he next sun. The Big Buffalo once learned to
believe the pledge of the Iroquois. When the mighty Big Throat said
that he was free, he believed. He did not set a guard to sit with
wakeful eyes through the night in fear that the pledge was not true.
No, the Big Buffalo is a warrior and a chief; he is not a woman. He
trusted his red brothers, and rested his head to sleep. Then in the
dark came a chief, a dog of a traitor, and took away his white brother
and his white sister while their eyes were still heavy with sleep, and
carried them far over the hills to the lake of the Cayugas. Here they
hid like serpents in the long grass, and thought that they would kill
them. But the Big Buffalo is a warrior. Without a knife or a musket or
a hatchet he killed the Long Arrow and came across the Long Lake. He
knew that the Cayugas were his brothers, that they would not break the
pledge of the Long House."

The grave faces of the Indians showed no surprise, save for a slight
movement of the eyes on the part of one or two of the younger men,
when the Long Arrow was mentioned. Most of them had lighted their
pipes before sitting down, and now they puffed in silence.

"The White Chief speaks strangely," the spokesman said at last. "He
tells the Cayugas that their brothers, the Onondagas, have broken the
pledge of the council."

"Yes."

"He asks for aid?"

"No," said Menard, "he does not ask for aid. He asks that the Iroquois
nation restore to him what the dogs of the Long Arrow have taken away.
He has spoken to the Long House in the voice of the Great Mountain. He
has the right of a free man, of a chief honoured by the council, to go
freely and in peace. What if those who do not respect the law of the
council shall rob him of his rights? Must he go on his knees to the
chiefs? Must he ask that he be allowed to live? Must he go far back on
his trail to seek aid of the Onondagas, because the Cayugas will not
hold to the law?"

One of the great lessons learned during Menard's work under Governor
Frontenac had been that the man who once permits himself to be lowered
in the eyes of the Indians has forever lost his prestige. Now he sat
before the chiefs of a great village, weak from the strain of the long
days and nights of distress and wakefulness and hunger, his clothing
still wet and bedraggled, with no weapon but a knife, no canoe, not to
speak of presents,--with none of the equipment which to the Indian
mind suggested authority,--and