hide. The scouts declared that a Jesuit priest and La Salle
himself led them.

The Frenchmen's lives seemed hardly a breath long. In the midst of
maddened, screeching savages Tonty and his men once more stood back to
back, and he pushed off knives with his copper hand.

"Do you want to kill yourselves?" he shouted. "If you kill us, the
French governor will not leave a man of you alive! I tell you Monsieur
de la Salle is not with the Iroquois, nor is any priest leading them!
Do you not remember the good Father Marquette? Would such men as he
lead tribes to fight one another? If all the Iroquois had stolen French
clothes, you would think an army of Jesuits and Messieurs de la Salle
were coming against you!"

"But some one has brought the Iroquois upon us!"

"I told you before we know nothing about the Iroquois! But we will go
with you now to fight them!"

At that the Illinois put their knives in their belts and ran shouting to
throw themselves into the canoes. Warfare with American Indians was
always the rush of a mob, where every one acted for himself without
military order.

"It is well the good friars are away making their retreat," said Tonty
to Boisrondet and Etienne Renault while they paddled as fast as they
could across the river with the Illinois. "Poor old L'Esperance must be
making a retreat, too."

"I have not myself seen him since last night," Boisrondet remembered.

"He put out in a canoe when the Indians were embarking their women and
children," said Etienne Renault. "I saw him go."

And so it proved afterwards. But L'Esperance had slipped away to bring
back Father Membre and Father Ribourde to tend the wounded and dying.

[Illustration: Long House of the Iroquois.]

Having crossed the river and reached the prairie, Tonty and his allies
saw the Iroquois. They came prancing and screeching on their savage
march, and would have been ridiculous if they had not been appalling.
These Hodenosaunee, or People of the Long House, as they called
themselves, were the most terrible force in the New World. Tonty saw
at once it would go hard with the Illinois nation. Never at any time
as hardy as their invaders, who by frequent attacks had broken their
courage, and weakened by the absence of their best warriors, they
wavered in their first charge.

He put down his gun and offered to carry a peace belt to the Iroquois to
stop the fight. The Illinois gladly gave him a wampum girdle and sent a
young Indian with