ponding to a summons--eight hundred
desperate men to leave scythe and flail and grist-mill for their rifles
at the dread call to arms. Two dozen or more blockhouses, holding from
ten to half a hundred families each, were strung out between Stanwix
Fort and Schenectady; these, except for a few forts, formed the outer
line of the United States' bulwarks in the north; and this line Willett
was here to hold with the scattered handful of farmers and Rangers.

Yet, with these handfuls, before our arrival he had already cleaned out
Torlock; he had already charged through the flames of Currietown, and
routed the renegades at Sharon--leading the charge, cocked-hat in hand,
remarking to his Rangers that he could catch in his hat all the balls
that the renegades could fire. Bob McKean, the scout, fell that day;
nine men, bound to saplings, were found scalped; yet the handful under
Willett turned on Torlock and seized a hundred head of cattle for the
famishing garrison of Herkimer. Wawarsing, Cobleskill, and Little Falls
were ablaze; Willett's trail lay through their smoking cinders, his
hatchets hung in the renegades' rear, his bullets drove the raiders
headlong from Tekakwitha Spring to the Kennyetto, and his Oneidas clung
to the edges of invasion, watching, waiting, listening in the still
places for the first faint sound of that advance that meant the final
death-grapple. It was coming, surely coming: Sir John already harrying
the Sacandaga; Haldimand reported on the eastern lakes; Ross and the
Butlers expected from Niagara, and nothing now to prevent Clinton from
advancing up the Hudson from New York, skirting West Point, and giving
the entire north to the torch. This was what confronted Tryon County;
but the army needed grain, and we were there to glean what we might
between fitful storms, watching that solid, thunderous tempest
darkening the north from east to west, far as the eye could see.

Colonel Willett had lighted his clay pipe, and now, map spread across
his knees and mine, he leaned over, arms folded, smoking, and examining
the discolored and wrinkled paper.

"Where is Adriutha, Carus?" he drawled.

I pointed out the watercourse, traced in blue, showing him the ancient
site and the falls near by.

"And Carenay?"

Again I pointed.

"Oswaya?"

"Only tradition remains of that lost village," I said. "Even in the
Great Rite those who pronounce the name know nothing more than that it
once existed. It is so with Ka