on?"
"Yes! yes!"
"If three fall and only two are left, these must not flinch."
"Yes! yes!"
"If four go down and only one is left, then he whoever he may be, must go
on and win alone?"
"Yes! yes!" came forth with deep emphasis.
CHAPTER II
A FOREST ENVOY
A group of men were seated in a pleasant valley, where the golden beams of
the sun sifted in myriads through the green leaves. They were about fifty
in number and all were white. Most of them were dressed in Old World
fashion, doublets, knee breeches, hose, and cocked hats. Nearly all were
dark; olive faces, black hair, and black pointed beards, but now and then
one had fair hair, and eyes of a cold, pale blue. Manner, speech, looks,
and dress, alike differentiated them from the borderers. They were not the
kind of men whom one would expect to find in these lonely woods in the
heart of North America.
The leader of the company--and obviously he was such--was one of the few
who belonged to the blonde type. His eyes were of the chilly, metallic
blue, and his hair, long and fair, curled at the ends. His dress, of some
fine, black cloth, was scrupulously neat and clean, and a silver-hilted
small sword swung it his belt. He was not more than thirty.
The fair man was leaning lazily but gracefully against the trunk of a
tree, and he talked in a manner that seemed indolent and careless, but
which was neither to a youth in buckskins who sat opposite him,
a striking contrast in appearance. This youth was undeniably of the
Anglo-Saxon type, large and well-built, with a broad, full forehead, but
with eyes set too close together. He was tanned almost to the darkness of
an Indian.
"You tell me, Senor Wyatt," said Don Francisco Alvarez, the leader of the
Spanish band, "that the new settlers in Kaintock[A] have twice driven off
the allied tribes, and that, if they are left alone another year or two,
they will go down so deep in the soil that they can never be uprooted.
Is it not so?"
"It is so," replied Braxton Wyatt, the renegade. "The tribes have failed
twice in a great effort. Every man among these settlers is a daring and
skillful fighter, and many of the boys--and many of the women, too. But if
white troops and cannon are sent against them their forts must fall."
The Spaniard was idly whipping the grass stems with a little switch. Now
he narrowed his metallic, blue eyes, and gazed directly into those of
Braxton Wyatt.
"And you, Senor Wyatt?" h
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