a plan of approaching the upper Mohawk village
of Canajoharie, where one account says that Thayendanegea was born,
although another credits his birthplace to the upper banks of the Ohio.

They turned now from the valley to the deep woods. The trail showed
that the great Indian force, after disembarking again, split into large
parties, everyone loaded with spoil and bound for its home village. The
five noted several of the trails, but one of them consumed the whole
attention of Silent Tom Ross.

He saw in the soft soil near a creek bank the footsteps of about eight
Indians, and, mingled with them, other footsteps, which he took to be
those of a white woman and of several children, captives, as even a
tyro would infer. The soul of Tom, the good, honest, and inarticulate
frontiersman, stirred within him. A white woman and her children being
carried off to savagery, to be lost forevermore to their kind! Tom,
still inarticulate, felt his heart pierced with sadness at the tale that
the tracks in the soft mud told so plainly. But despair was not the only
emotion in his heart. The silent and brave man meant to act.

"Henry," he said, "see these tracks here in the soft spot by the creek."

The young leader read the forest page, and it told him exactly the same
tale that it had told Tom Ross.

"About a day old, I think," he said.

"Just about," said Tom; "an' I reckon, Henry, you know what's in my
mind."

"I think I do," said Henry, "and we ought to overtake them by to-morrow
night. You tell the others, Tom."

Tom informed Shif'less Sol, Paul, and Long Jim in a few words, receiving
from everyone a glad assent, and then the five followed fast on the
trail. They knew that the Indians could not go very fast, as their speed
must be that of the slowest, namely, that of the children, and it seemed
likely that Henry's prediction of overtaking them on the following night
would come true.

It was an easy trail. Here and there were tiny fragments of cloth,
caught by a bush from the dress of a captive. In one place they saw a
fragment of a child's shoe that had been dropped off and abandoned. Paul
picked up the worn piece of leather and examined it.

"I think it was worn by a girl," he said, "and, judging from its size,
she could not have been more than eight years old. Think of a child like
that being made to walk five or six hundred miles through these woods!"

"Younger ones still have had to do it," said Shif'less Sol gravely