erce warriors
lay in the thicket, waiting to fall upon those who might follow the
trail of St. Luc. He had no doubt that a force of some kind would come.
The Bostonnais and the English always followed a retreating enemy, and
experience never kept them from walking into an ambush. Tandakora was
already counting the scalps he would take, and his savage heart was
filled with delight. He had been aghast when Bourlamaque abandoned
Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Throughout the region over which he had
been roaming for three or four years the Bostonnais would be triumphant.
Andiatarocte and Oneadatote would pass into their possession forever.
The Ojibway chief belonged far to the westward, to the west of the Great
Lakes, but the great war had called him, like so many others of the
savage tribes, into the east, and he had been there so long that he had
grown to look upon the country as his own, or at least held by him and
his like in partnership with the French, a belief confirmed by the great
victories at Duquesne and Oswego, William Henry and Ticonderoga.

Now Tandakora's whole world was overthrown. The French were withdrawing
into Canada. St. Luc, whom he did not like, but whom he knew to be a
great warrior, was retreating in haste, and the invincible Montcalm was
beleaguered in Quebec. He would have to go too, but he meant to take
scalps with him. Bostonnais were sure to appear on the trail, and they
would come in the night, pursuing St. Luc. It was a good night for such
work as his, heavy with clouds and very dark. He would creep close and
strike before his presence was even suspected.

Tandakora lay quiet with his warriors, while night came and its darkness
grew, and he listened for the sound of men on the trail. Instead he
heard the weird, desolate cry of an owl to his left, and then the
equally lone and desolate cry of another to his right. But the warriors
still lay quiet. They had heard owls often and were not afraid of them.
Then the cry came from the north, and now it was repeated from the
south. There was a surfeit of owls, very much too many of them, and they
called to one another too much. Tandakora did not like it. It was almost
like a visitation of evil spirits. Those weird, long-drawn cries,
singularly piercing on a still night, were bad omens. Some of his
warriors stirred and became uneasy, but Tandakora quieted them sternly
and promised that the Bostonnais would soon be along. Hope aroused
again, the men pluc