"It's clear enough to me, lad, and to the redskins. What do you say, chief?"

"Too much men," the Seneca replied sententiously.

For another minute or two he and Peter stood watching the forest, and then in a few words consulted together as to the best line to follow to avoid meeting the foe who, to their eyes, swarmed in the forest.

"It's mighty lucky," the hunter said as they turned to descend the hill, which was covered with trees to its very summit, "that they're white men and not redskins out in the woods, there. I don't say that there's not many frontiersmen who know the way of the woods as well as the redskins. I do myself, and when it comes to fighting we can lick 'em on their own ground; but in scouting we aint nowhere--not the best of us. The redskin seems to have an instinct more like that of an animal than a man. I don't say as he can smell a man a mile off as a dog can do, but he seems to know when the enemy's about; his ears can hear noises which we can't; his eyes see marks on the ground when the keenest-sighted white man sees nothing. If that wood was as full of redskins as it is of whites to-day, our sculps wouldn't be worth a charge of powder."