"So you leave for the north to-night?" I asked, amused.
"Yes, sir. There's a certain Walter Butler in this town, arrived like a hen-hawk from the clouds, and peep! peep! we downy chicks must scurry to the forest, lad, or there'll be a fine show on the gallows yonder and two good rifles idle in the hills of Tryon."
"You know Walter Butler?"
"Know him? Yes, sir. I had him at my mercy once--over my rifle-sights! Ah, well--he rode away--and had it not been young Cardigan who stayed my trigger-finger--But let that pass, too. What is he here for?"
"To ask Sir Henry Clinton's sanction of a plan to burn New York and fling the army on West Point, while he and Sir John Johnson and Colonel Ross strike the grain country in the north and lay it and the frontier in ashes."
There was a silence, then a quiet laugh from Mount.
"West Point is safe, I think," he murmured.
"But Tryon?" urged the Weasel; "how will it go with Tryon County, Jack?"
Another silence.
"We'd best be getting back to Willett," said Mount quietly. "As for me, my errand is done, and the strange, fishy smells of New York town stifle me. I'm stale and timid, and I like not the shape of the gallows yonder. My health requires the half-light of the woods, Mr. Renault, and the friendly shadows which lie at hand like rat-holes in a granary. I've drunk all the ale at the Bull's-Head--weak stuff it was--and they've sent for more, but I can't wait. So we're off to the north to-night, friend, and we'll presently rinse our throats of this salt wind, which truly inspires a noble thirst, yet tells nothing to a nose made to sniff the inland breezes."
He held out his hand, saying, "So you can learn no news of this place called Thendara?"
"I may learn yet. Walter Butler said to-day that I knew it. Yet I can not recall anything save the name. Is it Delaware? And yet I know it must be Iroquois, too."
"It might be Cayuga, for all I know," he said. "I never learned their cursed jargon and never mean to. My business is to stop their forest-loping--and I do when I can." He spoke bitterly, like that certain class of forest-runners who never spare an Indian, never understand that anything but evil can come of any blood but white. With them argument is lost, so I said nothing.