“Butler’s Rangers.” Also I discovered a line of writing signed by old John Butler himself, recommending the St. Regis to one Captain Service, an uncle of Sir John Johnson, and a great villain who recently had been shot dead by David Elerson, one of my own riflemen, while attempting to brain Tim Murphy with an axe.

“The poor fool,” I repeated, turning away, “Had he not meddled with war when his business lay only in hunting, he had gone free or, if we had caught him, only as a prisoner to headquarters.”

Mayaro shrugged his contempt of the St. Regis hunter; the Oneida youth sat industriously braiding his first trophy; the others had rekindled the embers of the dead man’s fire and were now parching his raw corn and dividing the baked river-trout into six portions.