No matter what happens, no man is to fire without orders----" I stopped abruptly and laid my hand on the Black-Snake's hatchet-sheath, feeling it all over with my finger-tips in the dark.
"Damnation!" I said.

"There are tin points on the fringe! You might better wear a cow-bell! Where did you get it ?" "It was in my pack." "You have not worn it before.

Why do you wear it now ?" "It is looser in time of need." "Very well.

Stand still." I whipped out my knife and, bunching the faintly tinkling thrums in my fingers, severed the tin points and tossed them into the darkness.
"I can understand," said I, "a horse-riding Indian of the plains galloping into battle all over cow-bells, but never before have I heard of any forest Indian wearing such a fringe in time of war." The rebuke seemed to stun the Wyandotte.

He kept his face averted while I spoke, then at my brief word stepped forward into his place between myself and the Mohican.
"March!" I said in a low voice.
The Sagamore led us in a wide arc north, then west; and there was no hope of concealing or covering our trail, for in the darkness no man could see exactly where the man in front of him set foot, nor hope to avoid the wet sand of rivulets or the soft moss which took the imprint of every moccasin as warm wax yields to the seal.
That there was in the primeval woods no underbrush, save along streams or where the windfall had crashed earthward, made travelling in silence possible.
The forest giants branched high; no limbs threatened us; or, if there were any, the Sagamore truly had the sight of all night-creatures, for not once did a crested head brush the frailest twig; not once did a moccasined foot crash softly through dead and fallen wood.
The slope toward the river valley became steeper; we travelled along a heavily-wooded hillside at an angle that steadily increased.