"I have made promise to my thirsty hatchet, O Loskiel! Else it might have leaped from its sheath and bitten some one." "A good hatchet and a good dog bite only under orders," I said.

"My younger brother's hatchet has acquired glory; now it is acquiring wisdom." Boyd came up along the line, his deerskin shirt open to the breastbone, the green fringe blowing in the hill wind.
Far below us in the river valley sounded the uproar of the battle--a dull, confused, and distant thunder--for now we could no longer hear the musketry and rifle fire, only the boom-booming of the guns and the endless roar of echoes.
Here on a high hill's spur, with a brisk wind blowing in our faces, the heavy rumble of forest warfare became deadened; and we looked out over the naked ridge of rock, across the forests of this broken country, into a sea of green which stretched from horizon to horizon, accented only by the silver glimmer of lakes and the low mountain peaks east, west, and south of us.
Below us lay a creek, its glittering thread visible here and there.

The Great Warrior trail crossed it somewhere in that ravine.
I drew the Mohican aside.
"Sagamore," said I, "now is your time come.

Now we depend on you.

If it lay with us, not one white man here, not one Indian, could take us straight to Catharines-town; for the Great Warrior trail runs not thither.