I trusted him and set no sentry at the hut door.

Is this well, brother ?" The Sagamore looked at me with eyes utterly void of expression.
"Is Mayaro a prisoner, then ?" he asked quietly.
Instantly I knew that he was not to be dealt with that way.

The slightest suspicion of any personal restraint or of any military pressure brought to bear on him might alienate him from our cause, if not, perhaps, from me personally.
I said: "The Siwanois are free people.

No lodge door is locked on them, not even in the Long House.

They are at liberty to come and go as the eight winds rise and wane--to sleep when they choose, to wake when it pleases them, to go forth by day or night, to follow the war-trail, to strike their enemies where they find them.
"But now, to one of them--to the Mohican Mayaro, Sagamore of the Siwanois, Sachem of the Enchanted Clan, is given the greatest mission ever offered to any Delaware since Tamenund put on his snowy panoply of feathers and flew through the forest and upward into the air-ocean of eternal light.
"A great army of his embattled brothers trusts in him to guide them so that the Iroquois Confederacy shall be pierced from Gate to Gate, and the Long House go roaring up in flames.
"There are many valiant deeds to be accomplished on this coming march--deeds worthy of a war-chief of the Lenni-Lenape--deeds fitted to do honour to a Sagamore of the Magic Wolf.
"I only ask of my friend and blood-brother that he reserve himself for these great deeds and not risk a chance bullet in ambush for the sake of an Erie scalp or two--for the sake of a patch of mangy fur which grows on these Devil-Cats of Amochol." At first his countenance was smooth and blank; as I proceeded, he became gravely attentive; then, as I ended, he gave me a quick, unembarrassed, and merry look.
"Loskiel," he said laughingly, "Mayaro plays with the Cat-People.