They had a plan of approaching the upper Mohawk village of Canajoharie, where one account says that Thayendanegea was born, although another credits his birthplace to the upper banks of the Ohio.
They turned now from the valley to the deep woods.

The trail showed that the great Indian force, after disembarking again, split into large parties, everyone loaded with spoil and bound for its home village.

The five noted several of the trails, but one of them consumed the whole attention of Silent Tom Ross.
He saw in the soft soil near a creek bank the footsteps of about eight Indians, and, mingled with them, other footsteps, which he took to be those of a white woman and of several children, captives, as even a tyro would infer.

The soul of Tom, the good, honest, and inarticulate frontiersman, stirred within him.

A white woman and her children being carried off to savagery, to be lost forevermore to their kind! Tom, still inarticulate, felt his heart pierced with sadness at the tale that the tracks in the soft mud told so plainly.