“Then this man must be dealt with.  I can’t go against him myself.  Other affairs press too much, but I can raise a force with speed.”

“Let me go, sir, against Tandakora!” exclaimed young Brant eagerly and in English.

Colonel Johnson looked at him a moment, his eyes glistening, and then he laughed, not with irony but gently and with approval.

“Truly ’tis a young eagle,” he said, “but, Joseph, you must remember that your years are yet short of twelve, and you still have much time to spend over the books in which you have done so well.  If I let you be cut off at such an early age you can never become the great chief you are destined to be.  Bide a while, Joseph, and your cousin, Daganoweda, will attend to this Ojibway who has wandered so far from his own country.”

Young Brant made no protest.  Trained in the wonderful discipline of the Hodenosaunee he knew that he must obey before he could command.  He resumed his seat quietly, but his eager eyes watched his tall cousin, the young Mohawk chieftain, as Colonel Johnson gave him orders.

“Take with you the warriors that you have now, Daganoweda,” he said.  “Gather the fifty who are now encamped at Teugega.  Take thirty more from Talaquega, and I think that will be enough.  I don’t know you, Daganoweda, and I don’t know your valiant Mohawk warriors, if you are not able to account thoroughly for the Ojibway and his men.  Don’t come back until you’ve destroyed them or driven them out of your country.”

Colonel Johnson’s tone was at once urgent and complimentary.  It intimated that the work was important and that Daganoweda would be sure to do it.  The Mohawk’s eyes glittered in his dark face.  He lifted his hand in a salute, glided from the bower, and a moment later he and his warriors passed from sight in the forest.

“That cousin of yours, Molly, deserves his rank of chief,” said Colonel Johnson.  “The task that he is to do I consider as good as done already.  Tandakora was too daring, when he ventured into the lands of the Ganeagaono.  Now, if you gentlemen will be so good as to be our guests we’ll pass the night here, and tomorrow we’ll go to Mount Johnson.”

It was agreeable to Robert, Willet and Tayoga, and they spent the remainder of the day most pleasantly at the bower.  Colonel Johnson, feeling that they were three whom he could trust, talked freely and unveiled a mind fitted for great affairs.

“I tell you three,” he said, “that this will be one of the most important wars the world has known.  To London and Paris we seem lost in the woods out here, and perhaps at the courts they think little of us or they do not think at all, but the time must come when the New World will react upon the Old.  Consider what a country it is, with its lakes, its forests, its rivers, and its fertile lands, which extend beyond the reckoning of man.  The day will arrive when there will be a power here greater than either England or France.  Such a land cannot help but nourish it.”