The eight men worked well.  By sunrise I was fighting the dogs and the stench in the Sacs village, and by eleven the same morning I was on my way again with eighty braves following.  The Sacs were such clumsy people in canoes that I did not dare trust them on the water, so we arranged to make a detour to the west and reach the rendezvous by land.

It was a terrible journey.  We had to make on foot nearly double the distance that the other tribes would make by canoe, so we gave ourselves no rest.  The trail led by morass and fallen timber, and it was the season of stinging gnats and breathless days.  The Sacs were always filthy in camp or journeying, and I turned coward at the food I was obliged to eat.  But I did not dare leave them and trust them to come alone.  They were a fierce, sullen people, unstable as hyenas, but they were terrible in war.  I had won some power over them, and they followed me with the eyes of snarling dogs.  But they would not have gone a mile without my hand to beckon.

So through filth and gnats, heat, toil, and lack of food, I followed Ambition.

CHAPTER XXX

THE MEANING OP CONQUEST

When I stumbled along the bank of the little stream that marked our rendezvous, I was mud-splashed, torn, and insect-poisoned, and I led a brutish set of ruffians.  Yet I heard a muffled cheer roar out as I came into view.  The Winnebagoes were in camp and in waiting.

I forgot ache and weariness.  The Winnebagoes were fifty in all, picked men, and I looked them over and exulted.  Erect and clean-limbed, they were as dignified and wonderful as a row of fir trees, and physically I felt a sorry object beside them.  Yet they hailed me as leader, and placing me on a robe of deerskins carried me into camp.  They smoked the pipe of fealty with me, and when I slept that night I knew that my dream castles of the last two years were at last shaping into something I could touch and handle.  Their glitter was giving way to masonry.

The morning brought the Malhominis, the noon the Chippewas.  I hoped for the French and the Pottawatamies by night.

But the night did not bring them, nor the next morning, nor the next day, nor yet the day following.

And in the waiting days I lived in four camps of savages, and it was my duty to cover them with the robe of peace.

The wolf-eyed Sacs, the stately Winnebagoes, the Chippewas, and Malhominis,—­they sat like gamecocks, quiet, but alert for a ruffle of one another’s plumage.  In council they were men; in idleness, children.  When I was with them, they talked of war and spoke like senators.  When I turned my back they gambled, lied, bragged, and stole.  I needed four bodies and uncounted minds.

And I saw how my union was composed.  The tribes would unite and destroy the Senecas,—­that done, it was probable they would find the game merry, and fall upon one another.