were in the thicket watching the great trail left by St. Luc.

"The Ojibway does not dream that he himself is being watched," said the
Onondaga, "and now I think we would better eat a little food from our
knapsacks and wait until the dark night that is promised has fully
come."

Tayoga's report was wholly true. Tandakora and twenty fierce warriors
lay in the thicket, waiting to fall upon those who might follow the
trail of St. Luc. He had no doubt that a force of some kind would come.
The Bostonnais and the English always followed a retreating enemy, and
experience never kept them from walking into an ambush. Tandakora was
already counting the scalps he would take, and his savage heart was
filled with delight. He had been aghast when Bourlamaque abandoned
Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Throughout the region over which he had
been roaming for three or four years the Bostonnais would be triumphant.
Andiatarocte and Oneadatote would pass into their possession forever.
The Ojibway chief belonged far to the westward, to the west of the Great
Lakes, but the great war had called him, like so many others of the
savage tribes, into the east, and he had been there so long that he had
grown to look upon the country as his own, or at least held by him and
his like in partnership with the French, a belief confirmed by the great
victories at Duquesne and Oswego, William Henry and Ticonderoga.

Now Tandakora's whole world was overthrown. The French were withdrawing
into Canada. St. Luc, whom he did not like, but whom he knew to be a
great warrior, was retreating in haste, and the invincible Montcalm was
beleaguered in Quebec. He would have to go too, but he meant to take
scalps with him. Bostonnais were sure to appear on the trail, and they
would come in the night, pursuing St. Luc. It was a good night for such