The Masters of the Peaks

CONTENTS

CHAPTER


I. IN THE DEEP WOODS

II. ON THE RIDGES

III. THE BRAVE DEFENCE

IV. THE GODS AT PLAY

V. TAMING A SPY

VI. PUPILS OF THE BEAR

VII. THE SLEEPING SENTINELS

VIII. BEFORE MONTCALM

IX. THE SIGN OF THE BEAR

X. THE FLIGHT OF THE TWO

XI. THE MYSTIC VOYAGE

XII. THE MARVELOUS TRAILER

XIII. READING THE SIGNS

XIV. ST. LUC'S REVENGE




CHAPTER I


IN THE DEEP WOODS

A light wind sang through the foliage, turned to varying and vivid
hues now by the touch of autumn, and it had an edge of cold that made
Robert Lennox shiver a little, despite a hardy life in wilderness and
open. But it was only a passing feeling. A moment or two later he
forgot it, and, turning his eyes to the west, watched the vast
terraces of blazing color piled one above another by the sinking sun.

Often as he had seen it the wonderful late glow over the mighty forest
never failed to stir him, and to make his pulse beat a little faster.
His sensitive mind, akin in quality to that of a poet, responded with
eagerness and joy to the beauty and majesty of nature. Forgetting
danger and the great task they had set for themselves, he watched the
banks of color, red and pink, salmon and blue, purple and yellow,
shift and change, while in the very heart of the vast panorama the
huge, red orb, too strong for human sight, glittered and flamed.

The air, instinct with life, intoxicated him and he became rapt as in
a vision. People whom he had met in his few but eventful years passed
before him again in all the seeming of reality, and then his spirit
leaped into the future, dreaming of the great things he would see, and
in which perhaps he would have a share.

Tayoga, the young Onondaga, looked at his comrade and he understood.
The same imaginative thread had been woven into the warp of which
he was made, and his nostrils and lips quivered as he drank in the
splendor of a world that appealed with such peculiar force to him, a
son of the woods.

"The spirit of Areskoui (the Sun God) is upon Dagaeoga, and he has
left us to dwell for a little while upon the seas of color heaped
against the western horizon," he said.

Willet, the hunter, smiled. The two lads were very dear to him. He
knew that they were uncommon types, raised by the gift of God far
above the normal.

"Let him rest there, Tayoga," he said, "while those brilliant banks
last, which won't be long. All things change, and the glorious hues
will soon give way to the dark."

"True, Great Bear, but if the night comes it, in turn, must yield to
the dawn. All things change, as you say, but nothing perishes. The sun
tomorrow will be the same sun that we see today. Black night will not
take a single ray from its glory."