"If the Mohawks strike, they will strike through here at Balston or
Saratoga, or at the half-dozen families left at Fonda's Bush, which some
of them call Broadalbin."
"Have these poor wretches no one to warn them?" I asked.
"Oh, they have been warned and warned, but they cling to their cabins as
cats cling to soft cushions. The Palatines seem paralyzed with fear, the
Dutch are too lazy to move in around the forts, the Scotch and English
too obstinate. Nobody can do anything for them--you heard what that
Schell woman said when I urged her to prudence."
I bent my eyes on the ominous trail; its very emptiness fascinated me,
and I dismounted and knelt to examine it where, near a dry, rotten log,
some fresh marks showed.
Behind me I heard Dorothy dismount, dropping to the ground lightly as a
tree-lynx; the next moment she laid her hand on my shoulder and bent
over where I was kneeling.
"Can you read me that sign?" she asked, mischievously.
"Something has rolled and squatted in the dry wood-dust--some bird, I
think."
"A good guess," she said; "a cock-partridge has dusted here; see those
bits of down? I say a cock-bird because I know that log to be a
drumming-log."
She raised herself and guided her horse along the trail, bright eyes
restlessly scanning ground and fringing underbrush.
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