So great was the heat that Colonel Butler and the soldiers and
scouts were compelled to withdraw to the edge of the forest. The
wind rose and the flames soared. Sparks flew in myriads, and
ashes fell dustily on the dry leaves of the trees. Bob Taylor,
with his hands clenched tightly, muttered under his breath,
"Wyoming! Wyoming!"
"It is the Iroquois who suffer now," said Heemskerk, as he
revolved slowly away from a heated point.
Crashes came presently as the houses fell in, and then the sparks
would leap higher and the flames roar louder. The barns, too,
were falling down, and the grain was destroyed. The grapevines
were trampled under foot, and the gardens were ruined. Oghwaga,
a great central base of the Six Nations, was vanishing forever.
For four hundred years, ever since the days of Hiawatha, the
Iroquois had waxed in power. They had ruled over lands larger
than great empires. They had built up political and social
systems that are the wonder of students. They were invincible in
war, because every man had been trained from birth to be a
warrior, and now they were receiving their first great blow.
From a point far in the forest, miles away, Thayendanegea,
Timmendiquas, Hiokatoo, Sangerachte, "Indian" Butler, Walter
Butler, Braxton Wyatt, a low, heavybrowed Tory named Coleman,
with whom Wyatt had become very friendly, and about sixty
Iroquois and twenty Tories were watching a tower of light to the
south that had just appeared above the trees.
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