Atatarho laughed. His laugh was like the roar of a fierce beast, filling the clearing. It was so loud and threatening that the men holding their clubs to either side of him flinched. But neither Holds the Door Open nor Burnt Hair moved. They stood there, eyes looking down at the earth, still showing respect, but not displaying the fear both of them felt at that moment.

They know, Okwaho thought, a shiver running down his back like an icy drop of rain, that if they show either weakness or defiance now, it may be the end of them both.

“Hah!” Atatarho growled. “You want to know what my answer would be if you asked to return?” He paused. Neither Burnt Hair nor Holds the Door Open said anything. What he’d just said was not a question.

Atatarho leaned forward, his right hand held up, his index finger pointing at the ground. “It will be easy,” he said. “Just come here and run the gauntlet. That way I will know you are worthy to be part of Onondaga again.”

Running the gauntlet. Okwaho understood what that meant, even though he had never seen it. It was an old way of testing the bravery of men taken captive. People, sometimes everyone in a village, would make two lines facing inward. In their hands they would hold sticks. Those who had to prove themselves would run between those two lines of people holding sticks, being struck on both sides by everyone they passed. Sometimes, the blows struck would be light ones, especially when the person being tested was a young man worthy of adoption. At the end of the line his new family members would be waiting with open arms to welcome him as one of them. Also, if someone showed particular bravery, walking through the gauntlet rather than running, those holding the sticks might just reach out and touch him with their sticks as he passed by them.

Other times, though, the blows struck in the gauntlet would be brutal ones, hard enough to bruise, to draw blood. Some who ran the gauntlet never made it through. They would fall and be beaten to death.

Hearing that running the gauntlet would be their only test almost made Burnt Hair and Holds the Door Open smile. The men of their little breakaway village could surely endure that.

But Atatarho was not finished.

One of the snakes in his hair had wriggled free and had started to crawl down his massive shoulder. Atatarho reached over and grasped the black snake with his left hand. It flicked its tongue out at him as he held it up in front of him.

“Yes,” Atatarho said, as if having heard the snake speak to him. “Yes.”

He dropped the snake and watched as it slithered down into a hole beneath the great rock where he sat.