… When the drums summoned us to the council house that night, we looked as much like Indians as any of the Sacs. Verrieul’s face was bright green; his eyes two discs of white. My chin and lips were blue against a background of vermilion. We even smelled like Indians, for our buckskins were black with grease and smoke, and our pouches stuffed with summer killikinnick—tobacco mixed with powdered wintergreen leaves—which has a sweetish smell.

Among the hundreds of Indians gathered in that long house—some flat on their backs, with their knees crossed, some hunkered down, some sprawled on their bellies, or disposed in any way that suited their convenience—my eager eye at once discovered Joseph Phipps and Gautier de Verville. I was impatient to see Joseph and speak with him, but I was even more anxious about Gautier; for it was he who would assist Langlade in leading such Sacs as elected to make war on the side of the English: he might, even, hold in his hands the power of life and death over Verrieul, Doc and myself—for if he prevented us from returning to the eastward, our existence among the Indians would be a living death forever.

Gautier, like most half-breeds, had a muddy complexion and a hard black eye; and he used that eye on Doc and Verrieul and me from the moment we entered. He wore a scarlet British coat and a brass gorget the size of half a pie, and a gold-laced hat. He was short and bandy-legged, but the Indians clearly held him in high esteem. This, Verrieul learned, was because he was almost as great a fighter as Langlade, and had fought like a lion for the French against the English on the day Montcalm was defeated at Quebec.

As for Joseph Phipps, he looked more impressive than on that distant night when he had guided me around the limestone mountain in Skenesboro to see his sister. He wore a buckskin coat, with the head of a moose painted on its back and front; and on his blackened face white moose-horns had been drawn so that they seemed to sprout from his nostrils. His wampum necklaces and headband were blue, his leggins and moccasins stiff with porcupine quills. Whether or not Joseph recognized me, I couldn’t be sure. From time to time his gaze passed lightly over me, only to return admiringly to Gautier. I feared his feelings toward us were bound to be colored by those of Gautier; and Gautier’s certainly were hostile. My heart was low and the outlook far from promising.

When Gautier rose to speak, he followed Indian custom by placing before him, as a gift to the Sac people, a broad band of glass beads, as large as a bell-pull. Verrieul told us what he said.