t we find in the
forest here, and you'll have plenty of time, as they won't be through
with that conference yet for at least five minutes."

Henry saw the savages gathered in a great mass, well out of rifle shot,
and, on a little hill back of them, the British officers, the renegades
and the chiefs were talking earnestly. Beyond all possible doubt they
had agreed that they were confronted by a formidable force. The proof of
it lay before them. Valiant warriors had fallen and the two slain
gunners could not be replaced. Henry knew that it was a bitter surprise
to them, and they must think that the settlers, hearing of the advance
against them, had sent forward all the men they could raise to form the
ambush at the ford.

He was full of elation, and so were his comrades. Five against an army!
and the five had stopped the army! Rifles against cannon. And the rifles
had stopped the cannon! The two slain gunners were proof of an idea
already in his mind, and now that idea enlarged automatically. They
would continue to pick off the gunners. What were a few warriors slain
out of a mass of a thousand! But there were only seven or eight gunners,
no, five or six, because two were gone already! He whispered to his
comrades to shoot a gunner whenever there was a chance, and they nodded
in approval.

The conferences lasted some time, and the gorge in front of them was
filled with savages, a great mass of men with tufted scalp locks, some
bare to the waist, others wrapped in gaudy blue or red or yellow
blankets, a restless, shifting mass, upon which the sun poured brilliant
rays, lighting up the savage faces as if they were shot with fire. It
was a strange scene, buried in the green wood, one of the unknown
battles that marked the march of the republic from sea to sea. As the
five stared from their covert at the savage army the vivid colors were
like those of shifting glass in a kaleidoscope. The whole began to seem
unreal and fantastic, the stuff of dreams. To Paul, in particular, whose
head held so much of the past, it was like some old tale out of the
Odyssey, with Ulysses and his comrades confronting a new danger in
barbaric lands.

"They're about to do somethin'," whispered the shiftless one.

"So I think," said Henry.

The British officers, the renegades and the chiefs walked down from the
mound. Among the savages arose a low hum which quickly swelled into a
chant, and Henry interpreted it as a sign that they now expecte