heir superior numbers swing around behind the enemy, but the lines
of the borderers were always extended to meet them, and the bullets from
the long-barreled rifles cut down everyone who tried to pass. It was
always Henry Ware who was first to see a new movement, his eyes read
every new motion in the grass, and foliage swaying in a new direction
would always tell him what it meant. More than one of his comrades
muttered to himself that he was worth a dozen men that day.

So fierce were the combatants, so eager were they for each other's blood
that they did not notice that the sky, gray in the morning, then blue at
the opening of battle, had now grown leaden and somber again. The leaves
above them were motionless and then began to rustle dully in a raw wet
wind out of the north. The sun was quite gone behind the clouds and
drops of cold rain began to fall, falling on the upturned faces of the
dead, red and white alike with just impartiality, the wind rose,
whistled, and drove the cold drops before it like hail. But the combat
still swayed back and forth in the leaden forest, and neither side took
notice.

Mr. Ware remained near the center of the white line, and retained
command, although he gave but few orders, every man fighting for himself
and giving his own orders. But from time to time Ross and Sol or Henry
brought him news of the conflict, perhaps how they had been driven back
a little at one point, and perhaps how they gained a little at another
point. He, too, a man of fifty and the head of a community, shared the
emotions of those around him, and was filled with a furious zeal for the
conflict.

The clouds thickened and darkened, and the cold drops were driven upon
them by the wind, the rifle smoke, held down by the rain, made sodden
banks of vapor among the trees; but through all the clouds of vapor
burst flashes of fire, and the occasional triumphant shout or death cry
of the white man or the savage.

Henry Ware looked up and he became conscious that not only clouds above
were bringing the darkness, but that the day was waning. In the west a
faint tint of red and yellow, barely discernible through the grayness,
marked the sinking sun, and in the east the blackness of night was still
advancing. Yet the conflict, as important to those engaged in it, as a
great battle between civilized foes, a hundred thousand on a side, and
far more fierce, yet hung on an even chance. The white men still stood
where they had