What do you reckon we're goin' to do,
Henry?"

"Fight!" replied the youth, with fierce energy. "Beat 'em off!"

"How?"

Henry circled the little oasis with the eye of a general, and his plan
came.

"You'll stand here, where the earth gives a footing," he said, "you,
Solomon Hyde, as brave a man as I ever saw, and with you will be Paul
Cotter, Tom Ross, Jim Hart, and Henry Ware, old friends of yours.
Carpenter will at once lead the women and children on ahead, and perhaps
they will not hear the battle that is going to be fought here."

A smile of approval, slow, but deep and comprehensive, stole over the
face of Solomon Hyde, surnamed, wholly without fitness, the shiftless
one. "It seems to me," he said, "that I've heard o' them four fellers
you're talkin' about, an' ef I wuz to hunt all over this planet an' them
other planets that Paul tells of, I couldn't find four other fellers
that I'd ez soon have with me."

"We've got to stand here to the death," said Henry.

"You're shorely right," said Shif'less Sol.

The hands of the two comrades met in a grip of steel.

The other three were called and were told of the plan, which met with
their full approval. Then the news was carried to Carpenter, who quickly
agreed that their course was the wisest. He urged all the fugitives to
their feet, telling them that they must reach another dry place
before night, but they were past asking questions now, and, heavy and
apathetic, they passed on into the swamp.

Paul watched the last of them disappear among the black bushes and
weeds, and turned back to his friends on the oasis. The five lay down
behind a big fallen pine, and gave their weapons a last look. They
had never been armed better. Their rifles were good, and the fine
double-barreled pistols, formidable weapons, would be a great aid,
especially at close quarters.

"I take it," said Tom Ross, "that the Iroquois can't get through at all
unless they come along this way, an' it's the same ez ef we wuz settin'
on solid earth, poppin' em over, while they come sloshin' up to us."

"That's exactly it," said Henry. "We've a natural defense which we can
hold against much greater numbers, and the longer we hold 'em off, the
nearer our people will be to Fort Penn."

"I never felt more like fightin' in my life," said Tom Ross.

It was a grim utterance, true of them all, although not one among them
was bloodthirsty.

"Can any of you hear anything?" asked Henry. "Nothin',"