d
the rifle fire from different parts of the town. His own band had been
annihilated by the riflemen, led by Henry Ware, but he had a sanguine
hope now that his enemies had rushed into a trap. The Iroquois would
turn back and destroy them.

Wyatt and his comrades presented a repellent sight as they crouched in
the room and fired from the two little windows. His clothes and those
of the white men had been torn by bushes and briars in their flight, and
their faces had been raked, too, until they bled, but they had paid
no attention to such wounds, and the blood was mingled with sweat and
powder smoke. The Indians, naked to the waist, daubed with vermilion,
and streaked, too, with blood, crouched upon the floor, with the
muz'zles of their rifles at the windows, seeking something human to
kill. One and all, red and white, they were now raging savages, There
was not one among them who did not have some foul murder of woman or
child to his credit.

Wyatt himself was mad for revenge. Every evil passion in him was up and
leaping. His eyes, more like those of a wild animal than a human being,
blazed out of a face, a mottled red and black. By the side of him the
dark Tory, Coleman, was driven by impulses fully as fierce.

"To think of it!" exclaimed Wyatt. "He led us directly into a trap, that
Ware! And here our band is destroyed! All the good men that we gathered
together, except these few, are killed!"

"But we may pay them back," said Coleman. "We were in their trap, but
now they are in ours! Listen to that firing and the war whoop! There are
enough Iroquois yet in the town to kill every one of those rebels!"

"I hope so! I believe so!" exclaimed Wyatt. "Look out, Coleman! Ah, he's
pinked you! That's the one they call Shif'less Sol, and he's the best
sharpshooter of them all except Ware!"

Coleman had leaned forward a little in his anxiety to secure a good
aim at something. He had disclosed only a little of his face, but in an
instant a bullet had seared his forehead like the flaming stroke of a
sword, passing on and burying itself in the wall. Fresh blood dripped
down over his face. He tore a strip from the inside of his coat, bound
it about his head, and went on with the defense.

A Mohawk, frightfully painted, fired from the other window. Like a flash
came the return shot, and the Indian fell back in the room, stone dead,
with a bullet through his bead.

"That was Ware himself," said Wyatt. "I told you he was the b