ehind the
front of the wagon beds, and drive any way you can. Now, Sol, you and I
and Dick Salter must rouse them from the thickets."

The three crept forward, and looked at the peaceful river under the
peaceful sky. So far as the ordinary eye could see, there was no human
being on its shores. The bushes waved a little in the gentle wind, and the
water broke in brilliant bubbles on the shallows.

But Henry Ware's eyes were not ordinary. There was not a keener pair on
the continent, and among the thickets on the farther bank he saw a stir
that was not natural. The wind blew north, and now and then a bush would
bend a little toward the south. He crept closer, and at last he saw a
coppery face here and there, and savage, gleaming eyes staring through the
bushes.

"Tell the wagons to come on boldly," he said to Shif'less Sol, and the
shiftless one obeyed.

"Now, Sol," he said, when the man returned, "take fifty more riflemen, and
hide in that thicket, at the highest part of the bank. Stay there. You
will know what else to do."

"I think I will," said the shiftless one, and every trace of indifference
or laziness was gone from him. He was the forester, alert and
indomitable--a fit second to Henry Ware. Then Henry and Jim Hart alone
were left near the river's brink. Henry did not look back.

"Are the wagons coming fast?" he asked.

"Yes," said Jim Hart, "but I'm beckonin' to 'em to come still faster.
They'll be in the water in three minutes. Listen! The drivers are whippin'
up the horses!"

The loud cracking of whips arose, and the horses advanced at a trot toward
the ford. At the same instant Henry Ware raised his rifle, and fired like
a flash of lightning at one of the coppery faces in the thicket on the
opposite shore. The death cry of the savage rose, but far above it rose
the taunting shout of the white youth, louder and more terrible than their
own. The savages, surprised, abandoned their ambush. The leading wagons
dashed into the water, and down upon them dashed the picked power of the
allied western tribes.

In an instant the far edge of the water was swarming with coppery bodies
and savage faces, and the war whoop, given again and again, echoed far up
and down the stream, and through the thickets and forest. Rifles cracked
rapidly, and then blazed into volleys. Bullets sighed as they struck on
human flesh or the wood of wagons, and now and then they spattered on the
water. Cries of pain or shouts of defian