's for you and me, Paul, to watch and fight."

A certain fierce resolve showed in his tone, and Paul knew that Henry felt
himself a match for anything.

"Better eat and drink a little more, Paul," said Henry. "Take the half of
a pigeon. We'll need all our strength."

Paul thought the advice good, and followed it. Then came another period of
that terrible waiting.

CHAPTER V

THE FLIGHT

Paul was half reclining against the wall, when he suddenly saw Henry look
up. Paul's eyes followed his comrade's, and then he heard a soft, faint
sound over their heads. He understood at once. Danger had come from a new
quarter. The Shawnees were upon the board roof, through which a rifle
bullet could easily pass. The menace was serious, but the men up there
could not see their targets below, and they themselves were in a
precarious position.

Henry once pointed his rifle toward a portion of the roof from which a
slight sound came, but for a reason that he did not give he withheld his
fire. Then came a dead stillness, to be broken a few moments later by
fierce war cries all around the cabin and a crash of rapid shots. It
seemed to Paul that an attack in great force was being made from every
side, and, thrusting his rifle through the loophole, he fired quickly at
what he took to be the flitting form of a foe. The next moment he became
aware of a terrible struggle in the cabin itself. He heard a thud, the
roar of a rifle shot within the confined space, a fall, and then, in the
half darkness, he saw two powerful figures writhing to and fro. One was
Henry and the other a mighty Shawnee warrior, naked to the waist, and
striving to use a tomahawk that he held in a hand whose wrist was clenched
in the iron grasp of his foe. Lying almost at their feet was the body of
another warrior, stark and dead.

Paul sprang forward, his second and loaded rifle in his hand.

"No, no, Paul!" cried Henry. "The chimney! Look to the chimney!"

Paul whirled about, and he was just in time. A savage warrior dropped down
the great wide chimney that all the log cabins had, and fell lightly on
his feet among the dead embers of a month ago. His face was distorted
horribly with ferocity, and Paul, all the rage of battle upon him now that
battle had come, fired squarely at the red forehead, the rifle muzzle only
three feet away. The savage fell back and lay still among the cinders. The
next instant the deep, long-drawn sigh of a life departing came fro