Fortune generally seems to have a sympathy with madness.
It certainly had so in this instance. Not one of these missiles even scraped his body. And before a second volley could be discharged at him, with, in all probability, a more successful result for the red-skins, Painter had crept to a point from which he could rake them a second time. This volley was delivered at short range and, as an officer of the regular army might say, destroyed their morale. As Ben subsequently thought proper to say, in a more vernacular phrase than I choose at present to employ, it impaired their digestion.
Seeing the disorder into which they were thrown, I gave the boys the order to advance.
My words were not quite rapid enough. The boys Brighton Bill had with him were once more in a position available for following the example those with Painter had set them.
Demoralized as they were by the second volley, the red-skins nevertheless exhibited what Saxons denominate pluck, and made a furious rush upon the main body of their assailants, meeting us about half-way up to their breastworks. Our work was now short and thorough.
Harry and myself had not dismounted. He was a capital horseman, and rode in Comanche style, better even than I did. It was in this fashion that he approached an old Indian who was literally hailing his arrows at us, and shot him from under the neck of his horse. Ridding his hand of the revolver which was attached to his wrist by a strap, he rushed the animal past his prostrate enemy, and took his scalp very neatly, almost at the same instant recovering his seat.
The red-skin, however, although dropped by Arnold's shot, very evidently disapproved of the loss of his hair. Raising himself from the ground, precisely at the moment when the former reappeared above the back of his horse, he let fly another arrow.
This struck Harry in the back of the neck, immediately behind the vertebral bones, passing directly through it for more than half its length.
No time was given the Indian for another shot, as I was sufficiently near to settle him.