While these directions went into effect, Crawford, who knew himself still unable to endure the heavy recoil of a musket, provided himself with several tomahawks and took post at the center of the barricade, where Frontin and Black Kettle joined him. Standing Bull himself was gone into the trees beyond with his scouts. Now Crawford heard the voice of Le Talon, and saw the crippled chief limping to him. There, his injured leg bolstered up, Le Talon stood facing the clearing beyond, his voice rising and falling in a weird monotone as it lifted to the morning sky the recital of his deeds and trophies.
Then, suddenly, a musket banged in the forest, followed by others. The Stone Men could have little ammunition left, and what they had was now being rapidly expended. Bullets clipped the high trees, while Crawford and his men waited for the battle to be broken upon them; and on the ground in little sheaves lay the scarlet arrows which were the peculiar token of the Star Woman. Yells resounded, and among them Crawford thrilled to the bull-like roar of Maclish.
Now came Standing Bull, darting from the trees and leaping over the barricade, reaching for arrows to fill his empty quiver.
“Wah!” he panted, fiercely exultant. “They come—all of them!”
Among the trees appeared other of the Dacotah, fighting as they retreated, arrows flashing around them. Man by man they came in—but not all of them. Five had fallen. A long yell shrilled up from the trees as the enemy sighted the barricade and paused.
“Fire one at a time, and low,” commanded Crawford.
On the word, the Stone Men came bursting from cover in one wild charge, as though to overwhelm the defenders in a great wave, with the roar of Maclish to spur them on. Stripped and painted, arrows and bullets hurtling over them into the barricade, the solidly massed redskins came pouring across the clearing, converging on the narrow line of felled trees.
“Let fire,” said Crawford, and Frontin dropped a chief who was in the lead.
The muskets spouted white flame and smoke; at that short distance even the Dacotah could not miss, and their bullets ploughed furrows of death through the enemy. The hum and twang of loosened bowstrings, the whistling song of feathered shafts, the panting grunts of men, rippled down the line; those short, powerful Teton bows, which could send a shaft through and through a bison, uttered a deeper and more vibrant note. The Assiniboine whoop changed to a death-yell. Their vanguard stumbled, melted away, plunged headlong. A red wall of the dead formed up, across which mounted the living ranks behind, only to catch anew the full sweep of those scarlet shafts which pierced two men at once.
None the less, they swept forward in stubborn fury, rolled on to the barricade, paused there like a breaking wave and then crested above it. As that tide of men burst high and fell inward, Crawford gave up all for lost.