"Now, boys," said Henry, "creep back and forth, and pick your warriors! There's plenty for all of us, and nobody need be jealous! If you can get any of the white gunners so much the better!"
And they responded with all the fire and skill and courage belonging to such forest knights, knights as brave and true and unselfish as any that ever trod the earth. Five against a thousand! Young forest runners against an army! Rifles against cannon they yet held the ford and flung terror into the hearts of their foes! Before that rain of death, and that thundering chorus of mighty voices, coming from many points, the warriors recoiled yet farther, and were stricken with superstitious dread by the sudden and mortal attack from an invisible foe. Even the face of Alloway, and he was brave enough, blanched. This was something beyond his reckoning, something of which no man would have dreamed, he was not used to the vast and sinister forest—sinister to him—and the invisible stroke appalled him. His courage soon came back, but he cursed fiercely under his breath, when he saw one of his gunners go down, shot through the heart, and a moment later another fall with a bullet through his head. Like the Indians, he saw a numerous and powerful foe on the opposite bank, and the ford was narrow and steep.
"They're drawing back for a conference," said Henry. "I believe we've made 'em think we're not a hundred only, but two hundred. Long Jim, your title as king of yellers is yours without dispute as long as you live. You've done magnificent work."
"I think I did shout a little," said Long Jim triumphantly, "but Henry, I'm just plum' empty uv air. Every bit uv it hez been drawed up from my lungs, an' even from the end uv ev'ry toe an' finger."
"Well, sit down there, Jim, and refill yourself, because we may have need of your lungs again. There's no better air than that we find in the forest here, and you'll have plenty of time, as they won't be through with that conference yet for at least five minutes."
Henry saw the savages gathered in a great mass, well out of rifle shot, and, on a little hill back of them, the British officers, the renegades and the chiefs were talking earnestly. Beyond all possible doubt they had agreed that they were confronted by a formidable force. The proof of it lay before them. Valiant warriors had fallen and the two slain gunners could not be replaced. Henry knew that it was a bitter surprise to them, and they must think that the settlers, hearing of the advance against them, had sent forward all the men they could raise to form the ambush at the ford.
He was full of elation, and so were his comrades. Five against an army! and the five had stopped the army! Rifles against cannon. And the rifles had stopped the cannon! The two slain gunners were proof of an idea already in his mind, and now that idea enlarged automatically. They would continue to pick off the gunners. What were a few warriors slain out of a mass of a thousand! But there were only seven or eight gunners, no, five or six, because two were gone already! He whispered to his comrades to shoot a gunner whenever there was a chance, and they nodded in approval.
The conferences lasted some time, and the gorge in front of them was filled with savages, a great mass of men with tufted scalp locks, some bare to the waist, others wrapped in gaudy blue or red or yellow blankets, a restless, shifting mass, upon which the sun poured brilliant rays, lighting up the savage faces as if they were shot with fire. It was a strange scene, buried in the green wood, one of the unknown battles that marked the march of the republic from sea to sea. As the five stared from their covert at the savage army the vivid colors were like those of shifting glass in a kaleidoscope. The whole began to seem unreal and fantastic, the stuff of dreams. To Paul, in particular, whose head held so much of the past, it was like some old tale out of the Odyssey, with Ulysses and his comrades confronting a new danger in barbaric lands.
"They're about to do somethin'," whispered the shiftless one.
"So I think," said Henry.