Something about the abrupt bend in the empty road below me attracted my attention. I examined it intently for a while, then, cautioning my Indians, I ventured to move forward and around the south slope of the hillock, wading waist-deep in juniper, in order to get a look at what might lie behind the bend in this road of mystery.
The road appeared to end abruptly just around the curve, as though it had been opened only so far and then abandoned. This first amazed me and then alarmed me, because I knew it could not be so as I had seen on the roadbed evidences of recent and heavy travel.
I stood peering down at it where it seemed to stop short against the green and tangled barrier of the woods which blocked it like a living abattis——
God! It was an abattis!—a mask!
As I realized this I saw a man in a strange, outlandish uniform run out from the green and living barrier, look up at me where I stood in the juniper, shout out something in German, and stand pointing up at me while a score of soldiers, all in this same outlandish uniform, swarmed out upon the road and started running toward where I stood.
Then I came to my senses, clapped my rifle to my cheek and fired, stopping one of these strange soldiers and curing him of his running habits forever.
To me arrived swiftly my Oneidas, and dropped in the juniper, kneeling and firing upon the soldiers below. Two among them fell down flat on the road, and then the others turned and fled straight into their green barrier of branches. From there they fired at us wildly, keeping up a strange, hoarse shouting.
"Hessian chasseurs!" I exclaimed. "These troops can be no other than the filthy Germans hired by King George to come here and cut our throats!"
"Those men wear the uniform I saw in my vision of this place!" whispered Thiohero, quietly reloading her rifle. "I think that this is truly your battle, my Captain."
Then, as her prophecy of cannon came into my mind, there was a blinding flash from that green barrier below; a vast cloud blotted it from view; the pine beside which I stood shivered as though thunder-smitten; and the entire top of it crashed down upon us, burying us all in lashing, writhing branches.