I looked ahead into the darkening woods; the Caughnawaga men were falling back, taking station behind trees; Mount stepped to the shelter of a big oak; Elerson leaped to cover under a pine; a Caughnawaga bateaux-man darted past me, stationing himself on my right behind the trunk of a dapple beech. Suddenly an Indian showed himself close in front; the Caughnawaga man fired and missed; and, quicker than I can write it, the savage was on him before he could reload and had brained him with a single castete-stroke. I fired, but the Mohawk was too quick for me, and a moment later he bounded back into the brush while the forest rang with his triumphant scalp-yell.
"That's what they're doing in front!" shouted Elerson. "When a soldier fires they're on him before he can reload!"
"Two men to a tree!" roared Jack Mount. "Double up there, you Caughnawaga men!"
Elerson glided cautiously to the oak which sheltered Mount; Murphy crept forward to my tree.
"Bedad!" he muttered, "let the ondacent divils dhraw ye're fire an' welcome. I've a pill to purge 'em now. Luk at that, sorr! Shteady! Shteady an' cool does it!"
A savage, with his face painted half white and half red, stepped out from the thicket and dropped just as I fired. The next instant he came leaping straight for our tree, castete poised.
Murphy fired. The effect of the shot was amazing; the savage stopped short in mid-career as though he had come into collision with a stone wall; then Elerson fired, knocking him flat, head doubled under his naked shoulders, feet trailing across a rotting log.
"Save ye're powther, Dave!" sang out Murphy. "Sure he was clean kilt as he shtood there. Lave a dead man take his own time to fall!"
I had reloaded, and Murphy was coolly priming, when on our right the rifles began speaking faster and faster, and I heard the sound of men running hard over the dry leaves, and the thudding gallop of horses.
"A charge!" said Murphy. "There do be horses comin', too. Have they dhragoons?--I dunnoa. Ha! There they go! 'Tis McCraw's outlaws or I'm a Dootchman!"