sound as the blood spurted from his throat.  Wetzel pulled the weapon from the body of his victim, and with the same motion he swung it around.  This time the blunt end met the next Indian’s head with a thud like that made by the butcher when he strikes the bullock to the ground.  The Indian’s rifle dropped, his tomahawk flew into the air, while his body rolled down the little embankment into the spring.  Another and another Indian met the same fate.  Then two Indians endeavored to get through the aperture.  The awful axe swung by those steel arms, dispatched both of than in the twinkling of an eye.  Their bodies stuck in the hole.

Silas and Alfred stood riveted to the spot.  Just then Wetzel in all his horrible glory was a sight to freeze the marrow of any man.  He had cast aside his hunting shirt in that run to the fence and was now stripped to the waist.  He was covered with blood.  The muscles of his broad back and his brawny arms swelled and rippled under the brown skin.  At every swing of the gory axe he let out a yell the like of which had never before been heard by the white men.  It was the hunter’s mad yell of revenge.  In his thirst for vengeance he had forgotten that he was defending the Fort with its women and its children; he was fighting because he loved to kill.

Silas Zane heard the increasing clamor outside and knew that hundreds of Indians were being drawn to the spot.  Something must be done at once.  He looked around and his eyes fell on a pile of white-oak logs that had been hauled inside the Fort.  They had been placed there by Col.  Zane, with wise forethought.  Silas grabbed Clarke and pulled him toward the pile of logs, at the same time communicating his plan.  Together they carried a log to the fence and dropped it in front of the hole.  Wetzel immediately stepped on it and took a vicious swing at an Indian who was trying to poke his rifle sideways through the hole.  This Indian had discharged his weapon twice.  While Wetzel held the Indians at bay, Silas and Clarke piled the logs one upon another, until the hole was closed.  This effectually fortified and barricaded the weak place in the stockade fence.  The settlers in the bastions were now pouring such a hot fire into the ranks of the savage that they were compelled to retreat out of range.

While Wetzel washed the blood from his arms and his shoulders Silas and Alfred hurried back to where Bennet had fallen.  They expected to find him dead, and were overjoyed to see the big settler calmly sitting by the brook binding up a wound in his shoulder.

“It’s nothin’ much.  Jest a scratch, but it tumbled me over,” he said.  “I was comin’ to help you.  That was the wust Injun scrap I ever saw.  Why didn’t you keep on lettin’ ’em come in?  The red varmints would’a kept on comin’ and Wetzel was good fer the whole tribe.  All you’d had to do was to drag the dead Injuns aside and give him elbow room.”

Wetzel joined them at this moment, and they hurried back to the block-house.  The firing had ceased on the bluff.  They met Sullivan at the steps of the Fort.  He was evidently coming in search of them.