Hwissss! pft! swt! cheew! Bones of Caesar!  The arrows flitted and clipt amongst us like a flight of bats!  Dan Golby threw a double-summersault, alighting on his head.  Dory Durkee went smashing into the fire.  Jerry Hunker was pinned to the sod where he lay fast asleep.  Such dodging and ducking, and clawing about for weapons I never saw.  And such genuine Indian yelling—­it chills my marrow to write of it!

Old Nick vanished like a dream; and long before we could find our tools and get to work we heard the desultory reports of his pistols exploding in his holsters, as his pony measured off the darkness between us and safety.

For some fifteen minutes we had tolerable warm work of it, individually, collectively, and miscellaneously; single-handed, and one against a dozen; struggling with painted savages in the firelight, and with one another in the dark; shooting the living, and stabbing the dead; stampeding our horses, and fighting them; battling with anything that would battle, and smashing our gunstocks on whatever would not!

When all was done—­when we had renovated our fire, collected our horses, and got our dead into position—­we sat down to talk it over.  As we sat there, cutting up our clothing for bandages, digging the poisoned arrow-heads out of our limbs, readjusting our scalps, or swapping them for such vagrant ones as there was nobody to identify, we could not help smiling to think how we had frightened Old Nick.  Dan Golby, who was sinking rapidly, whispered that “it was the one sweet memory he had to sustain and cheer him in crossing the dark river into everlasting f——.”  It is uncertain how Dan would have finished that last word; he may have meant “felicity”—­he may have meant “fire.”  It is nobody’s business.

* * * * *

JUNIPER.

He was a dwarf, was Juniper.  About the time of his birth Nature was executing a large order for prime giants, and had need of all her materials.  Juniper infested the wooded interior of Norway, and dwelt in a cave—­a miserable hole in which a blind bat in a condition of sempiternal torpor would have declined to hibernate, rent-free.  Juniper was such a feeble little wretch, so inoffensive in his way of life, so modest in his demeanour, that every one was disposed to love him like a cousin; there was not enough of him to love like a brother.  He, too, was inclined to return the affection; he was too weak to love very hard, but he made the best stagger at it he could.  But a singular fatality prevented a perfect communion of soul between him and his neighbours.  A strange destiny had thrown its shadow upon him, which made it cool for him in summer.  There was a divinity that shaped his ends extremely rough, no matter how he hewed them.