“Tell the wagons to come on boldly,” he said to Shif’less Sol, and the shiftless one obeyed.

“Now, Sol,” he said, when the man returned, “take fifty more riflemen, and hide in that thicket, at the highest part of the bank.  Stay there.  You will know what else to do.”

“I think I will,” said the shiftless one, and every trace of indifference or laziness was gone from him.  He was the forester, alert and indomitable—­a fit second to Henry Ware.  Then Henry and Jim Hart alone were left near the river’s brink.  Henry did not look back.

“Are the wagons coming fast?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Jim Hart, “but I’m beckonin’ to ’em to come still faster.  They’ll be in the water in three minutes.  Listen!  The drivers are whippin’ up the horses!”

The loud cracking of whips arose, and the horses advanced at a trot toward the ford.  At the same instant Henry Ware raised his rifle, and fired like a flash of lightning at one of the coppery faces in the thicket on the opposite shore.  The death cry of the savage rose, but far above it rose the taunting shout of the white youth, louder and more terrible than their own.  The savages, surprised, abandoned their ambush.  The leading wagons dashed into the water, and down upon them dashed the picked power of the allied western tribes.

In an instant the far edge of the water was swarming with coppery bodies and savage faces, and the war whoop, given again and again, echoed far up and down the stream, and through the thickets and forest.  Rifles cracked rapidly, and then blazed into volleys.  Bullets sighed as they struck on human flesh or the wood of wagons, and now and then they spattered on the water.  Cries of pain or shouts of defiance rose, and the furious conflict between white man and red rapidly thickened and deepened, becoming a confused and terrible medley.

Henry Ware and Jim Hart ran down into the stream by the side of the leading wagons, and loaded and fired swiftly into the dense brown mass before them.  Nor did they send a bullet amiss.  Henry Ware was conscious at that moment of a fierce desire to see the face of Braxton Wyatt amid the brown horde.  He knew he was there, somewhere, and in the rage of conflict he would gladly have sent a bullet through the renegade’s black heart.  He did not see him, but the dauntless youth pressed steadily forward, continually shouting encouragement and showing the boldest example of them all.

A bank of blue and white smoke arose over the stream, shot through by the flashes of the rifle firing, and out of this bank came the defiant shouts of the combatants.  Suddenly, from the high bank, on the shore that they had just left, burst a tremendous volley—­fifty rifles fired at once.  A yell of pain and rage burst from the savages.  Those rifles had mowed a perfect swath of death among them.

“Good old Sol!  Good old Sol!” exclaimed Henry, twice through his shut teeth.  “On, men, on!  Trample them down!  Drive the wagons into them!”