“Comin’ closer, comin’ closer, Paul!” whispered Shif’less Sol.  “One o’ them bullets flyin’ in the dark may hit somethin’ putty soon.”

Sol was a prophet.  A hunter not far away uttered a low cry.  He was struck in the shoulder, but after the single cry he was silent.  Henry was the first to see one of the creeping brown bodies and fired, and after that the shots on either side increased fast.  It was all confused and terrible to Paul.  The darkness, instead of thinning to accustomed eyes, seemed to him to grow heavier.  The pin points of light from the rifle fire multiplied themselves into hundreds, and the front of the foe shifted about, as if they were trying to curve around the defenders.

Paul could not definitely say that he saw a single savage, but he fired now and then at the flashes of light, and also tried to obey Sol’s injunction about sticking close to him and Henry.  But he was not always sure that the figures near him were theirs, the darkness remaining so intense.  He heard occasional low cries, the light impact of bullets, and the shuffling sound of feet, but he was fast losing any ordered view of the battle.  He knew now that the savages were very close, that the combat was almost hand to hand, but he knew little else.  The night enclosed all the furious border conflict, and hid the loss or gain of either side from all but the keenest eyes.

Paul could never tell how long this lasted, but he felt confident that the area of conflict was shifting.  Having first faced one side, they were now facing another, as the savages wheeled about them.  He rose to his feet in order to keep with his friends.  He had been loading and firing more rapidly than he knew, and the barrel of his rifle was hot to his touch.  He stood a moment listening for the savages, and then turned to two indistinct figures near him.

“Sol,” he said, “can you and Henry see them?”

The two indistinct figures suddenly became distinct, and sprang upon him.  He was seized in a powerful grasp and hurled down so violently that he became unconscious for a little while.  Why he was not killed he did not know that night, nor ever after—­probably they wished to show a trophy.  When he gathered his scattered senses he was being dragged away, and his hands were bound.  He was too dazed to cry aloud for rescue, but he remembered afterwards that the battle behind him was waning at the time.

He was dragged deeper into the forest, and the shots on the hill became fainter and fewer.  His sight cleared, but the darkness was so great that he could yet see little except the warrior who pulled him along.  Paul made an effort and gained a better footing.  It hurt his pride to be dragged, and now he walked on in the path that the warrior indicated.

They stopped after a while in an open space in the forest.  The moon was clearing a little, and Paul saw other warriors standing about.  Nearly all were wounded.  Hideous and painted they were, with savage eyes filled with rage and disappointment, and the looks they gave Paul made him consider himself as one dead.