Shif’less Sol, Tom, and Long Jim, although overwhelmed with anxiety for their young comrade, steadily turned their faces toward the foe, and replied to his fire.  Henry, while the bullets whistled above his head, bent down and cut away Paul’s hunting shirt.  Yes, the bullet had gone entirely through his body and it was lucky for Paul that it had done so.  No need now of the surgeon’s probe.  Henry bound up the wound tightly and stopped the bleeding.  Then he undertook to lift the lad; but Paul, although still unconscious and a dead weight in his arms, groaned with pain.  Henry laid him gently back on the ground.

“Boys,” he said, “Paul is too weak to be moved, and we’ve got to hold this place until help comes or the enemy quits.”

“I think the last skirmisher has escaped now,” said Shif’less Sol, “but here we stay.”

He spoke for them all, and Henry, unable to do anything more for Paul, turned his attention anew to the enemy.  There was a sudden increase of the firing in front.  The clouds and vapors rolled back, and the dancing figures in the thickets took on more semblance of reality.  Suddenly Henry uttered a cry.  His eyes of almost preternatural keenness had recognized one of the figures.

“What is it, Henry?” asked Shif’less Sol.

“Braxton Wyatt.  He’s in the thicket.  I saw him a moment ago.  I know his face and figure too well to be mistaken.”

“I saw him, too,” replied the shiftless one.  “O’ course he’s escaped the bullets so fur.  It’s jest his luck.”

“I think he knows we’re here,” said Henry, “and he’s leading the attack on us.  But we’ll never yield this ground and Paul to such a fellow.”

“No!” said the others with one voice.

The clouds and vapors closed in again.  The darkness rolled up in wave after wave, and the renegade, leading on outlaw and red man, pressed the attack; but the four met them with courage and spirit unshaken.

The clouds and vapors rolled over attack and defense, but through the darkness fire answered fire.  After a while the forest and the bayou, which had witnessed such a desperate display of human energy, sank into darkness and silence.  The clouds, now in the zenith, began to give forth rain, but it was a gentle, beneficent rain, and it fell silently on the faces of the living and the dead alike.

CHAPTER XXII

THE CHOSEN TASK

Adam Colfax had gone through the battle unharmed, but that terrible night left new gray in his hair.  He was a religious man, and, when the rifle fire died down in the forest and then went out, he uttered a devout prayer of thankfulness.  He and his train, on the whole, had come through better than he had expected.  There had been moments in the bayou when he thought no mortal strength or skill could break the chain that bound them.  But the savage army and navy had been beaten off, and the core of his fleet was saved.  He could still go on to Pittsburgh with his precious cargo.