but was determined that if I went down to earth many a painted savage should lie there with me.  The enshrouding darkness proved a friendly help; for as I backed in closer against the bank, I gained a fair view of my opponents, while keeping myself more hidden.  Again and again they charged upon me, joined now by the others from above; but the circling iron I swung with tireless arms formed a dead-line no leaping Indian burst through alive.

Once a hurtling tomahawk half buried itself in my shoulder; a long knife, thrown by a practised hand, pierced the muscles of my thigh, and stuck there quivering, till I struck it loose; and twice they fired at me, the second shot tearing the flesh of my side, searing it like fire.  Yet I scarcely realized I was touched, so fiercely was the battle-blood now coursing through my veins, so intense the joy with which I crushed them back.  I grew delirious, feeling the rage to slay sweep over me as never before, giving me the crazed strength of a dozen men, until I lost all sense of defensive action, and sprang forth into their midst as might an avenging thunderbolt from the black sky.  Never had I swung flail in peaceful border contest as I did that murderous iron bar in the dark of the river-shore, driving them back foot by foot against the high bank which held them helpless victims of my wrath.  I struck again and again, my teeth set together in bulldog tenacity, my breath coming in gasps, the streaming blood from a deep cut over my eyes half blinding me, yet guided by fierce instinct to find and smite my foes.  I trod on limp bodies, on writhing forms, and felt my weapon clash against iron rifle barrels and clang upon uplifted steel; but nothing stopped me,—­no cry of terror, no plea for mercy, no clutching hand, no deadly numbing blow.

God knows the story of that fight,—­how long it lasted, by what miracle ’t was won.  To me it is—­and was—­little more than a dim haze of strange leaping figures, of fierce dark faces, of maddened cries of hate, of uplifted hands, of dull-clashing weapons.  I seemed to see it all through a red fog whence the blood dripped, and I lost consciousness of everything save my unswerving duty to strike hard until I fell.  At last out from the maelstrom of that wild melee but a single warrior seemed to face me; and some instinct of the fight caused me to draw back a pace and wipe the obscuring blood away, that I might see him better.  It came to me that this was to be the end,—­the final duel which was to decide that midnight battle.  He and I were there alone; and the stars bursting through the clouds gave me faint view of him, and of those dark, silent forms that lined the shore where they had fallen.

A chief, a Pottawattomie,—­this much I knew even in that hasty shrouded glance.  Writers of history affirm my opponent was Peesotum, the same fierce warrior whose cruel hand slew the brave Captain Wells and wrenched his still beating heart from out the mutilated body.  All I realized then were his broad sinewy shoulders, his naked brawny body, his eyes ablaze with malignant hate.  He was the first to close, his wild cry for vengeance piercing the still night; and before I knew it, the maddened savage was within the guard of my rifle-barrel, and we were locked in the stern grapple of death.