At eventide came to lurid and disordered brains the knowledge that the other branch was here.  And, mercifully, it was shallower than the first.  Holding his rifle high, with a war-whoop Bill Cowan plunged into the stream.  Unable to contain myself more, I flung my drum overboard and went after it, and amid shouts and laughter I was towed across by James Ray.

Colonel Clark stood watching from the bank above, and it was he who pulled me, bedraggled, to dry land.  I ran away to help gather brush for a fire.  As I was heaping this in a pile I heard something that I should not have heard.  Nor ought I to repeat it now, though I did not need the flames to send the blood tingling through my body.

“McChesney,” said the Colonel, “we must thank our stars that we brought the boy along.  He has grit, and as good a head as any of us.  I reckon if it hadn’t been for him some of them would have turned back long ago.”

I saw Tom grinning at the Colonel as gratefully as though he himself had been praised.

The blaze started, and soon we had a bonfire.  Some had not the strength to hold out the buffalo meat to the fire.  Even the grumblers and mutineers were silent, owing to the ordeal they had gone through.  But presently, when they began to be warmed and fed, they talked of other trials to be borne.  The Embarrass and the big Wabash, for example.  These must be like the sea itself.

“Take the back trail, if ye like,” said Bill Cowan, with a loud laugh.  “I reckon the rest of us kin float to Vincennes on Davy’s drum.”

But there was no taking the back trail now; and well they knew it.  The games began, the unwilling being forced to play, and before they fell asleep that night they had taken Vincennes, scalped the Hair Buyer, and were far on the march to Detroit.

Mercifully, now that their stomachs were full, they had no worries.  Few knew the danger we were in of being cut off by Hamilton’s roving bands of Indians.  There would be no retreat, no escape, but a fight to the death.  And I heard this, and much more that was spoken of in low tones at the Colonel’s fire far into the night, of which I never told the rank and file,—­not even Tom McChesney.

On and on, through rain and water, we marched until we drew near to the river Embarrass.  Drew near, did I say?  “Sure, darlin’,” said Terence, staring comically over the gray waste, “we’ve been in it since Choosd’y.”  There was small exaggeration in it.  In vain did our feet seek the deeper water.  It would go no higher than our knees, and the sound which the regiment made in marching was like that of a great flatboat going against the current.  It had been a sad, lavender-colored day, and now that the gloom of the night was setting in, and not so much as a hummock showed itself above the surface, the Creoles began to murmur.  And small wonder!  Where was this man leading them, this Clark who had come amongst them from the skies, as it were?  Did he know, himself?  Night fell as though a blanket had been spread over the tree-tops, and above the dreary splashing men could be heard calling to one another in the darkness.  Nor was there any supper ahead.  For our food was gone, and no game was to be shot over this watery waste.  A cold like that of eternal space settled in our bones.  Even Terence McCann grumbled.