The night darkened, there were signs of rain, induced perhaps, by so much firing; the moon was completely hidden by gathering clouds; the river became a black, flowing ma.s.s and the boats upon it blurred with its surface, save when they leaped into the light in the blaze of a cannon shot. The woods, too, seemed a solid, black wall, along the front of which rifle shots sparkled in cl.u.s.ters.

"Good boys! good boys!" exclaimed Henry in low tones, surcharged with excitement. He, too, had the mounting blood hot in his brain. All the old primeval pa.s.sion was flaming in him. But the fire of the enemy converged nearer and nearer, and the bullets sang a ceaseless little song in his ears as they pa.s.sed. "Ah!" he exclaimed as one struck him in the arm. But that was all he said. He went on with his loading and firing.

"Are you hit, Henry?" asked Shif'less Sol.

"A scratch! Nothing more! Look how Long Jim fights!"

Long Jim was almost flat upon his face, but the man, usually so mild and good tempered, was now wholly possessed by the rage of combat. His long thin figure fitted around the sinuosities of the earth, and he seemed to have a curious gliding motion, sliding forward slowly to meet the enemy.

The darkness was nothing now to his accustomed eyes, and he sent his bullets with sure aim toward the shadowy forms in the bushes in front of them.

Long Jim forgot everything now but his rifle and the enemy there in the thicket. He slid further and further, still drawing himself over the ground in that terrible semblance of a serpent. Paul, seeing his face, was frightened. "Jim! Jim!" he cried. "Stop!" But Long Jim slid slowly on. Tom Ross said something, but it was lost in the whistling of a cannon shot overhead.

They saw Long Jim stop the next moment, and Paul believed that he heard him utter a little sigh. Long Jim's limbs contracted and straightened out again with a jerk. Then he turned slowly over on his side and lay still, a moment or two, after which he began to writhe violently. At the same time he clapped his hand to his head and it came back red.

"Sol sometimes says I've a thick skull, an' 'ef so it's a good thing," he muttered to himself.

He shook his head again and again, as if to clear it, and crept back to his friends. There he tore off a portion of his deerskin hunting shirt, tied it tightly around the wound, and went on with his firing.

"Don't be too enthusiastic, Jim," said Henry.

"I won't," replied Long Jim, "I'm cured."

Lower crouched the five, taking advantage of the bushes and little hillocks, and sending a bullet every time they saw a flitting figure in the forest in front of them. Behind them they could still hear the roar of the combat on the river. The crackle of the rifles and the muskets was steady in their ears, while now and then the note of a cannon boomed above it, and a solid shot, curving over their heads, whizzed into the thickets. But they paid little attention to the main battle; it was merely a chorus, a background, as it were, for their own corner of the struggle, which absorbed all their energies.

Their fire was so incessant, it was so well aimed, and it stung the allied army so severely, that an increasing force was steadily concentrating in front of them. Nor did they escape wholly unhurt. A bullet grazed Henry's arm and another did the same for Shif'less Sol's shoulder; but neither paid any attention to his wounds, loading and reloading, facing the enemy with undiminished zeal and courage.

Its whole aspect was now a phantom battle to them all. The incessant crash and roaring in their ears, and the smoke and vapor in their nostrils, heated their brains and made everything look unreal. They were but phantoms themselves, and the foes who leaped about in the forest were phantoms, too. Darker and darker the clouds rolled up and the smoke and vapors thickened in the forest, but through the blackness the lines of flame still replied to each other.

Paul's excitement was so great that he could not keep himself down. He was burning with fever, but pa.s.sion seemed to be departing from him. He thought that, if they were all to die, it was a privilege to die together.

He saw now the deep cool woods, a beautiful lake, and an island enclosed within it, like a green gem in a blue setting. Paul's thoughts, and his vision with them, were wandering into the past.

"Steady, Paul, steady!" said Henry. But Paul saw nothing now. A bullet, singing merrily, gave him a leaden kiss, and he sank down very gently, lying upon one arm, the red fast dyeing his buckskin hunting shirt.

Henry gave a cry when he saw Paul fall, and bent anxiously over his friend. The light was faint, but the bullet seemed to have gone entirely through the youth. Henry put his ear to his chest, and could hear his heart still beating, though faintly.

"Hold 'em back!" he shouted to his friends, "and I'll help Paul!"

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.

The trumpet was sounded again, and the boats, drawing together, began to count their losses. It was a long sad count, but those who survived were elated over their great victory.

It was then that Adam Colfax discovered the loss of the five who had helped him so much. Some one had seen them spring ash.o.r.e to protect the escape of the skirmishers, and he ordered the fleet at once toward the land to save them, or, if too late, to bring their bodies to the boat.

A dozen boats swung in toward the bank and that of Adam Colfax was foremost. He was not conscious of the gentle rain, save that it felt cooling and pleasant on his face after the heat and smoke of the battle.

Yet the brain of the stern New Hampshire man was still fevered, too. The battle had ceased, but the roar of the cannon-shots and the crash of the rifles yet echoed in his ears. The black forest that came down to the water's edge, was full of mystery and terror, and his was no timid heart.

Smoke of the battle drifted among the trees or over the river, and the rain did not drive it all away. In the far distance low thunder muttered, and now and then flashes of heat lightning drew a belt of coppery red along the dark horizon.

Adam Colfax, stern man that he was, shuddered. But he would not flinch. He was the first to spring ash.o.r.e. The forest a.s.sumed its most somber aspect.

The trees were weird and ghostly, and there was no sound at all but the gentle drip, drip of the rain. Here the vapors and mists seemed to be imprisoned by the boughs and foliage, and the odors were heavy and acrid.

He had landed upon a little neck of land, and some one remarked: "It was here that the Kentuckians landed." But there was no sound in the forest and the scouts had reported already that the enemy had gone away. A great fear gripped at the heart of Adam Colfax. "They are all dead," he thought.

Men brought torches, as they no longer had any fear of sharpshooters; and Adam Colfax, followed by twenty others, entered the forest. The wind rose slightly and whipped the rain in his face, but he stepped into the deepest shadow, and, taking a torch from one of the men, held it aloft with his own hand. The light fell upon a little open s.p.a.ce and, despite himself, Adam Colfax uttered a cry.

A figure lay outstretched under the shelter of arching boughs and bushes, and four more beside it were still and silent, leaning against a fallen log. There was such an absolute lack of motion, that Colfax at first thought that the soul of every one was sped.

"Good G.o.d! Dead! All dead!" he exclaimed.

But a great figure quickly uprose.

"No," said Henry Ware, a fine smile pa.s.sing over his boyish face. "We beat them off, and we're just resting and waiting. Only Paul is seriously hurt, and so far we've been afraid to move him."

Shif'less Sol, Jim Hart, and Tom Ross rose, too, and shook the raindrops from their clothes.

"We didn't have good shelter here," said Shif'less Sol, "but I think the rain and its coolness have helped Paul."

Adam Colfax bent over the boy and, in the dawning light, made a critical examination.