sing the
death-song? I have lived in the woods, and gone forth with your
war-parties; am I less a warrior, now that I fight with the people of
my own race? Go take your warning to some squaw; we ride straight on
to Dearborn, even though we have to fight our way."

The Indian glanced, as Wells pointed, toward the Fort, and sneered.

"All old women in there," he exclaimed derisively. "Say this to-day,
and that to-morrow. They shut the gates now to keep Indian on outside.
No trade, no rum, no powder,--just lies. But they no keep back our
young men much longer." His face grew dark, and his eyes angry.

"Why you bring them?" he asked hotly, designating our escort of Miamis,
already shrinking from the taunts of the gathering braves. "They dog
Indians, bad medicine; they run fast when Pottawattomie come."

"Don't be so certain about that, Topenebe," retorted Wells, shortly.
"But we cannot stop longer here; make way, that we may pass along,
Jordan, push on with your advance through that rabble there."

The Indian chief drew his horse back beside the trail, and we moved
slowly forward, our Indian guides slightly in advance, and exhibiting
in every action the disinclination they felt to proceed, and their
constantly increasing fear of the wild horde that now resorted to every
means in their power, short of actual violence, to retard their
progress. As they closed in more closely around us, taunting the
Miamis unmercifully, even shaking tomahawks in their faces, with fierce
eyes full of hatred and murder, I drew back my horse until I ranged up
beside Mademoiselle Antoinette, and thus we rode steadily onward
through that frenzied, howling mass, the girl between De Croix and me,
who thus protected her on either side.

It was truly a weary ride, full of insult, and perchance of grave peril
had we faced that naked mob less resolutely. Doubtless the chiefs
restrained their young men somewhat, but more than once we came within
a hair's-breadth of serious conflict. They hemmed us in so tightly
that we could only walk our horses; and twice they pressed upon Jordan
so hard as to halt him altogether, bunching his cowardly Miamis, and
even striking them contemptuously with their blackened sticks. The
second time this occurred, Captain Wells rode forward to force a path,
driving the spurs into his horse so quickly that the startled animal
fairly cut a lane through the crowded savages before they could draw
back. Naught rest