the helping band.
Another flash of lightning showed where friends and foe fought face to
face with tomahawk and clubbed rifle, and then Clark and the new force
were upon the warriors. Paul, carried away by excitement, was shouting:

"Give it to 'em! Give it to 'em! Drive 'em back!"

But he did not know that he was uttering a word. He saw the high cheek
bones and close-set eyes, and then he felt the shock as they struck the
hostile line. Steel and clubbed rifle only were used first. They did not
dare fire at such close quarters as friend and foe were mingled closely,
but the warriors were pushed back by the new weight hurled upon them,
and then the woodsmen, waiting until the next flash of lightning, sent
in a volley that drove the Indians to the cover of the forest. The
attack at that point had failed, and the white line was yet complete.

Once more the five threw themselves down gasping among the bushes,
reloaded their rifles and waited. In front of them was silence. The
enemy there had melted away without a sound, and he too lay hidden, but
from left and right the firing and the shouting came with undiminished
violence. Henry, also, at the same time heard in all the terrible uproar
the distant and low muttering of the thunder, like a menacing
under-note, more awful than the firing itself. The smoke reached them
where they lay. It was floating now all through the forest, and not only
stung the nostrils of the defenders, but heated their brains and made
them more anxious for the combat.

"We were just in time," said Shif'less Sol. "Ef Colonel Clark hadn't led
a hundred or so o' us on the run to this place the warriors would hev
been right in the middle o' the camp, smashin' us to pieces. How they
fight!"

"Their chiefs think this army must be destroyed and they're risking
everything," said Henry. "Girty must be here, too, urging them on,
although he's not likely to expose his own body much."

"But he's a real gen'ral an' a pow'ful help to the Injuns," said Tom
Ross.

Clark's summons came again. The sound on the flank indicated that the
line was being driven in at another point to the eastward, and the
"chosen hundred," as the shiftless one called them, were hurled against
the assailants, who were here mostly Miamis and Delawares. The Indians
were driven back in turn, and the circle again curved over the ground
that the defenders had held in the beginning. Jim Hart and Tom Ross were
wounded slightly, but they hid