riflemen back, and we'll drive the enemy out of these houses without
losing a single man on our side."

"Thar speaks wisdom," said Shif'less Sol to the other. "Now in all the
excitement I had clean forgot that we could blow them houses to pieces,
but the Colonel didn't forget it."

"No, he didn't," replied Henry. "Stand back and we'll see the fun. A lot
of destruction will be done soon."

The twilight had not yet come, although the sun was slowly dimming in
the East. A great cloud of smoke from the firing hung over Piqua and the
bordering fields that had witnessed so fierce a combat. The smoke and
the burned gunpowder made a bitter odor. Flashes of firing from the
strong houses, and from ambushed Indians here and there pierced the
smoke. Then came a tremendous report and a twelve-pound cannon ball
smashed through a wooden house. Another and another and it was
demolished. The defenders fled for their lives. Every other house that
could be used for shelter was served in the same way. The last ambushed
foe was swept from his covert, and when the twilight fell Piqua,
throughout its whole length of three miles along Mad River, was held by
the Kentuckians.

The Indian women and children had fled already to the forest, and there
they were slowly followed by the warriors, their hearts filled with rage
and despair. Beaten on ground of their own choosing, and not even able
to bring away their dead, they saw their power crumbling. Fierce words
passed between Timmendiquas and Simon Girty. The Wyandot chieftain
upbraided the renegade. He charged him with giving up too soon, but
Girty, suave and diplomatic, said, after his first wrath was over, that
he had not yielded until it was obvious that they were beaten. Instead
of a fruitless defense it was better to save their warriors for another
campaign. They could yet regain all that they had lost. There was some
truth in Girty's words. Blue Lick and St. Clair's terrible defeat were
yet to come, but Clark's blow had destroyed the very nerve-center of the
Indian confederacy. The Kentuckians had shown that not only could they
fight successfully on the defensive, but they could also cross the Ohio
and shatter the Indian power on its own chosen ground. Neither the valor
of the warriors, nor the great aid that they received from their white
allies could save them from ultimate defeat.

Henry, Paul, the officers, and many others felt these things as the
night came down, and as they roamed