marched in shirt sleeves, two abreast. A narrow footbridge
led across a brook, since known as Bloody Run, to cliffs behind which
the Indians were intrenched. Along the trail were the whitewashed
cottages of the French farmers, who stared from their windows in their
nightcaps, amazed beyond speech at the rashness of the {286} English.
On a smaller scale it was a repetition of Braddock's defeat on the
Ohio. Indians lay in ambush behind every house, every shrub, in the
long grass. They only waited till Dalzell's men had crossed the bridge
and were charging the hill at a run. Then the war whoop shrilled both
to fore and to rear. The Indians doubled up on their trapped foe from
both sides. Rogers' Rangers dashed for hiding in a house. The drum
beat retreat. Under cover of Rogers' shots from one side, shots from
the boats on the other, Dalzell's men escaped at a panic run back over
the trail with a loss of some sixty dead. In September came more ships
with more men, again to be ambushed at the narrows, and again to reach
Detroit, as the old record says, "bloody as a butcher's shop." So the
siege dragged on for more than a year at Detroit. Winter witnessed a
slight truce to fighting, for starvation drove the Indians to the
hunting field; but May saw Pontiac again encamped under the walls of
Detroit till word came from the French on the lower Mississippi in
October, definitely and for all, they would not join the Indians. Then
Pontiac knew his cause was lost.

Up at Michilimackinac similar scenes were enacted. Major Etherington
and Captain Leslie had some thirty-five soldiers. There were also
hosts of traders outside the walls, among whom was Alexander Henry of
Montreal. Word had come of Pontiac at Detroit, but Etherington did not
realize that the uprising was general. June 4 was the King's birthday.
Shops had been closed. Flags blew above the fort. Gates were wide
open. Squaws with heads under shawls sat hunched around the house
steps, with that concealed beneath their shawls which the English did
not guess. All the men except Henry, who was writing letters, and some
Frenchmen, who understood the danger signs, had gone outside the gates
to watch a fast and furious game of lacrosse. Again and again the ball
came bounding towards the fort gates, only to be whisked to the other
end of the field by a deft toss, followed by the swift runners. No one
was louder in applause than Etherington. The officers were c