reful! Look at their
uniforms! Don't go too close to them!"

"They're coming from the north!" bawled Mount. "They're our own people,
Dave! Come on!"

Captain Jacob Gardinier, with a dozen Caughnawaga men, had already
reached the advancing troops, when Murphy seized my arm and halted me,
crying out, "Those men are wearing their coats turned inside out!
They're Johnson's Greens!"

At the same instant I recognized Colonel John Butler as the officer
leading them; and he knew me and, without a word, fired his pistol at
me. We were so near them now that a Tory caught hold of Murphy and tried
to stab him, but the big Irishman kicked him headlong and rushed into
the mob, swinging his long hatchet, followed by Gardinier and his
Caughnawaga men, whom the treachery had transformed into demons.

In an instant all around me men were swaying, striking, shooting,
panting, locked in a deadly embrace. A sweating, red-faced soldier
closed with me; chin to chin, breast to breast we wrestled; and I shall
never forget the stifling struggle--every detail remains, his sunburned
face, wet with sweat and powder-smeared; his irregular teeth showing
when I got him by the throat, and the awful change that came over his
visage when Jack Mount shoved the muzzle of his rifle against the
struggling fellow and shot him through the stomach.

Freed from his death-grip, I stood breathing convulsively, hands
clinched, one foot on my fallen rifle. An Indian ran past me, chased by
Elerson and Murphy, but the savage dodged into the underbrush,
shrieking, "Oonah! Oonah! Oonah!" and Elerson came back, waving his
deer-hide cap.

Everywhere Tories, Royal Greens, and Indians were running into the
woods; the wailing cry, "Oonah! Oonah!" rose on all sides now.
Gardinier's Caughnawaga men were shooting rapidly; the Palatines, master
of their reeking brush-field, poured a heavy fire into the detachment of
retreating Greens, who finally broke and ran, dropping sack and rifle in
their flight, and leaving thirty of their dead under the feet of the
Palatines.

The soldiers of the Canajoharie regiment came up, swarming over a wooded
knoll on the right, only to halt and stand, silently leaning on
their rifles.

For the battle of Oriskany was over.

There was no cheering from the men of Tryon County. Their victory had
been too dearly bought; their losses too terrible; their triumph
sterile, for they could not now advance the crippled fragments of their
regiments