Chapter 21: Forces Meet

Major George Augustus Braithwaite had judged aright. Henry Ware knelt in the prow of the first boat, as it showed beyond the curve after forcing the watery pass. The shiftless one knelt just behind him, and in the stern was Paul, kneeling, too. The rifles of all three were hot in their hands. Long Jim and Silent Tom were now at the oars.

It all seemed--that last half hour--a dream to Henry and Paul. They had moved in a kind of mist, now red, now black. They had seen the black hills lowering above them, and the innumerable flashes of fire. They had heard the roar of the tempest and the unbroken crackle of hundreds of rifles, and they had fired in reply almost mechanically. Their one object was to press forward, always to press forward, and so long as their boat continued to move they knew that they must be succeeding.

Now they beheld the wider water before them, and upon a high hill upon the southern shore a great fire blazed, by the light of which they saw wooden walls and roofs.

“We are through!” exclaimed Henry. “We have at least come as far as the fort, whether we can land or not!”

“Yes, we are through,” said the shiftless one, “but I never run such a gantlet afore, an’ I hope never to do it ag’in.”

He laid down his rifle a moment, and began to feel himself critically and carefully.

“What are you doing?” asked Henry.

“Me?” replied Sol. “I’m tryin’ to see whether I’m all here, or whether most o’ me is scattered around in the Ohio. When a million savages are shootin’ at a feller, all at the same time, an’ keep on doin’ it, it’s more’n likely that feller will soon be in pieces. No, I ain’t hurt. Some o’ my huntin’ shirt hez been shot away, but the body o’ Sol Hyde is sound an’ whole, fur which I do give thanks. How are you, Henry?”

“All right. I’ve been grazed twice but there’s no damage.”

“An’ you, Paul?”

“Nicked on the wrist and scared to death, but nothing more.”

“An’ you, Tom?”

“Nigh deef, I guess, from sech a racket, but I’m still fit fur work.”

“An’ you, you onery old Long Jim.”

“Mighty tired, an’ hungry, too, I guess, though I don’t know it, but I kin still shoot, an’ I kin hit somethin’ too.”

“Then we’ve come through better than we could hev hoped,” said the shiftless one joyfully. “‘Pears again that Paul was right when he said down thar on the Missip that Providence had chose us fur a task.”

“The battle is not over yet,” said Henry. “If we help the fort we’ve got to make a landing, or the Indians can go on with the siege almost as if we were not here. And landing in face of the horde is no easy task.”

“Ain’t it likely that the people in the fort will help us?” said Shif’less Sol.

“If I know Major Braithwaite, and I think I do,” replied Henry, “they will surely help. It was a good thing on their part to build that bonfire as a signal and to show us the way. See how it grows!”

The fire, already great, was obviously rising higher, and its light deepened over the river. The whole fleet was now through the pass, and it swung for a few moments in the middle of the stream like a great bird hovering before it decided on its flight. The light from the bonfire fell upon it and tinged it red. Although the savage attack had not ceased, and some of the white men were still firing, most of them lay for a little while at rest to take fresh breath and strength for the landing. Henry looked back at them, and spontaneously some scene from the old Homeric battles that Paul told about came to his mind. He knew these men as they lay panting against the sides of the boats, the light from the bonfire tinting their faces to crimson hues. This gallant fellow was Hector, and that was Achilles, it was Ajax who sat in the prow there, and the wiry old fellow behind him, with the wary eyes, was even the cunning Ulysses himself.

It was but a fleeting fancy, gone when Adam Colfax hailed them from the deck of the Independence. The eyes of the Puritan still burned with zealous fire, and those of Drouillard beside him showed the same spirit.

“What do you think of the landing?” he said to the five collectively. “Can we force it now? What do you think?”

“I think we can,” Henry replied for them all, “if the people in the fort help--and listen to that! They are helping now!”

There was a sudden spurt of firing from the undergrowth on the southern bank. Nor was it fitful. It continued rapid and heavy, and they knew that a diversion of some kind had been created. It must be due to the men from the fort, and now was the time to make the landing.

Adam Colfax stood upright on the deck of the Independence at the risk of sharpshooter’s bullet, and looked eagerly along the Kentucky shore, seeking some low place into which his boats could push their prows. His was a practiced mariner’s eye, and he saw it at last, a cove which was the ending of the ravine in the high bank, and he said a few words to his trumpeter. The silver peal rose once more, mellow, clear, and reaching far, and the tired men rose, as usual, to its call. Steady hands held the rifles, and strong arms bent the oars.

The Independence and the boat of the five swung in toward the cove, and the whole fleet followed hard at their heels.

The savages uttered a great cry when they saw the movement, and swarmed anew for the attack, firing rapidly from the forest, while their canoes pushed boldly out from the northern shore. But Henry judged that the violence of the attack was less than when they had been in the pass, and he inferred that a considerable part of their force was drawn off by the diversion from the woods. He could mark by the rapid blaze of the rifles in the forest the place where this contest was being waged with the utmost courage and tenacity. His attentive ear noticed a sudden great increase in the firing there, and it all seemed to come from one point.

“Somebody has been reinforced, and heavily, at that,” he said to Shif’less Sol.

“It’s shorely so,” said the shiftless one.

A faint sound, nay, hardly more than an echo, came to their ears. But it was the echo of a deep, full-throated cry, the cry that white men give.

“It’s friends,” murmured Henry. “I don’t know who they are, but they are friends.”

“It’s shorely so,” said the shiftless one.

Their boat and the Independence were now not thirty feet from the land, and in a few more moments they struck upon the shelving margin. The five instantly leaped ashore, and after them came the men of the fleet in a torrent. Now they heard that full-throated cheer again, loud, clear, and near. A powerful friend was at hand, and Adam Colfax, Drouillard ever at his side, understood it.

“Forward, men!” he cried in his highest voice. “Clear the red swarm from the bushes!”

With four score brave riflemen he charged through the forest, sweeping away what was left, at that point of the horde, and, as the warriors vanished before them, they met in an open space two other forces, one coming from the east, and the other from the south.

Adam Colfax, the brave Drouillard still at his side, stopped and stood almost face to face with a tall, middle-aged man who wore a uniform and on whose head rested a cocked hat from which the rain had long been pouring in three streams, one at each corner. The man’s face bore signs of physical exhaustion, but his spirit showed triumphant. Behind him were about thirty men who leaned panting upon their rifles.

The eyes of Adam Colfax shifted to the second force, the one that had come from the south, the leader of which stood very near, also almost face to face when he turned. The second leader was even more remarkable than the first. Hardly in middle age, and with a figure of uncommon litheness and power, he had a face of extraordinary sweetness and repose. Even now, fresh from the dangers and excitement of deadly conflict, it showed no excitement. The mild eyes gazed placidly at Adam Colfax, and his hands rested unmoving upon the muzzle of his rifle. He was clothed wholly in deerskin, with the usual cap of raccoon skin. By the side of him stood a young man clothed in similar fashion. But his strong face showed all the signs of passion and battle fire. His deep-set eyes fairly flashed. Behind these two were about thirty men, mostly young, every one of them brown as an Indian and in wild garb, true sons of the wilderness.

Henry Ware quickly stepped forward. He alone knew them all.

“Mr. Colfax,” he said, nodding toward the head of the first column, “this is Major Braithwaite, the commander of Fort Prescott, and this--”

He turned and paused a moment as he faced the leader of the second band, him with the peaceful eyes. He felt that he was calling the name of a great man, a fit match for any Hector or Achilles that ever lived.

“This is Daniel Boone,” he said to Mr. Colfax, “and this, Mr. Boone, is Adam Colfax, the commander of the fleet that has come from New Orleans on its way to Pittsburgh.”

“Daniel Boone!” exclaimed Adam Colfax, and stepping forward he took the hand of the great hunter, explorer, and wilderness fighter. It was an impulse which did not seem strange to him that he should leave Major Braithwaite for second place, and it seemed natural, also, to the Major, who did not know until then the name of the man who had come so opportunely with his friends to his relief.

“I knew Fort Prescott was pushed hard and would be pushed harder,” said Daniel Boone, smiling gently after he had shaken hands with Adam Colfax and Major Braithwaite, “so me an’ Simon--this is Simon Kenton--hurried south after some of our friends, hunters an’ sech like, an’ it ‘pears that we’ve got back in time.”

“You certainly have,” said Major Braithwaite with deep emphasis. “Never was help more opportune.”

“It was a good fight!” exclaimed Simon Kenton, the battle fire not yet dead in his eyes.

Daniel Boone smiled again, that extraordinary smile of sweetness and peace.

“But the one that really brought us all together at the right minute,” he said, “was a boy, though he is a mighty big and strong one, and he stands here right now.”

He put his hand upon Henry Ware’s shoulder, and Henry blushed under his tan in embarrassment.

“No, no!” he cried. “It was everybody working together, and I’m just one of the crowd.”

He retreated hastily behind his comrades, and Daniel Boone laughed.

“Don’t you think that we’d better go into the fort now, Mr. Boone?” asked Adam Colfax with deference.

“Yes, as soon as we can,” replied Daniel Boone, “but we ought to keep a strong line down to the fleet. We can do it with a chain of men. We are not out of the woods yet. We might be, if a common man led the Indians, but Timmendiquas, Timmendiquas the Great, the White Lightning of the Wyandots, is out there, and he does not know what it is to be beat.”

“He surely must be a mighty chief,” said Major Braithwaite--the way in which everybody spoke of Timmendiquas impressed him. “But come, we will enter the fort.”

He led the way, and the triple force, now united, followed close behind. Paul’s eyes were chiefly for the hunters who had come with Boone and Kenton, and he read their minds--they did not regard what they were doing as an act of benevolence, one for which they could claim a great reward; they were doing, instead, what they loved to do, and they were grateful for the chance. It was the wildest looking band of white men that he had ever seen, but it was worth a regiment to the fort.

The gate was thrown open again, and the three forces passed in, there to receive the welcome that is given only by those who have been saved from what looked like certain death. The scout and the others who knew him gave Henry Ware the hearty clasp of the hand that means so much, and then the five went to a cabin to eat, rest and sleep.

“We’ll need you to-morrow,” said Adam Colfax, “but meanwhile you must refresh yourselves.”

“That sounds mighty good to a tired man,” said Shif’less Sol in his whimsical tone. “I never worked so hard in my life before ez I hev lately, an’ I think I need to rest for the next three or four years.”