Too miserable to shun danger, I sat down on a stone in the trail, my head in my hands, rifle across my knees. Presently a soldier who had been standing near me, firing across the river, fell down with a grunt and lay there flat on his back.
I stared at him stupidly, not realizing that the man was dead, though out of his head crawled a sluggish, dark red stream, dropping steadily onto the withered leaves. It was only when a swift, dusky shape came creeping out of the brush towards the dead man that I came to my senses and dropped behind the stone I had been resting on, barely in time, too, for a bullet came smack! against my rock, and after it, bounding and yelping, flew an Indian. He was on me ere I could fire, one sinewy fist twisted in my hair, but his knife snapped off short on my rifle-stock, and together, over and over we rolled, down a ravine among the willows, clawing, clutching, strangling each other, till of a sudden my head struck a tree, crack! And I knew nothing after that until the cool rain beating in my face awoke me. I lay very still, listening.
Somebody near by was trying to light a fire; I smelled the flint and the glowing tinder. Another odour hung heavily in the moist night air, the wild, rank scent of savage men, strong and unmistakable as the odour of a dog-fox in March.
I began to move noiselessly, working my head around so that I might see. My head was aching heavily; I could scarce stir it. At length I raised myself on my hands, and saw the spark from a flint fly into a ball of dry moss and hang there like a fire-fly until the tiny circle of light spread slowly into a glow, ringed with little flames that ate their way through the tinder-moss.
A tufted head bobbed down beside the flame; unseen lips blew the fire into a sudden blaze which brightened and flashed up, throwing ruddy shadows over bush and earth.
Then I saw that I lay on a hill-top in the rain, with dark, shaggy bushes hedging me. And under every bush crouched an Indian, whose dusky, half-naked body glistened with paint, over which rain-drops stood in brilliant beads.
Leggings, clouts, sporrans, and moccasins were soaked; the slippery, wet buckskins glistened like the hides of serpents; fringes, beaded belts, and sheaths shone as tinted frost sparkles at sunrise.