“For by the Eternal,” says he, “I'll shoot down the first of you who takes a forward step!”
The sulky, hungry hunting-shirt men scowl at the General. He scowls back at them, with the wicked ferocity of a tiger and an iron determination not to be revoked. And thus they stand glaring--one against hundreds! Then the courage of the hungry hundreds oozes away, and they fall back before that menacing apparition which glowers at them along the rifle barrel. They melt away by the rear, those hunting-shirt men, and lurk off to their quarters--ashamed of their weakness, yet afraid to go on.
At last, a herd of beef, quite as gaunt as the starved hunting-shirt men themselves, arrives. Fires are set going and knives drawn. There is a measureless eating. Belts are let out to the full-fed holes of other days; mutiny, like an evil spirit, takes its flight. The gorged hunting-shirt men, as though in amends for their scowl-ings and mutinous grumblings, beg to be led instantly against the Creeks. This the General is very willing to do, since he suspects the Creeks of possessing corn.
The General's scouts tell him that the scattered Creeks are collecting in force at the Horseshoe. Upon this news, one bright morning the General rides out of Fort Strother, and his recuperated hunting-shirt men, two thousand strong, are at his back.
The Horseshoe is a loop-like bend in the Tallapoosa, which incloses a round one hundred heavily-timbered acres. Across the open end, three hundred and fifty yards wide, the British engineers have taught the Creeks to throw up a fortification of logs. Behind this bulwark is gathered the fighting flower of the Creeks, more than one thousand warriors in all.
Arriving in front of the log bulwark, the General, with the experienced Coffee, pushes forward to reconnoiter.
“We can thank the British for that,” says the General, tossing his indignant right hand toward the Creek defenses. “Billy Weathers-ford, even with the half-white blood that's in him, would never have designed it.”
The astute Coffee makes a suggestion and, acting on it, the General dispatches him by a roundabout march to take the Creeks from behind. The fatuous savages flatter themselves that the wide-flowing Tallapoosa will defend their rear. All they need do, they think, is lie behind those English-log breastworks and knock over whatever obnoxious paleface shows his head. This is an admirable programme, and comforting to the cockles of the aboriginal heart. There is but one trouble; it won't work.