So we dropped double loads of buck-shot in our muskets, slung them over our shoulders, and for the last time climbed to the crow’s nest in our tall pine.

The forest to the northward seemed deserted. We watched for Indian signs: for crows flying hurriedly from the direction of the Fort Ann road: for wisps of smoke: listened for the metallic cry with which a bluejay comments on a passer-by. We heard nothing: saw nothing.

The sun came up, a red ball: sign of a hot day. From behind us, borne on light airs from the west, came the odor of wood smoke; the distant rattle of a drum in the fort; the bawing of a cow at Widow McNeil’s. It was a mournful bawing, such as a cow makes when over-full of milk. It occurred to me that if the cow was unmilked, the widow, even though a Tory, might have taken precautions against the approach of Indians: might have sought refuge in the fort with her black-haired, black-eyed guest, Jennie McCrae, of whom Cap had spoken with such ardor.

I murmured my suspicions to Doc, but he disagreed with me. “That woman, she’s like most fat folks. She’s sot in her ways. If fat folks wasn’t sot, they wouldn’t be so fat. That woman, she’s extra fat, and she’s sot against us rebels. She’s seen us, and she don’t like us, so she’s sotter against us than she is against Injuns, that she don’t know nothin’ about. Us thin folks, we got a lot to be—–”

His philosophizing came to an abrupt stop. Somewhere behind us there was the sharp whack of a musket-shot, followed by the resonant impact of the sound against the pines on the far side of the river. We listened, rigid. There was another shot, followed by a burst of quavering yowls.

“By Grapes!” Doc whispered. “There they be! They’ve broke through to the north’ard instead of here!”

Cautiously we advanced our heads over the edge of our crow’s nest.

Doc’s hand clutched my elbow. Directly beneath us were Indians, running. I saw five; then a sixth and seventh. Then I saw more, hastening along in single file from the direction of Fort Ann.

Except for the slight squelching noise of their feet in the soft soil, they made no sound. They were like shadows, almost: like animals—deer or panthers—and the same color. Now and again one leaped upward to make a violent chopping stroke with his hatchet, but he did it silently.

There were thirty of them, forty, fifty. From where we were they looked misshapen and grotesque: little more than shaven, painted heads balanced on legs and arms that jerked forward and back; forward and back.