When I had given up human claims for
myself, I had ceased to exist as an independent agent. It was only by
knowing that I was a tool that I could keep myself alive.
And so I sat upon my knees and whispered to the Indians about me. They
whispered in turn, and soon three hundred men were waked and ready.
Yet the forest scarcely rustled.
I motioned, and the line started. We crept some twenty paces from tree
to tree. Then ahead of us I saw an opening. I could distinguish the
outlines of a rough redoubt.
I stepped in front and stopped a moment. It had grown light enough for
me to see the faces of the Sac warriors. Dirt-crusted, red-eyed,
wolfish, they awaited my signal.
I raised my sword. "Ready!" I called. An inferno of yells arose. We
ran at the top of our speed. We charged the stake-built redoubt with
knives in hands. Mingled with our war cry I heard the screams of the
awakening camp.
I reached the palings. They were of bass wood, roughly split and
tough. I could not scale them with my lame shoulder. I seized a
hatchet from an Indian, struck the stakes, wrenched one free, and
climbed through the hole.
The camp was in an uproar. A few Sacs had scaled the redoubt ahead of
me, and one of them was grappling with a Seneca just in my path.
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