the women, and we hadn't much difficulty in getting up such a skear
among 'em that before nightfall every one of 'em in the farms around
made their husbands move into the stockade of the village.

"When the night passed off quietly most of the men were just as
savage with us as if it had been a false alarm altogether. I p'inted
out that it was not because War Eagle had left 'em alone that night
that he was bound to do so the next night or any night after. But in
spite of the women they would have started out to their farms the
fust thing in the morning, if a man hadn't come in with the news that
Carter's farm had been burned and the whole of the people killed and
scalped. As Carter's farm lay only about fifteen miles off this gave
'em a skear, and they were as ready now to believe in the Injuns as I
had tried to make 'em the night before. Then they asked us old hands
to take the lead and promised to do what we told 'em, but when it
came to it their promises were not worth the breath they had spent
upon 'em. There were eight or ten houses outside the stockade, and in
course we wanted these pulled down; but they wouldn't hear of it.
Howsomever, we got 'em to work to strengthen the stockades, to make
loop-holes in the houses near 'em, to put up barricades from house to
house, and to prepare generally for a fight. We divided into three
watches.

"Well, just as I expected, about eleven o'clock at night the Injuns
attacked. Our watch might just as well have been asleep for any good
they did, for it was not till the redskins had crept up to the
stockade all round and opened fire between the timbers on 'em that
they knew that they were near. I'll do 'em justice to say that they
fought stiff enough then, and for four hours they held the line of
houses; every redskin who climbed the stockade fell dead inside it.