The bayonet was raised and the savages fled from
its cold touch. We roused them out of the brush like
a swarm of partridges^ and they could not stand before
us. Then they learned that they had not come against
an ambushed rabble like St. Claires force, but a trained
army led by the best men in the West. Again I felt
the thrill of exultation as the line of bayonets flashed
in the brushwood, and the naked warriors, leaping from
their coverts, ran in terror. On our left we saw the
same gleam, and we knew that it came from the bayo-
nets of our comrades who were driving the enemy before
them with a speed not less than ours.
The savages ceased to utter the defiant war-whoop.
On all sides they fled, a frightened swarm, pursued by
the avenging bayonets and stricken down by the rifle
fire, the forms of their dead scattered all through the
brushwood and high grass.
A tall figure rose out of the smoke beside me and
a voice shouted in my ear:

" Who's blinkin' like a frog in a thunderstorm now,
John?"

It was old Joe Grimes, his face one great blaze
of triumph.
" You're right," I replied. " They can't stand the
flash of the bayonet in their eyes."

"Bayonet, hell!" he cried. "It ain't the bayonet
that's doin' 'em! It's this! " and he tapped the barrel
of his rifle as he spoke. The next moment he was gone
in the timber, hot upon the trail of the beaten savages.
But I knew that he would never allow any of the credit
of the victory to the regular soldiers, or to that weapon
despised by all frontiersmen, the bayonet.
