"I can't shoot wo'th a cent, nohow, an' ef ye cripple up my trigger-finger--" Kenton had been peeping under the low-hanging scrub-oak boughs while Oncle Jazon was speaking these last words; and now he suddenly interrupted: "The devil! look yonder!" he growled out in startling tone.

"Injuns!" It was a sharp snap of the conversation's thread, and at the same time our three friends realized that they had been careless in not keeping a better look-out.

They let fall the meat they had not yet finished eating and seized their guns.
Five or six dark forms were moving toward them across a little point of the prairie that cut into the wood a quarter of a mile distant.
"Yander's more of 'em," said Oncle Jazon, as if not in the least concerned, wagging his head in an opposite direction, from which another squad was approaching.
That he duly appreciated the situation appeared only in the celerity with which he acted.
Kenton at once assumed command, and his companions felt his perfect fitness.

There was no doubt from the first as to what the Indians meant; but even if there had been it would have soon vanished; for in less than three minutes twenty-one savages were swiftly and silently forming a circle inclosing the spot where the three white men, who had covered themselves as best they could with trees, waited in grim steadiness for the worst.
Quite beyond gunshot range, but near enough for Oncle Jazon to recognize Long-Hair as their leader, the Indians halted and began making signs to one another all round the line.

Evidently they dreaded to test the marksmanship of such riflemen as they knew most border men to be.