THE BATTLE ON THE HILL Six men were sitting around a camp fire, and they showed every sign of comfort and cheerfulness.

It was a big fire, a glowing fire, a warm fire, and it took all trace of damp from the rain or cold of the autumn morning.
They were just having breakfast, and their food was buffalo hump, very tender as it came from beneath a huge bed of red-hot embers.
The men seemed to have no fear of an enemy, perhaps because their fire was in an open space, too far from the forest for the rifle shot of an ambushed foe to reach them.

Perhaps, too, they felt security in their numbers and valor, because they were certainly a formidable-looking party.
All were stalwart, dressed in wilderness fashion--that is, in tanned deerskin--and every one carried the long, slender-barreled Kentucky rifle, with knife and hatchet at his belt.

There was Tom Ross, the guide, of middle years, with a powerful figure and stern, quiet face, and near him lounged a younger man in an attitude of the most luxurious and indolent ease, Shif'less Sol Hyde, who had attained a great reputation for laziness by incessantly claiming it for himself, but who was nevertheless a hunter and scout of extraordinary skill.

Jim Hart, a man of singular height and thinness, whom Sol disrespectfully called the "Saplin'"-- that is, the sapling, a slim young tree--was doing the cooking.