"We all know you were pow'ful tired, an' I'd have slept, too, ef them fellows hadn't been mean enough to keep me from it.

You wuz just nacherally overpowered, an' you had to do it." Paul looked around at the little group, and he read the meaning in the eye of every man.
"You are going to fight that war band ?" he said.
"It 'pears to me that it's a sight less tirin' than runnin' away," replied Shif'less Sol, "though we hate to drag you, Paul, into such a fracas." The blood flushed into Paul's face.
"I'm ready for it!" he exclaimed.

"I'm as ready as any of you! Do you think I want to run away ?" "We know, Paul, that you've got ez much grit ez anybody in the world," said Tom Ross kindly; "but Sol maybe didn't think a boy that's a big scholar, an' that kin read an' understand anything, would he as much interested in a real hair-raisin' fight as the rest o' us." Paul was mollified.

He knew their minds now, and in a way it was an unconscious tribute that these wild borderers paid to him.
"I'm with you to the end of it," he said.

And they, too, were satisfied.
Then the entire party moved forward into the deep woods, watching and listening for the slightest sign of the Shawnee advance.