They had made a full transfer, from their old to their new quarters, of bag and baggage; and had possessed themselves of all the log-houses in and about the disputed region.

Their fires were in full heat, to use the frontier phrase, and the water was hissing in their kettles, and the dry thorns crackling under the pot.
Never had usurpers made themselves more perfectly at home; and the rage of the old incumbents was, of course, duly heightened at a prospect of so much ease and felicity enjoyed at their expense.
The enemy were about equal in point of number with those whom they had so rudely dispossessed.

They had, however, in addition to their disposable force, their entire assemblage of wives, children, slaves, and dependants, cattle and horses, enough, as Forrester bitterly remarked, "to breed a famine in the land." They had evidently settled themselves _for life_, and the ousted party, conscious of the fact, prepared for the _dernier_ resort.

Everything on the part of the usurpers indicated a perfect state of preparedness for an issue which they never doubted would be made; and all the useless baggage, interspersed freely with rocks and fallen trees, had been well-employed in increasing the strength of a position for which, such an object considered, nature had already done much.

The defences, as they now stood, precluded all chance of success from an attack by mounted men, unless the force so employed were overwhelming.