Page:The Conquest.djvu/53

 the sound of guns. But the Frenchmen themselves turned their rifles on the fort.

Under the friendly light of the new moon Clark and his men threw up an intrenchment, and from behind its shelter in fifteen minutes the skilled volleys of the border rifle had silenced two of the cannon.

"Surrender!" was Clark's stentorian summons at daylight.

Hamilton, with the blood of many a borderer on his head,—what had he to hope? Hot and hotter rained the bullets.

"Give me three days to consider."

"Not an hour!" was Clark's reply.

"Let me fight with you?" said The Tobacco's son, the principal chief on the Wabash.

"No," answered Clark, "you sit back and watch us. Americans do not hire Indians to fight their battles."

Amazed, the Indians fell back and waited.

The fort fell, and with it British dominion in the northwest territory. Then the galley hove in sight and the flag waved above Vincennes.

"A convoy up de rivière on its way with goods, from le Detroit," whispered a Frenchman. Directly Clark dispatched his boatmen to capture the flotilla.

"Sur la feuille ron—don don don," the voyageurs were singing.

Merrily rowing down the river came the British, when suddenly out from a bend swung three boats. "Surrender!"

Amid the wild huzzas of Vincennes the Americans returned, bringing the captive convoy with fifty thousand dollars' worth of food, clothing, and ammunition, and forty prisoners.

With a heart full of thanksgiving Clark paid and clothed his men out of that prize captured on the Wabash.

"Let the British flag float a few days," he said. "I may entertain some of the hair-buying General's friends."

Very soon painted red men came striding in with bloody scalps dangling at their belts. But as each one entered, red-handed from murder, Clark's Long Knives shot him