"Will you stand off!" Tonty warned them. And every brave in the town knew what they called the medicine hand in his right gauntlet, powerful and hard as a war club. They stood in awe of it as something more than human. He put his followers behind him. The Frenchmen crowded back to back, facing the savage crowd. Hampered by his imperfect knowledge of their language, he hearkened intently to the jangle of raging voices, his keen dark eyes sweeping from face to face. Tonty was a man of impressive presence, who inspired confidence even in Indians. They held back from slaying him and his people, but fiercely accused him. Young braves dragged from the French lodge the goods and forge saved from Fort Crevecoeur, and ran yelling to heave everything into the river. "The Iroquois are your friends! The Iroquois are at peace with the French! But they are marching here to eat us up!" "We know nothing about the Iroquois!" shouted Tonty. "If they are coming we will go out with you to fight them!" Only half convinced, but panic-stricken from former encounters with a foe who always drove them off their land, they turned from threatening Tonty and ran to push out their canoes. Into these were put the women and children, with supplies, and all were paddled down river to an island, where guards could be set. The warriors then came back and prepared for fighting. They greased their bodies, painted their faces, made ready their weapons, and danced and howled to excite one another to courage. All night fires along shore, and leaping figures, were reflected in the dark river. About dawn, scouts who had been sent to watch the Iroquois came running with news that the enemy were almost in sight across the prairie on the opposite side, slipping under cover of woods along a small branch of the Illinois River. They had guns, pistols, and swords, and carried bucklers of rawhide. The scouts declared that a Jesuit priest and La Salle himself led them. The Frenchmen's lives seemed hardly a breath long. In the midst of maddened, screeching savages Tonty and his men once more stood back to back, and he pushed off knives with his copper hand. "Do you want to kill yourselves?" he shouted. "If you kill us, the French governor will not leave a man of you alive! I tell you Monsieur de la Salle is not with the Iroquois, nor is any priest leading them! Do you not remember the good Father Marquette? Would such men as he lead tribes to fight one another? If all the Iroquois had stolen French clothes, you would think an army of Jesuits and Messieurs de la Salle were coming against you!" "But some one has brought the Iroquois upon us!" "I told you before we know nothing about the Iroquois! But we will go with you now to fight them!" At that the Illinois put their knives in their belts and ran shouting to throw themselves into the canoes. Warfare with American Indians was always the rush of a mob, where every one acted for himself without military order.