“To the roof my two companions quickly climbed, a path to gain By the great, capacious chimney, where resistance would be vain; “For, so soon as they descended and attacked her on the floor, Unopposed I’d find an entrance in the then unguarded door. “But let no one boast his cunning, if a squaw be in the way, Never fox hath more of shrewdness than a woman held at bay. “From its place within the corner soon she tore a feather-bed, And she tossed it in an instant on the embers fiery red. “Scorched with fierce and sudden blazing, nearly stifled with the smoke, Fell my two remaining comrades, to receive her axe’s stroke. “Then I struggled at the entrance, and had partly made my way When the woman came before me, like a wounded buck at bay. “From her mouth the foam was flying, and her eyes were glazed and green; Such a sight to shake my courage, I before had never seen. “Turned I quickly in my terror, bounding through the darkness deep, And I never stopped my running till the dawn began to peep. “Now, what think you of my story?” said the savage unto me— “Was she not a woman worthy leader of a tribe to be?” “Ay!” I answered, “but I tell you, should you try it, you would see We have many a hundred women that in need were stout as she. “On the mountains of Virginia, in Kentucky’s bloody ground, In the forests of Ohio, scores of such are to be found— “Women tender, trusting, tearful; yet if peril forced among, They can fight as stern and fiercely as a pantheress for her young.” Quoth the chieftain, “If so many like that woman you can find, You should send them forth to battle, while your men remained behind. “I have met your braves in combat when the skies were red with fire, And the sabres of your horsemen flashed the lightning of their ire— “When your brazen-bodied cannon spoke their wrath to those around, And the trampling of your legions shook the awed and trembling ground. “Where the waters of Kanawha rush to join a clearer tide, I was there with stout old Cornstalk, when you broke our power and pride. “With the Mingoes, under Girty, at Fort Henry I was one, When your forty kept four hundred baffled there from sun to sun. “By Tecumthe’s side I battled at the Thames the day he fell, Where continual flash kept lighting forest, river, swamp, and dell. “But I never knew a terror, and a fear I never felt, Save that midnight when the woman so upon my comrades dealt. “And if I were young and likely, then, whatever dames I saw, I would wed none save the equal of that daring long-knife squaw.” _THE LAST BATTLE OF THE WAR._ [Illustration: ANDREW JACKSON.]