Adam Colfax was proud of his fleet and the great amount of precious stores that it carried. The reinforcements after the Battle of the Bayou had raised it to more than its original strength and value. All the men had recovered from their wounds, and everybody was in splendid health. He had made up his mind that fleet and cargo should be delivered intact at Pittsburgh, otherwise he could never consider his voyage wholly a success. The night after he fell back from the watery pass he held a council of his captains and guides on his own flat boat, which had been named the _Independence_. He had with him Adolphe Drouillard, a brave and devoted French Creole from New Orleans; James Tilden, a Virginian; Henry Eckford, a south Carolinian; Charles Turner, a New Yorker, and William Truesdale, and Eben Barber, New Englanders, and besides these, Nat Thrale and Ned Lyon, the best of the scouts and guides since the disappearance of the five, were present. The fleet was anchored in the middle of the river, out of rifle shot for the present, but Adam Colfax knew very well that the enemy was in the dense wood lining either bank. He had sent skirmishers ashore in the afternoon, and they did not go many yards from the stream before they were compelled to exchange shots with the foe. Thrale and Lyon, who were on the southern bank, reported that the Indians were still thick in the forest. "They see us here on the river," said Thrale, "an' ef we don't keep well in the middle uv it they kin reach us with thar bullets. But we won't be able to see the least speck or sign uv them." Adam Colfax had sighed when he heard these words, and now, as his little council gathered, it seemed that all predictions of evil were about to be fulfilled. A smoky red sun had set behind the hills, and the night, true to the promise of the sun, had come on dark and cloudy. It was not exactly the cloudiness of rain; it was rather that of heat and oppressiveness, and it had in it a certain boding quality that weighed heavily upon the spirits of Adam Colfax. The boats were anchored in a double row in the exact center of the stream, swaying just a little with the gentle current. All those carrying sails had taken them down. Adam Colfax's boat was outside the two lines, slightly nearer to the southern shore, but still beyond rifle shot.