They had gone away from their wooden walls, deep into the unknown wilderness, to meet an enemy four or five times their numbers, and skilled in all the wiles and tricks of the forest.
Every face was grave, but the knowledge of danger only strengthened them for the conflict.

Hot blood became cool and cautious, and wary eyes searched the thickets everywhere.

Rash and impetuous they may have been; but they were ready now to redeem themselves, with the valor, without which the border could not have been won.
Henry Ware had suddenly gone forward from the others, and the green forest swallowed him up, but every nerve and muscle of him was now ready and alert.

He felt, rather than saw, that the enemy was at hand; and in his green buckskin he blended so completely with the forest that only the keenest sight could have picked him from the mass of foliage.

His general's eye told him, too, that the place before them was made for a conflict which would favor the superior numbers.