They had been coming up a gorge, and if beaten they would be crowded back in it upon each other, hindering the escape of one another, until they were cut to pieces.
The wild youth smiled; he knew the bravery of the men with him, and now their dire necessity and the thought of those left behind in the two villages would nerve them to fight.

In his daring mind the battle was not yet lost.
A faint, indefinable odor met his nostrils, and he knew it to be the oil and paint of Indian braves.

A deep red flushed through the brown of either cheek.

Returning now to his own kind he was its more ardent partisan because of the revulsion, and the Indian scent offended him.

He looked down and saw a bit of feather, dropped no doubt from some defiant scalp lock.