THE ATTACK.
They were filled with hot indignation over the situation. They felt sure
now that Ben and Percy had been lured away, but they were not uneasy for
their safety. Billie had told them what Dr. Hume had said: that the
mountaineers would not dare injure any of the campers. But all of them
realized that Phoebe might be treated with cruel indignities. Only a few
weeks before, Billie had read an account in a newspaper of how a pretty
young school teacher had been tarred and feathered by a mob of people
who were jealous of her beauty and refinement. If Lupo could persuade
the villagers that Phoebe and her father were responsible for the forest
fires, Billie felt certain they would have a very unreasonable lot of
visitors to deal with that night. She wished with all her heart that
someone with an eloquent tongue would appear and address these narrow,
stupid men, someone who understood their natures and knew how to deal
with them. She believed that violence would only aggravate their rage.
Someone would have to talk to them.
The other Motor Maids sat on a divan whispering together, and Miss
Campbell, calm as was her wont in the presence of danger, paced up and
down the room, examining the bolts of the heavy shutters. Alberdina,
with her little iron bound trunk beside her, sat grumbling in a corner.
"Is it for thees I haf gome?" she murmured. "I to New Yorg return
to-morrow. They will keel me already yet."
"You are perfectly safe, Alberdina," said Miss Campbell, "and you are
not to go back to New York to-morrow. You are to stay with us and see
this thing through. I shall telegraph Mr. Campbell in the morning and
have the law on these people. I am sick and tired of their savagery and
injustice. The cruel wretches! I----"
A long shrill whistle interrupted her outburst. It penetrated the stout
walls of their fortress so unexpectedly that it brought them all to
their feet with low exclamations.
"There they are," whispered Mary.
Alberdina groaned, "Mein lieber Gott," and sank upon a couch with the
expression of a condemned man about to be executed.
It was some moments after the whistle before the enemy made its next
advance. That also was unexpected and terrifying,--loud knocks on the
wooden shutters of the large entrance.
Nobody moved or spoke. Again the knocks came and a voice called:
"We want that gal and her father. You ain't got no right to shelter
criminals. Open in the name of the law. I reckon a sheriff will make you
listen to reason."
"Break the door down, Lupo," said another voice. "The law's in its
right to git what it wants. They ain't nobody that kin refuse the law
without payin' for it."
Although they were so confident of the law, the girls felt sure the
mention of a sheriff was a blind, and that the mountaineers were not
going to do anything so incriminating as to break in the doors. Then
there followed a period of consultation outside. Footsteps could be
heard along the galleries; the stout shutters on all the openings were
shaken and pounded upon; but Sunrise Camp was indeed as strong as a
fortress when it was closed. Storms had beaten against it in vain, and
unless the mob outside resorted to hatchets and saws, it would not be
easy to break in.
At last the voice of Lupo spoke from the front gallery.
"Ladies, I'm only askin' justice. You got two dangerous people in this
here house. The law wants 'em. We don't mean no harm to you an' we'll
leave peaceable if you'll hand over the prisoners. I'm goin' to give you
five minutes to decide in an' if you don't open the door, we're goin' to
break it open with this here axe."
"You'll do nothing of the sort, Lupo," cried Miss Campbell, her voice
ringing with indignation. "And I warn you that unless you wish to serve
a long term in the penitentiary, you'd better leave this place at once
with your friends. Mr. Campbell would never stop until he saw all of you
well punished for this night's work. You've already broken into the
house and robbed our maid----"
"Who said I did?" shouted Lupo. "It was Frenchy done that, too. He's a
dangerous man to live in a peaceable place. We've been puttin' up with
him and his daughter for too long, and we citizens ain't goin' to put up
with 'em no longer. They gona' be punished first, and then they gona'
give up that there home that ain't theirs by rights and leave this here
part of the country forever."
Miss Campbell decided not to reply to Lupo's outburst. It only excited
him and it was evident her arguments had no effect.
And now, after what seemed an interminable time, the door resounded with
the blows of a woodman's axe.
"Go up into the gallery, Phoebe," ordered Miss Campbell, trembling in
spite of her determination not to be frightened.
Phoebe rose and walked to the middle of the room. Her face was
transfigured and she looked almost unearthly.
"I am not afraid," she said. "I believe that I will be saved from my
enemies. God is sending someone to save me."
But the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell had no such faith to bolster up
their faltering courage. During the long, lonely evenings on the
mountainside when Phoebe had read aloud to her father from the New
Testament, which he seemed to like best, there had grown in her mind a
belief as strong as it was simple. There had never been any people to
shake her convictions with arguments, nor books to suggest doubts. And
now in her soul she had called for help and she believed it would come
even at the eleventh hour.
Billie, whose faith in prayer was not unmixed with a desire for action
of a very vigorous and immediate variety, seized an old rifle hung from
a nail on the wall. She had no idea whether there were any loads in it,
but she had made up her mind to use the butt-end on the first man who
entered the room. In the meantime, the axe had crashed through one of
the thick, hardwood panels, making a slit broad enough to see through.
"I'll shoot any man who comes into this room," called Billie. "Keep
out."
An eye was placed at the hole in the door. Billie felt instinctively it
was Lupo's.
"That there old rusty gun ain't got no loads in it, Miss. You kin shoot
all you like."
There was another pause, and the blows began again. Alberdina gave
evidence of wishing to speak, but Miss Campbell interrupted her.
"Never mind, Alberdina," she said impatiently. "You may go up into the
gallery if you like. You are quite safe. They only want Miss Phoebe."
But Alberdina would not be silenced. Perhaps somewhere in the remote
history of her ancestors there had been a warrior who had ranged the
German forests dressed in the skins of wild beasts, his helmet decorated
with a pair of fierce upstanding horns. Who knows but a drop of his
fighting blood had come down through the generations to stir this
sluggish descendant into action just at this particular moment when
something had to be done?
"Come," she called, with unexpected energy. "I asg you, come. We will a
high wall mag already. You will see. Hein?"
Again the axe crashed through the door and without a word they followed
her into the gallery, Billie carrying the rifle and Elinor the breakfast
horn. Alberdina hurried into the locker room and presently returned with
a trunk hoisted on her shoulders. This she placed at the top of the
stairs.
"Good," exclaimed Billie. "Why didn't we think of that before? It will
keep them off for a little longer, at any rate."
Alberdina did not listen to these honeyed words of praise, however. She
never paused until she had piled three trunks, one on top of the other
in a very effective barricade. At the far end of the gallery, Elinor and
Mary appeared to be very much occupied at a little window placed in the
roof for ventilation, but now closed. Finding the bolt rusty, Elinor
took off her slipper and broke a pane of glass. Mary, her lieutenant,
then handed her the breakfast horn. It was like Elinor to wipe off the
mouth piece carefully with her handkerchief before she placed it to her
lips. But the blast she blew must have startled the mountaineers
outside, for the blows on the door ceased for a moment. Again and again
she signaled, always the same long agitated note.
"I think anybody would recognize that as a call for help," she said,
pausing for breath; and while the axe crashed through the door, she
continued to blow the bugle with all her strength.
Billie, however, felt fairly certain that a trunk barricade and a bugle
blast for help would not keep off the savages long.
"We need some kind of ammunition, Nancy," she said. "If only this rifle
was loaded."
"Did you look through the barrel?" asked Nancy, slightly more
experienced with firearms than Billie. She seized the rifle and held it
up before a lamp that Alberdina had set in a corner of the gallery,
cocked it and looked through with one eye professionally squinted.
"Why, it is loaded," she announced. "It only has two empty what do you
call them--chambers?"
"Must I shoot at somebody?" asked Billie.
"You could try and I could try," answered Nancy, "but I don't think
either one of us would hit an elephant."
Just then Miss Campbell put out the light. At the same moment the axe
made a breach in the door and a man crawled through. Billie lifted the
rifle and, taking a long breath, aimed at his foot. The man was looking
about him in a bewildered way. It was the innkeeper, second leader of
the gang. Billie pulled and pulled, but nothing happened, and in another
moment a dozen mountaineers had crawled through the opening. The one
lamp cast a small circle of light near the fire-place. The rest of the
room was in darkness. In the gallery the anxious watchers were invisible
to the band of men, but the watchers themselves could see the outlaws
plainly now gathered in a group in the center of the room, rather uneasy
after breaking down the door of Sunrise Camp.
"Ladies, I'd advise you to give up the prisoners," called Lupo,
addressing the darkness. "We ain't goner touch none of you, but we wants
them two furriners right away."
"Git some torches," ordered the innkeeper, who seemed really to be the
boldest man in the lot.
Several men disappeared and in a moment returned with pitch torches
which cast a lurid, flickering light through the room. It was a weird
scene, looking down from the gallery. All of the men wore masks except
Lupo and the innkeeper, who were boldly undisguised. They peered about
the room. Suddenly Lupo's eye caught a corner of the staircase at the
far end.
"They're upstairs. Come on, men," he called.
Billie raised the shotgun to her shoulder.
"I'll shoot the old thing off this time if it flies to pieces," she
said, and pulled the trigger with all her might.
"Bang!" went the gun, and down she sat very hard, not knowing where she
had aimed. There was a great confusion of voices below and she thought
she heard someone cry out with pain.
"Could I have shot anyone?" she asked herself tremulously as she picked
herself up from the floor. Her shoulder ached and her finger was
bruised, but she put the gun into position again.
"I'll shoot any man who comes up those steps," she called.
The outlaws had gathered under the gallery now, holding their torches
high and gazing with some curiosity at the women grouped above them.
Miss Campbell stood with her arm around Phoebe's waist. Elinor and Mary
were still at the window. Nancy was with Billie, and Alberdina crouched
behind the barricade.
Lupo fell back angrily.
"I guess you ain't got but one load in your old shotgun," he called.
"Come on, men. We'll make a run for it."
Billie turned the gun straight on him. She felt almost more afraid of
the unwieldy thing than she did of the man himself.
"If it jumps again," she thought, "it'll break my shoulder. And it's so
undignified to have to sit down every time I shoot it off."
The innkeeper made a leap for the steps and Lupo followed him. Billie
ran to the other end of the gallery so as to get a better aim, and
pulled at the trigger. The trunks were swaying and Alberdina had rushed
from behind them.
"Oh, Nancy, I can't make it go off," Billie sobbed under her breath.
"Give it to me," whispered Nancy, seizing the gun and leveling it with
trembling hands at Lupo.
"Look out, Lupo," called a man below, as the barricade went down with a
crash.
But Lupo was in no mood to listen to warnings. Bounding over a fallen
trunk, he wrenched the gun from Nancy's hand.
At this moment, a man walked into the room and marched straight up to
the group of mountaineers.
"I beg your pardon, gentlemen," he said in a voice loud enough to be
heard by everybody, "is this Sunrise Camp?"