Sergeant Dick’s automatic at once spoke rapidly; and, shot through
the brain, three of the would-be invaders fell back from the
bulwark, while the others, fearing the same fate, voluntarily let go
and likewise disappeared.
“Hooray!” shouted Amos. “We’ve done ’em yit again. Keep the shutter
up just a little longer, sergeant, and I’ll be able to help ye.”
He vacated his kneeling posture at the door, slamming and hooking
the slide over the loop in it, and turned and looked wildly about
the cabin for a means of fastening up the shutter. But his dull wits
could think of none on the spur of the moment.
“You’ll have to drop it and let it sweat, sergeant,” he said. “I
don’t see how we can manage it arter all. Look ahere, I’ll take the
loop beside it and guard it that way, and you can take the door
’stead o’ me. The women in the ‘castle’ will pick off all the red
varmints who try to board us on t’other side, you see.”
Sergeant Dick could not help smiling grimly at the young man
resigning the post at the door to him. It was far the more perilous
position if the window he was at had to be left unshuttered.
None of these young squatters commended himself very much to the
police officer. One and all, though fierce and plucky enough, he had
already had plenty of evidence, would prefer to save his own skin at
his (the sergeant’s) expense.
Without a word, however, John Dick at once dropped the shutter again
to the floor, and almost heaved a sigh of relief at being thus rid
of its most tiring weight.
Then he flitted to the door, and knelt by the loop Amos had just
left. Amos, however, redeemed himself somewhat now in the sergeant’s
eyes, for seeing from the loop his father had been so lately firing
through that that side of the craft was free of invaders or
boarders, he at once rushed across the cabin to the other, and
looked out on that side also.
“Hooray! Hooray, sergeant!” he yelled. “There’s not a redskin aboard
on either side. I can see from end to end of the scow, and there
can’t be none at t’other end of cabin neither. I should say, Abner
and the Old Man air firing at the skunks in the water. Ay, give it
to ’em hot, now, sergeant! Don’t spare the skunks. Put a bullet
through every head in sight. Thunder! What’s that blaze out in the
middle of the lake? Cuss it! It’s on Stable Islet! The skunks have
landed a party there an’ fired the stables with the ’osses inside.”
“No, they are carrying off the horses, I can see from here, on two
rafts they have evidently made from some of the timber of the
stables.”
“We’ll have to let ’em go; we can do nothing to purvent ’em. We’ve
got our hands full with the varmints round us. Let ’em have it,
sergeant! Wipe out all who are inside the dock! Hooray! They’re
done, and air all trying to get away now.”
It was true. From the upper loophole in the door, Dick could see all
the redmen in the enclosure before him swimming away desperately for
the palisades, or clambering over these into the canoes waiting
outside.
Such of the Indians as had remained in the canoes were firing
through the palisades at both the ark and the “castle,” to try to
cover the retreat. But both these structures were bullet-proof, and
the excitement, flurry, and exasperation of the red sharpshooters
militated against any likelihood of their getting a shot home
through the tiny slits of loopholes in the shutters.
Almost directly in front of him, the sergeant could see out upon the
lake two large rafts--made of beams and boards, and what had
evidently been partitions between stalls in the stable and the
buggy-house, as well as doors, bound roughly together with rawhide
lariats.
The rafts were beyond Stable Islet, and so beyond the radius of the
illumination of the blazing tar-barrel hung out by Muriel and Jenny.
But a huge bonfire, composed of the flaming remains of the looted
and half dismantled stable and buggy-house lit up another great
patch of the lake, and showed the two captured horses, one on either
raft, surrounded by several Indian warriors paddling and steering
for the western shore.
A couple of canoes were also towing each raft, which, therefore, for
all its clumsy make, moved fairly quickly over the lake.
[Illustration: A HUGE BONFIRE SHOWED THE TWO CAPTURED HORSES.]
Amos Arnold, sharp on his own last words, had thrust his Winchester
repeater through the loop he stood beside, and started vengefully to
take potshots at every plumed head bobbing upon the water before
him.
Sergeant Dick, however, held his fire. He did not believe in such
cruel butchery as that, retribution though it might be called.
“Let the misguided poor wretches go,” he cried. “They’ve had enough
of it. We’ve given them a drubbing--a thrashing they are not likely
to get over in a hurry.”
He was pleased to note that only one rifle seemed to be firing now
from the front or verandah side of the house, although three rifles
had been until the besiegers turned tail. The single rifle could
only belong to the fierce old wife and mother of this tigerish
family.
Muriel and Jenny had been firing out upon the assailants up to now,
but, seeing their foes fleeing, they too were humanely forbearing to
shoot.
“What’s that?” howled Amos. “Let the wretches go! Spare ’em ’cos
they’re runnin’. Not much! Not me!”
And he continued to pot away. But with indifferent success, for the
light from the blazing tar-barrel was getting very bad--very jumpy
and feeble. The barrel was falling to pieces and dropping in flaming
fragments with loud hisses into the water, or rebounding from and
sliding down the iron roof of the “castle.”
Moreover, the swimmers dived incessantly or swam under water until
they reached the palisades, where many of them managed to slip
through instead of having to climb over.
For all their vindictiveness, too, the squatter and his two sons saw
that the current was carrying the ark against the southern end of
the enclosure, and comprehended the peril of allowing this to
happen. Partly screened from the fire of those within the ark by the
palisades, the redmen outside these would easily be able to board,
if it drifted alongside them. The little craft would be bound to be
taken. The Indians, by mounting on the palisades, would be able to
leap aboard in overwhelming numbers, get on the roof where they
could not be reached, and break through with their tomahawks.
“Quick!” shouted Sergeant Dick, on noting the danger simultaneously
with the other three. “We shall drift against the palisades if we
are not careful, and then it will be all up with us. Quick! The
other door! We must get out at all risks and use the sweeps, or we
are done for.”
As one man, the four defenders of the ark rushed to the door by
which they had entered its “house”--which door was still the nearer
to the “castle,” and now almost directly facing it.
Frenziedly the whole quartet flung themselves upon the bolts and
bars. One wrenched back the top bolt; another the bottom. Another
turned the key, and the fourth whipped out the top great wooden bar.
Then the other two bars were removed in like haste and the door was
thrown open.
Out into that end of the scow the four men burst, and seized upon
the two big oars or “sweeps” lying to either side. The cabin
screened them from their nearest foes--those lining the palisading
at the point whither they were drifting. But they were wholly
exposed, save when they stooped double, to the Indians on either
side of them, and in order to use the “sweeps,” they would have to
expose themselves. Not only that. They were now so close up to the
palisading that they might not be able to overcome the inertia of
their craft, plus the resistance of the current, which was dead
against them, in time to avert the threatened calamity.
Woman’s wit proved their salvation. But for it they must assuredly
have, all four, fallen victims to the fury of the already exulting
savages waiting for them. Using the sweeps, they would not have been
able to get back inside the “house” or cabin, and shut out their
foes before these were upon them, once they touched the palisades.
A rope came sailing through the air from the direction of the
“castle.” It fell across both bulwarks of the scow, and in an
instant all four inmates of this had sprung upon it and grabbed it.
As they did so a storm of bullets “criss-crossed” through the space
they had just been occupying. The Indians on the broken arc of
palisading in sight of them had opened a cross fire upon them. The
air above them, as they crouched on all fours, grasping the
rope--below the bulwarks of the scow--was alive with lead flying in
different directions.
To stand upright again would have meant instant annihilation, for
the range was not twenty feet.
“Back inside the cabin! Crawl on your hands and knees. We can haul
on the rope through the doorway!” cried Sergeant Dick.
The four men scrambled madly back inside the open door behind them,
holding tightly, all, to the rope which was pulled hard against
them. It was an experience none of them would wish to go through a
second time.
The leaden storm over their heads never abated for a moment, but
whistled past, thudded against the bulkhead, whizzed in at the open
door of the cabin or came smashing through the sides of the scow,
incessantly.
But once inside the cabin door, they pushed this three quarters to,
and, standing behind it, heaved their hardest, in concert, on the
rope, which they passed around the foot of the mast in the middle of
the compartment.
As the rope had come sailing through the air towards them, one and
all had seen that it emanated from the “castle” window nearest them,
looking out onto the verandah.
Muriel Arnold had seen their imminent deadly peril, and with a
woman’s quick wit had realized that only a rope thrown them from the
“castle” could save them.
“Aaron! Abel!” she had screamed to her two married cousins. “Quick,
here! Quick! Drop everything and come quick!”
The two brothers came tearing from their respective posts and found
her gripping a coil of rope. She then thrust the rope into the
eldest brother, Abel’s, hands, threw up the shutter within the
embrasure of the window, and hurriedly explained that he must toss
the rope to his father and two brothers on the ark.
An adept at throwing the lasso, it was the easiest thing in the
world for Abel Arnold to send the rope sailing out through the open
window into the near end of the scow. And the moment he and Aaron
felt it tugged upon, they began to haul with all their might upon
it, aided by their mother, Muriel, and Jenny, overcoming the “way”
on the craft, and drawing it back towards the verandah.