“Courage! Courage, Miss Arnold! You know me. It’s all right. Keep
silent, and we’ll get away in safety.”
“Oh, thank Heaven--thank Heaven!” the girl breathed in tones of
ineffable relief, as he drew her free from the tree.
Something bright and shining whizzed past his head, and struck with
a loud thud against the tree.
It was a tomahawk, and it remained with the blade imbedded deep in
the tree-trunk, the haft quivering with the force with which it had
been thrown.
Simultaneously, a shrill, peculiar, ear-piercing cry rang out close
behind him. He wheeled--to see one of the wounded Ogalcrees
kneeling, bleeding like a stuck pig from a wound in the chest, and
still in the final attitude of hurling the hatchet at him.
The Indian made to catch up his rifle lying beside him. But, before
his fingers could close upon the weapon, there was a whiplike crack,
and he doubled up and fell forward, writhing, upon his face.
Amos had shot him with the revolver.
Sergeant Dick threw one arm quickly around Muriel to support her,
and, carrying his rifle “a-trail,” ran with her at full speed for
the nearest canoe. The police officer saw Amos finish freeing his
father in the same instant, and put a second well-aimed bullet from
the revolver through the head of the other wounded redskin, who was
weakly sighting at him with a rifle.
All four fugitives reached the canoes practically together, for Old
Alf and Amos got over the ground more quickly than Dick, hampered as
he was with the girl.
Amos brought up the rear, ready to fire the revolver again at the
first foeman to reappear.
Sergeant Dick hurriedly lifted Muriel in, then pushed the craft off
the sandy strip, retaining hold of it, however, so as to enable the
other two to get in.
“To the far end--to the bow, gal!” panted her uncle. And Muriel went
scrambling across the thwarts to the other extremity of the canoe.
Then with a curt “Thank ’ee, sergeant,” he leaped in, and scrambled
after her. Amos clambered in on the other side; and, throwing one
leg in, Dick thrust off well with the other.
Muriel and the old man had already caught up and dipped a paddle
apiece, and, propelled by their deft strokes, away the canoe shot
across the lake, just as there came a furious howl ashore, and loud
tramping of the bushes.
Amos promptly shot with the revolver, twice in rapid succession, at
the dark, plumed figures he saw amongst the trees, and the sergeant
swung his rifle to his shoulder, and sighted it, but forbore to
press the trigger.
“Fire--fire into them. Why don’t you?” screamed Amos.
His question was drowned by the noise of the discharge of the police
officer’s piece a fraction of a second before that of one of their
enraged foes on the bank.
Dick, who could see as well in the dark as any man--a matter of
practice always--had noted an Ogalcree about to shoot at them, and
had promptly anticipated the man.
He was not in time to prevent the shot being fired, but his bullet
pierced the Indian’s brain even as the trigger was pressed, with the
result that the hostile bullet flew wide of them.
Such deadly accuracy checked the ardor of the rest of the three or
four braves in the view of the fugitives. One hurriedly took shelter
behind a tree, and potted at the fleeing craft, while the others
rushed to launch more canoes and follow in pursuit.
Both Amos and Sergeant Dick, however, banged away wildly in the
direction of the solitary marksman to distract his aim. The
first-mentioned fired off the two remaining cartridges in the
revolver, and then, catching up a paddle, assisted in propelling the
canoe.
Light as a feather, and with next to no draught of water, it skimmed
along swiftly. It was speedily out of reach of the firelight in the
glade, and hidden by the dense shadows of the night from the
marksman on the bank.
The three paddlers, however, did not relax their exertions. They
still paddled desperately on, and the sergeant now laid down his
rifle, no longer of any use, and likewise took up a paddle, and
plied it.
“We all three owe you our lives, sergeant,” growled Old Man Arnold.
“You and the boys planned it well, and no error. You couldn’t hev
arranged it neater, nohow. But I do hope as ’ow the lads hev got
cl’ar as well, I much bedoubt that they hev. And yet if they hadn’t
a-gotten cl’ar we’d hev surely heerd the riptiles acrowin’ and
hooraying like, don’t ye think?”
“Yus, that’s so,” said Amos. “They’ve got cl’ar right enough, or
we’d ha’ heerd the painted demons a-screechin’ with joy. Strange,
though, none of the riptiles seem to be coming off arter _us_. How’s
that?”
“I should say the sergeant’s straight shooting is the deterrent,”
said Muriel, who spoke considerably better than her uncle and
cousins.
“H’m! P’raps,” growled her cousin, “but I don’t hear the ark
neither--nor see anythink of her.”
“You can hardly expect to see anythink of her in this darkness,”
said his father, adding no less anxiously, however, “I could wish it
weren’t quite so pesky dark now, so’s we might be able to look round
us and see if they’ve got cl’ar. How did you manage to get to the
‘castle,’ sergeant? And wot brought ye back ’ere again? Did ye lose
your way? Didn’t ye find Bill Seymour’s place, then?”
“No, I only escaped last night from the ambush by the skin of my
teeth, so to speak,” John Dick answered. “I had to run my hardest
through the woods to get away from the Indians, who followed me hard
and long. When they abandoned the chase I was lost, and dead beat; I
crawled in between two rocks and I didn’t wake until near sundown
to-day. Then I climbed a height, and saw the lake, and something
else I will tell you about later, and so returned here. I haven’t
been to the ‘castle,’ and your rescue was none of my planning. Who
are the boys you mentioned as having planned it, you thought, with
me? Who are those you hope are in the ark?”
“Who are them we hope are in the ark! Why, my other three sons,
Abel, Aaron and Abner,” replied the old squatter.
“But I saw them on the verandah of ‘Water Castle’ just before the
attack, along with your wife and your two daughters-in-law,” was
John Dick’s rather astonished remark, for surely, he thought, the
three ex-prisoners must likewise have seen the six on the verandah.
The police-sergeant’s astonishment was increased when his three
companions gave vent to subdued half-laughs and chuckles.
“You _thought you saw_ my three cousins on the verandah with my aunt
and cousins,” said Muriel, softly, “but really you only saw Aunt
Kate and Bella and Deborah, with three dressed-up dummies to
represent my cousins Abel, Aaron, and Abner. It is an old dodge that
we often resort to when we don’t want undesirable parties on the
lakeside to know exactly how many are at home in the ‘castle.’”
“I see. Well, well, I was completely taken in, as also it is evident
were all the redmen. A rare ruse, squatter! I congratulate you upon
it.”
“Oh, it worn’t my idea; it wor Muriel’s,” chuckled Old Alf. “But you
say you weren’t actin’ in partnership with my three lads?”
“No; or at least our partnership was quite accidental. I didn’t know
they were there, though it’s just on the cards that they may have
seen me on the other side of the glade, and have acted as they did,
knowing I would be bound to set you free if they succeeded in
drawing off the band in pursuit.”
“That’s more’n likely,” grunted Amos. “I wish I was sure, though,
that they had got away all right ag’in, in the ark.”
“How did you come to be captured by the Indians?” asked Dick.
“Before I made off into the woods last night, I saw you and your
sons had got clear of the ambush, Mr. Arnold.”
“It was all on account of Jenny, confound her,” replied the old man.
“She thought she might do the same as Hetty Hutter did in that
blamed story of ‘The Deerslayer,’ you know, that we all think so
much of, and got the idea of our water-abode out of. What does she
do but slip off just at dusk in one of the canoes to have a talk
with the Indians and try and bring ’em to see the evil of their
ways--make them abandon their wicked designs upon the ‘castle’ and
our lives, and go back peaceful, like lambs, ag’in to their
Reservation. Muriel spied her when she was more’n halfway ashore. We
could see the redskins’ campfire towards the southwest of the
‘castle,’ and the foolish child was making for it. O’ course some of
us had to follow her, at once, and stop her; and so, Amos and Muriel
and me, we jumped into another canoe and started arter her for all
we were worth.”
“My three brothers were to follow in the ark if we didn’t overtake
her,” Amos took up the narrative. “We didn’t; she was too near the
bank. But we were close behind her when she landed, almost right on
her, and so we all three risked jumping ashore and chasing after her
into the bushes, when we was immediately pounced upon and made
prisoners of by Howling Wolf and a good score or more of his bucks,
who had seen us a-chasin’ of her, and hurried along the bank to
ambush us, which they did neat enough, cuss ’em.”
They had nearly reached the palisading around “Water Castle,” and
Muriel and the old man now hailed Aunt Kate and Jenny, who were
standing together in the doorway of the house. The girl’s mother
seemed to be abusing her roundly for what she had done. As Muriel
hailed her aunt, the old woman pushed Jenny angrily inside the
house, and called back anxiously to know if they were all there and
unhurt.
“We are all here--all, that is, ’cept Abel, Aaron, and Abner,
mother,” answered Old Alf, “and nary a one of us ’as as much as a
scratch. The ark will be along presently, I’ve no doubt. The lads
worked it fine, though it couldn’t ha’ bin worked so well, and we
mightn’t ha’ got cl’ar, if it hadn’t bin for Sergeant Dick here.”
“He’s come back ag’in, and he come just in the nick o’ time whar we
was consarned--jist in time to set us three free arter the boys had
drawn the redskins off. But you saw it all, like as not, from ’ere
in the light o’ the fire they’d lit, so’s ye might--the painted
varmints.”
“Yus, yus, the gals and I seen it all from ’ere, but we didn’t
recognize the sergeant; we thought it must be Abner. The light was
so bad, and it was too far off. Ye’re doubly welcome this time,
sergeant, arter what father’s just told me.”
They had passed through the gate in the palisading, which Jenny had
left open for them; and they in their turn also left it open in the
hope of the ark’s speedy arrival. Paddling up to the verandah, Dick
was giving his hand to Muriel, to help her to step on to the little
landing-ladder, when her aunt and uncle and Amos simultaneously
cried out in tones of relief and satisfaction:
“Hooray! Here’s the ark. They got clear all right. Abel, Aaron,
Abner, are you all right?”
Sergeant Dick followed Muriel quickly on to the ladder, and up it on
to the verandah. He turned then and saw the ark working in through
the stockade-gate in rather a clumsy way.
Three dark forms in cowboy hats and long great-coats could be dimly
seen warping the craft in behind the cabin.
No answer was returned from the ark, however, to the anxious
inquiries of the squatter and his wife, who now called out again to
know if all three aboard were quite all right.
Again no answer was vouchsafed, but the ark, having cleared the
gateway, came shooting swiftly, still propelled by its sail,
straight for the verandah.