CHAPTER XII--SAVED BY A WOMAN’S WIT

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.