CHAPTER XIII--SERGEANT DICK’S DETERMINATION

The Indians howled with baffled fury and concentrated their fire upon the open window of the “castle.” Several of their bullets actually frayed the rope, while others entered the open window.

But Abel and Aaron’s wives rushed in, and, from the other, shuttered, windows looking on to the verandah, opened a dropping fire upon the discomforted redmen. In less time almost than it takes to tell it, the near end of the ark bumped against the verandah, and the craft was safe.

Hurriedly making fast the rope in the “castle” and the ark, the occupants of both were able to man their loopholes again in full strength. They fired into the besiegers with such effect that these saw the hopelessness of continuing the struggle and broke and paddled away for dear life out of the radius of the light.

“We’ll have our horses back. If we are sharp we can manage it,” roared the squatter inside the ark. “Quick! Amos, Abner, sergeant, let us get up the sail.”

“No, no, uncle, you’ll be captured--you’ll all go to your certain capture or death!” screamed Muriel, inside the “castle.”

“Not us!” cried Amos. “The Injins air all running like sheep. We’ll chase ’em. The burnin’ stable will give us all the light we need.”

“It would be the height of folly, squatter,” said Sergeant Dick quietly. “Out in the open lake and darkness the canoes would be buzzing round you immediately, like wasps around a jampot. Besides, do you think for a moment the Indians would let you recover the horses _alive_? No, they would cut the animals’ throats if they had to abandon them. And, look at the distance the rafts are from us, and how near to the shore. We couldn’t possibly do it, fast as I know the scow sails, with the delay in opening and warping out through your dock-gate.”

“You hold your tongue until you are asked for your advice, me bold policeman,” snarled Abner.

“All the same it would be downright, dod-rotted madness, Alf, and you’ll do no such thing!” bawled the squatter’s wife. “Let the ’osses go. They’re not wu’th my brave lads’ lives, if you don’t vally your own. Ain’t you got the sense to know when to come in out of the rain?”

That settled it.

Old Man Arnold grinned a little sheepishly at Sergeant Dick, then faced sharply upon his son Abner.

“You hold _your_ tongue, me lad, and l’arn a little more respec’ for a man who’s proved hisself to be a man all through this ’ere night. Never you mind him, sergeant. He allus had a spiteful tongue. Don’t know why ’zactly. Didn’t get it from me, anyways, though he mout from the old ’ooman.”

The redmen were now in full retreat on all sides, and the majority of them were already swallowed up in the inky shadows surrounding the circle of light still feebly cast by the almost burnt-out tar-barrel.

Without fear of being shot at, therefore, Sergeant Dick, the squatter, and Amos and Abner emerged from the open door of the ark, and followed each other on to the verandah of the “castle,” to the accompaniment of sounds of the door of this being hastily unbarred and unbolted.

Jenny was the first to rush forth, and greet her father and brothers. She threw herself, sobbing and laughing together hysterically, into the old man’s arms, while her cousin Muriel advanced to the young police officer, and said:

“Sergeant, on behalf of my uncle and aunt and cousins, as well as myself, I thank you sincerely for the excellent help you gave us. I am sure we are all very grateful to you.”

“What did he do more’n the rest of us?” asked Abner. “Wasn’t it for his own life as much as yourn or anybody else’s, he was fightin’. He on’y done wot we all done, and had to do.”

“You are ungenerous, Abner. At least have the decency to hold your tongue if you can’t be grateful for the excellent service our guest rendered us, and remember that he is our guest.”

“Hoity-toity, gal! Can’t the lad speak in his own ’ome? Since when did you put up to l’arn my sons manners?”

This from the aunt and mother.

“That’ll do--that’ll do, Kate! The gal was quite right, and Abner’s an ungrateful young pup as wants l’arnin’ different. Come, let’s git indoors. Mother, and you, gals, put the pot on, and let’s have somethink to eat, and give us somethink to drink while it’s a-cookin’. I’m that thirsty I could nigh drink the lake dry, and you must be the same, sergeant.”

Dick admitted that he was dry, but said that a glass of water would serve him. Whereupon Muriel at once rushed off and brought him one, to the scowling and muttered resentment of Abner.

The old woman promptly put a big pot on an oilstove, and Muriel and she proceeded to lay the table, while her husband and sons, throwing themselves into chairs, were served with tin mugs of whisky by Jenny and the two daughters-in-law, Bella and Deborah.

Occasionally one of the young men would rise and look out through a loophole in front or at the side, to see that all was well without; and while they drank and filled and smoked their pipes, they agreed that it was most unlikely that the rebellious Indians would renew the attack upon them.

“They’ve had their bellyful of fightin’ with us, there’s no doubt aboot that,” guffawed Abel, the eldest brother. “They’ve gone off right enough; they’ll not show up here again in a ’urry, though I ’spects they’ll carry on their devilish games elsewheres--range all over the country, raisin’ Cain. But that don’t matter a red cent to us s’long as they leaves us alone.”

“It matters a lot to me, though,” said Sergeant Dick. “As one of the custodians of law and order in the country, my duty demands that I delay no longer here, but hurry at once back to the nearest police-station, an’ put myself at the disposal of my superiors--assist them in whatever measure they see fit to take to cope with this revolt.”

“You must stay the night with us, sergeant,” said the old squatter. “Don’t go and say later on as ’ow we druv you away. You mustn’t take no heed of that surly young pup, Abner, there.”

“No, I don’t think I ought to wait until morning. It makes my blood run cold when I think of the atrocities these rebel braves may be guilty of all over the defenseless country while I am snug and safe here. I couldn’t sleep comfortably in my bed, Mr. Arnold. My plain duty is to get away back to my fellow-troopers, and help in checking these redskin raiders--putting a stop to their wild work. And so you must really excuse me for apparently running away from you and not availing myself of your kind invitation. I will partake of your hospitality, however, so far as to remain until after supper, for I am just about famished, and it’s no use starting out on the back-trail faint with hunger. But, after that, I will trouble one or more of your sons”--he purposely did not look at Abner--“to put me ashore somewhere, on the north shore preferably, when I will make the best of my way on shank’s pony to Lonewater, the nearest of our stations about here, I believe.”

“Please yourself, sergeant,” responded the old man, “but, harkee! You needn’t go on foot. There’s an old fellow lives wi’ his wife, and no ’un else, back of the cliffs wot the echo comes from on this lake. You heerd the echo, no doubt?”

“I did.”

“Waal, this old chap--name of Seymour--is an old shepherd on the big sheep ranch that stretches for miles on miles t’other side of them cliffs--the Lonewater Ranch it’s known as; and he keeps a couple of horses allus for gallopin’ round looking arter stray sheep, and if you tells him or his missus you comes from me they’ll let you have one of the nags ’ithout a word.”

He was frowning in a strange, deprecatory way at his four sons, who had all looked quickly and suspiciously at him and one another when he first mentioned about the shepherd.

Abel, Aaron, and Amos nodded back at him, plainly reassured. But Abner shrugged a shoulder and turned away, the gesture signifying, as plain as plain could be, in the vernacular of the country, “Oh, the old man’s fair dotty, and, as for me, I give him up as hopeless.”

Sergeant Dick did not fail to notice these strange looks and signs passing between the father and sons. It was his business to be observant, to keep his eyes about him and notice such little things. But he could not understand the meaning of them, the reason for them, and was considerably puzzled.

He feigned, however, not to notice anything, to be absorbed in the contemplation of the glass of milk which Muriel had insisted on his having.

He was to wonder afterwards why he was not sharper--why he did not tumble to the significance of this wireless telegraphy.

“Oh, thank you!” he said. “I shall be glad if you will direct me to this Seymour’s cabin. But possibly the poor old man and his wife have fallen victims to the Indians’ fury. The fiends are bound to scour the country all round, and murder every living soul they come across.”

“They’ll not get hold of old Bill Seymour or his missus. You can lay to that.”

Again his sons frowned and shook their heads at him, and he frowned back at them in a way that clearly meant, “Mind your own business, lads. I know what I’m doing.”

“I don’t mind a-tellin’ _you_, sergeant, that he’s had his cabin burnt over the heads of his missus and hisself afore now by redskins, and bad whites, an’ nary a ’air of either of ’em has been singed. And for why? Waal, as I said I don’t mind a-tellin’ _you_, but it mustn’t go no further, mind. Acause the cabin’s abuilt close by the cliffs, not thirty yards from ’em, and he and his missus hev a hunderground passage that they dug out a-runnin’ from th’ ’ut to a hidden cave in the rocks--a cave that the redmen wouldn’t find if they s’arched for donkeys’ years.”

His sons on this, exchanged nods that implied, like Abner’s shrug, that their father was clean crazy thus to give away Seymour’s secret. Aaron jumped up quickly and noisily, and shouted, clearly in order to put a stop to the old man’s confidences:

“Come on, mother, Deb, Bella, Muriel, Jenny! What are you all so long about? Let’s have something to eat for goodness’ sake. I’m just starved. Hurry up, do!”