CHAPTER XVIII--BACK AT “WATER CASTLE”

“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.