Всего за 5.99 руб. Купить полную версию
As may be supposed, the Wyandot had not run half the intervening distance, when another blue puff, floating aside from the loophole, accompanied the report of a rifle. Jim Turner had fired at the approaching Wyandot, but he did it so hastily that he missed him altogether.
"Is there no way of stopping him?" muttered Sam Megill, hurriedly bringing his gun to bear and discharging it; but, astonishing as it may seem, he missed also.
Jo Stinger was hastily reloading his piece, determined that the daring red man should not escape him, when Ned Preston dashed through the door and was safe.
As the Colonel quickly shut and fastened the entrance, a heavy thud was heard. The Wyandot had hurled his tomahawk with such prodigious force at the vanishing fugitive that the blade was buried half way to its head, and the handle projecting outward, would have required a power like that of King Arthur to draw it forth.
CHAPTER IX WITHIN THE BLOCK-HOUSE
The momentum of his furious pursuit carried him almost against the door of the block-house and directly beneath the overhanging floor, built so as to allow the defenders to fire down on the heads of their assailants. The rapid shifting of position served to confuse the garrison to a certain extent, but the action of the Indian was incomprehensible.
Making a sharp turn to the left, he ran with astonishing swiftness along the front of the building and stockade, until he was half way to the north-western angle, around which he had only to dart to be beyond reach of any bullet; but he seemed to think all at once
that he had made a mistake. He stopped like a flash, turned with inconceivable quickness, and sped directly over the ground he had traversed, passing in front of the stockade and the block-house, his evident purpose being to reach the deserted cabin from which he had emerged in the first place.
As he was running with tremendous speed in front of the building, another gun was discharged at him, but he showed no sign of being harmed, and, without a second's hesitation, made for the cabin, where a brother brave awaited him.
"I consider that that 'ere beats all creation!" exclaimed Jo Stinger, aggravated over the repeated escapes of the daring redskin; "all I want is a chance to get a pop at him."
There was little time to spare, for the movements of the Wyandot proved him to be no ordinary athlete, and he was going for the open window of the cabin, like the wind.
Jo Stinger, by the utmost haste, beat him in the novel contest, and, thrusting his gun hastily through the loophole, aimed and fired with unusual nervousness.
"I struck him!" he exclaimed in great glee, as the warrior sprang in air, as if shot upward by a catapult.
"You haven't harmed a hair of his head!" laughed Jim Turner, who was peering through one of the loopholes; "it wasn't your bullet that made him jump."
"You're right," muttered the chagrined scout; "if I had another gun, I would break this one to pieces."
"It wasn't the fault of your rifle ," was the truthful remark of his companion.
At the very moment Jo Stinger took his hasty aim and fired his gun, the fleeing Wyandot was so near the cabin that he bounded upward from the ground and went through the door, as the performer in the circus bounds through the hoop covered with paper.
The bullet which so rarely missed its mark did so in this instance by a hair's-breadth; but under such circumstances, a miss was as good as a mile, and the courageous Wyandot plunged through the entrance without a scratch, or so much as the "smell of fire" about his garments.
He had played a most desperate game and won so brilliantly that the veteran Jo Stinger, while exasperated over his own failure, felt like cheering the exploit.
The safety of the brave seemed to be the signal for a general fire along the lines. The Wyandots began discharging their rifles from the wood beyond the stockade, north, east and south, while Deerfoot was somewhat alarmed to hear several shots from the river bank where he was crouching, and at no great distance from him.
A number crept up to the rear of the nearest cabin, into which they entered without much danger to themselves, and from the windows of which they discharged their pieces at the block-house. This seemed a useless expenditure of ammunition, but there was a chance or two of doing something. Some of the bullets sent from the woods and cabins might enter a loophole: a number did pass through the narrow windows and were buried in the heavy logs beyond.
Unless the inmates were specially careful, one or more of these invisible messengers would strike them, and it was this hope which led the assailants to keep up the desultory firing for more than an hour succeeding the remarkable incidents on the clearing.
The garrison did not throw away their ammunition: they kept a sharp lookout for signs of their enemies, and, when there was a chance of doing execution, they were quick to take advantage of it, but there was no shooting at random, as is too often the case, under similar circumstances.