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"I knows what it am," said Blossom Brown, who had been drawn to the spot by the firing and the words he had overheard.
"You do, eh?" remarked the Colonel, looking toward him in the darkness; "what is it?"
"Dey're comin' to steal de well."
"What will they do with it, after they steal it?"
"Take it off in de woods and hide it, I s'pose."
"They won't have any trouble in preventing us from stealing it, that is certain," observed the Colonel, bitterly.
"Why can't we dig the well inside the block-house, as you intended?" asked Ned; "there are shovels, spades and picks, and I don't suppose it would take us a great while."
"If we are driven to it, we will make the attempt; but there is no likelihood that we will have a chance. All our attention will be required by the Indians."
"You can set Blossom to work if you wish to," said Ned Preston; "he is good for little except to cut wood and dig. If he worked steadily for two or three days, he might reach water."
Ned was in earnest with this proposition, and he volunteered to take his turn with his servant and the others; but the scheme filled Blossom with dismay.
"I neber dugged a well," he said, with a contemptuous sniff; "if I should undertook it, de well would cave in on me, and den all you folks would hab to stop fightin' de Injines and go to diggin' me out agin."
Colonel Preston did not consider the project feasible just then, and Blossom Brown was relieved from an anticipation which was anything but pleasant.
Jo Stinger was attentively watching the stockade where the figures of the Wyandot warriors were faintly seen. He was greatly mystified to understand what their object could be in exposing themselves to such risk, when, so far as he could judge, there was nothing to be gained by so doing; but none knew better than did the veteran that, brave as were these red men, they were not the ones to face a danger without the reasonable certainty of acquiring some advantage over an enemy.
"I will risk a shot anyway," he thought; "for, though I can't make much of an aim, there is a chance of doing something. As soon as the moon comes out, I will see how the varmints will stand a bullet or two."
So he waited "till the clouds rolled by," but, as he feared, the straining eye could not catch the faintest suggestion of a warrior, where several were visible only a short time before.
They had vanished as silently as the shadows of the clouds swept across the clearing.
The action of the Indians in this respect was the cause of all kinds of conjectures and theories, none of the garrison being able to offer one that satisfied the others.
Megill believed it was a diversion intended to cover up some design in another direction. He was sure that, when the Wyandots made a demonstration, it would come from some other point altogether. He, therefore, gave his attention mainly to the cabins and the clearing in front.
Turner suspected they meant to destroy the well by filling it up, so that it would be useless when the supply of water within the block-house should become exhausted. Precisely how this filling up was to be done, and wherein the necessity existed (since the Wyandots could command the approaches to the water day and night), were beyond the explanation of the settler.
Jo Stinger, the veteran of the company, scouted these theories, as he did that of the Colonel that it was a mere reconnoissance, but he would not venture any guess further than that the mischief was much deeper than any believed, and that never was there more necessity of the most unremitting vigilance.
Megill asserted that some scheme was brewing in the cabin from which the two warriors emerged, when they sought to cut off the boys in their run to the block-house. He had seen lights moving about, though the
ones who carried the torches took care not to expose themselves to any shot from the station.
The silence lasted two hours longer without the slightest evidence that a living person was within a mile of the block-house. During that period, not a glimmer of a light could be detected in the cabin, there was not a single burning arrow, nor did so much as a war-whoop or signal pass the lips of one of the Wyandots.
The keen eyes of Jo Stinger and Ned Preston failed to catch a glimpse of the shadowy figures at which they discharged their rifles, and which caused them so much wonderment and speculation.
But the keen scrutiny that seized every favoring moment and roamed along the lines of stockades, further than the ordinary eye could follow, discovered a thing or two which were not without their significance.
On the northern and eastern sides a number of pickets had been removed, leaving several gaps wide enough to admit the passage of a person. This required a great deal of hard work, for the pickets had been driven deep into the earth and were well secured and braced from the inside.
"They needed men on both sides of the stockade to do that," said Colonel Preston, "and those whom we saw, climbed over, so as to give assistance."