CHAPTER V

THE FLIGHT

Paul was half reclining against the wall, when he suddenly saw Henry look up.  Paul’s eyes followed his comrade’s, and then he heard a soft, faint sound over their heads.  He understood at once.  Danger had come from a new quarter.  The Shawnees were upon the board roof, through which a rifle bullet could easily pass.  The menace was serious, but the men up there could not see their targets below, and they themselves were in a precarious position.

Henry once pointed his rifle toward a portion of the roof from which a slight sound came, but for a reason that he did not give he withheld his fire.  Then came a dead stillness, to be broken a few moments later by fierce war cries all around the cabin and a crash of rapid shots.  It seemed to Paul that an attack in great force was being made from every side, and, thrusting his rifle through the loophole, he fired quickly at what he took to be the flitting form of a foe.  The next moment he became aware of a terrible struggle in the cabin itself.  He heard a thud, the roar of a rifle shot within the confined space, a fall, and then, in the half darkness, he saw two powerful figures writhing to and fro.  One was Henry and the other a mighty Shawnee warrior, naked to the waist, and striving to use a tomahawk that he held in a hand whose wrist was clenched in the iron grasp of his foe.  Lying almost at their feet was the body of another warrior, stark and dead.

Paul sprang forward, his second and loaded rifle in his hand.

“No, no, Paul!” cried Henry.  “The chimney!  Look to the chimney!”

Paul whirled about, and he was just in time.  A savage warrior dropped down the great wide chimney that all the log cabins had, and fell lightly on his feet among the dead embers of a month ago.  His face was distorted horribly with ferocity, and Paul, all the rage of battle upon him now that battle had come, fired squarely at the red forehead, the rifle muzzle only three feet away.  The savage fell back and lay still among the cinders.  The next instant the deep, long-drawn sigh of a life departing came from behind, and Paul whirled about again, his heart full of sickening fear.

But it was Henry who stood erect.  He had wrenched the warrior’s own tomahawk from him, and had slain him with it.  His face was flushed with a victorious glow, but he stood there only a moment.  Then he seized his own second and loaded rifle, and ran to the chimney.  But nothing more came down it, and there were no more sounds of warriors walking on the roof.  The three who had come had been daring men, but they had paid the price.  The shots and shouts around continued for a little space, forms dashed heavily against the door, and then, as suddenly as it began, the tumult ceased.

Paul felt a chill of horror creeping through his bones.  It was all so ghastly.  The dead warriors lay, each upon his back, one among the dead coals, and Paul could hear nothing but his own and Henry’s heavy breathing.