“Is that right?”

“Oh, say, I saw the fellow with his hand on the knife.”

“After we git the chap, we ’ll give them people a chance to tell what they know.”

Brant’s keenly attentive ears heard the far-off chug of numerous horses’ feet.

“I rather think you will,” he said, confidently, his voice ringing out with sudden authority.

He stepped back, lifted a silver whistle to his lips, and sounded one sharp, clear note.  There was a growing thunder of hoofs, a quick, manly cheer, a crashing through the underbrush, and a squad of eager troopers, half-dressed but with faces glowing in anticipation of trouble, came galloping up the slope, swinging out into line as they advanced, their carbines gleaming in the sunlight.  It was prettily, sharply performed, and their officer’s face brightened.

“Very nicely done, Watson,” he said to the expectant sergeant.  “Deploy your men to left and right, and clear out those shooters.  Make a good job of it, but no firing unless you have to.”

The troopers went at it as if they enjoyed the task, forcing their restive horses through the thickets, and roughly handling more than one who ventured to question their authority.  Yet the work was over in less time than it takes to tell, the discomfited regulators driven pell-mell down the hill and back into the town, the eager cavalrymen halting only at the command of the bugle.  Brant, confident of his first sergeant in such emergency, merely paused long enough to watch the men deploy, and then pressed straight up the hill, alone and on foot.  That danger to the besieged was yet imminent was very evident.  The black spiral of smoke had become an enveloping cloud, spreading rapidly in both directions from its original starting-point, and already he could distinguish the red glare of angry flames leaping beneath, fanned by the wind into great sheets of fire, and sweeping forward with incredible swiftness.  These might not succeed in reaching the imprisoned men, but the stifling vapor, the suffocating smoke held captive by that overhanging rock, would prove a most serious menace.

He encountered a number of men running down as he toiled anxiously forward, but they avoided him, no doubt already aware of the trouble below and warned by his uniform.  He arrived finally where the ground was charred black and covered with wood ashes, still hot under foot and smoking, but he pressed upward, sheltering his eyes with uplifted arm, and seeking passage where the scarcity of underbrush rendered the zone of fire less impassable.  On both sides trees were already wrapped in flame, yet he discovered a lane along which he stumbled until a fringe of burning bushes extended completely across it.  The heat was almost intolerable, the crackling of the ignited wood was like the reports of pistols, the dense pall of smoke was suffocating.  He could see scarcely three yards in advance, but to the rear the narrow lane of retreat remained open.  Standing there, as though in the mouth of a furnace, the red flames scorching his face, Brant hollowed his hands for a call.