Tom picked up the spare rifle.

“Davy,” said he, “you stay here beside Polly Ann, behind the oak.  You kin shoot with a rest; but don’t shoot,” said he, earnestly, “for God’s sake don’t shoot unless you’re sure to kill.”

I nodded.  For a moment he looked at the face of Polly Ann, sleeping peacefully, and the fierce light faded from his eyes.  He brushed her on the cheek and she awoke and smiled at him, trustfully, lovingly.  He put his finger to his lips.

“Stay with Davy,” he said.  Turning to me, he added:  “When you wake Weldon, wake him easy.  So.”  He put his hand in mine, and gradually tightened it.  “Wake him that way, and he won’t jump.”

Polly Ann asked no questions.  She looked at Tom, and her soul was in her face.  She seized the pistol from the blanket.  Then we watched him creeping down the creek on his belly, close to the bank.  Next we moved behind the fallen tree, and I put my hand in Weldon’s.  He woke with a sigh, started, but we drew him down behind the log.  Presently he climbed cautiously up the bank and took station in the muddy roots of the tree.  Then we waited, watching Tom with a prayer in our hearts.  Those who have not felt it know not the fearfulness of waiting for an Indian attack.

At last Tom reached the bend in the bank, beside some red-bud bushes, and there he stayed.  A level shaft of light shot through the forest.  The birds, twittering, awoke.  A great hawk soared high in the blue over our heads.  An hour passed.  I had sighted the rifle among the yellow leaves of the fallen oak an hundred times.  But Polly Ann looked not once to the right or left.  Her eyes and her prayers followed the form of her husband.

Then, like the cracking of a great drover’s whip, a shot rang out in the stillness, and my hands tightened over the rifle-stock.  A piece of bark struck me in the face, and a dead leaf fluttered to the ground.  Almost instantly there was another shot, and a blue wisp of smoke rose from the red-bud bushes, where Tom was.  The horses whinnied, there was a rustle in the cane, and silence.  Weldon bent over.

“My God!” he whispered hoarsely, “he hit one.  Tom hit one.”

I felt Polly Ann’s hand on my face.

“Davy dear,” she said, “are ye hurt?”

“No,” said I, dazed, and wondering why Weldon had not been shot long ago as he slumbered.  I was burning to climb the bank and ask him whether he had seen the Indian fall.

Again there was silence,—­a silence even more awful than before.  The sun crept higher, the magic of his rays turning the creek from black to crystal, and the birds began to sing again.  And still there was no sign of the treacherous enemy that lurked about us.  Could Tom get back?  I glanced at Polly Ann.  The same question was written in her yearning eyes, staring at the spot where the gray of his hunting shirt showed through the bushes at the bend.  Suddenly her hand tightened on mine.  The hunting shirt was gone!