The Lost Wagon Part 61

"Of course I'm all right!" Martha's eyes were blazing too. "I'm not going to faint on you or anything like that! Oh, I'm so glad I could bring my hen along!"

"Well, you just come right in the house! We have everything we need there and the men will be along!"

Winterson, Joe and Ellis unhitched the team and led them to the stable.

The black horse followed and crowded in as soon as the door was open.

They put the mules in one stall and two horses in each of the others.

Ellis filled the mangers with hay and Joe turned to Winterson.

"What happened?"

"They came at dawn!" Winterson said savagely. "The hen started cackling and woke me up! I saw this one looking in the window and threw the first thing I could lay my hands on at him! Happened to be the chamber pot!

Time I got my hands on my rifle, he was gone! I took Martha with me, and time we got harnessed there were more of the skunks in the woods! They nicked me in the arm and we were gone!"

"Did they have horses?"

"Probably they had some somewhere! I suppose they left them back in the woods when they came to get us! Yes, there must have been horses! These Indians are too blasted lazy to walk anywhere! I got off one shot, but think I missed!"

"How many are there?"

"I saw anyhow six, but there are more than that! Blasted mongrels probably wouldn't fight at all unless they were anyhow fifteen to one!

Wish I'd had another rifle! I--There's three of us now! Let's go back and tear into them!"

Joe said gently, "Leave the women and kids here unprotected?"

"You're right! Guess you're right! It's just that I'm so lashing mad I'd do about anything! I'm never going to like an Indian again if I live to be five hundred years old!"

"They burned your buildings. I saw the smoke."

"That's probably why they weren't hot on our trail; they were too busy looting! I suppose they got my cow and pigs too, but I saved the horses and Martha got her hen out. That's some hen! I wouldn't swap her for a farm!"

"Better come up and get a dressing on that arm."

"Just a scratch," Winterson a.s.sured him. "It doesn't amount to anything.

What are we going to do now? Send somebody to Camp Axton to bring the soldiers?"

"Too dangerous," Joe decided. "One man alone could be ambushed and we have four rifles now. We'd better figure on making a stand right here."

"Who's the fourth rifle?"

"Tad, and he'll be a good one. That kid can shoot the whiskers off a cat at a hundred yards. Did you bring plenty of bullets?"

"Just what's in my pouch. We didn't have time to grab as much as we'd have liked."

"Well, we have lead and molds. We can rig a mold to fit your rifle.

Let's go in before the womenfolk decide we've all been scalped."

Still more angry than frightened, Martha Winterson had taken Carlyle on her lap and was relating the story of the raid. Barbara and Emma listened closely, while the three younger children stood silently near.

Too young to appreciate exactly what had happened, they knew it was something out of the ordinary and they digested it as such. A look of eager excitement on his face, Tad was sitting in front of the fireplace melting lead in a ladle and molding bullets for his rifle.

"That's enough," Joe ordered. "Leave some lead for the rest of us."

"But what if there's a whole mob of them?"

"Everybody still has to shoot."

Martha rose and, despite her swollen body, there was a supple grace about her as she moved across the floor to her husband.

"Now I'll fix that arm, Henry," her voice was faintly apologetic. "There wasn't time to do it before."

She unb.u.t.toned his shirt, removed it, and bared the b.l.o.o.d.y arm. The bullet had torn through one side, missing the big muscle and the artery, and leaving only a flesh wound. Martha washed the dried blood away and put a cold compress over the still-bleeding wound.

"Would you have some whisky?" she appealed to Joe. "This should really be sterilized."

"Don't have a drop," Joe admitted. "I didn't bring any."

"I did," Emma announced. She reached into her trunk, brought out a brown bottle, and glanced aside at Joe. "I brought it for emergencies only."

"Thank you, Emma." Martha Winterson pursed her lips, dampened one side of her cloth with whisky, and said, "Now this may sting a little."

While her husband gritted his teeth and made a face, she applied the antiseptic. "The bullet wasn't that bad!"

"Now don't be a baby," Martha chided. "You won't feel it in a little while."

"Probably won't be able to feel anything," he grumbled.

Martha applied a clean bandage and Henry put his shirt back on. He wandered restlessly to look out of a front window. Anger flared in his face. Henry Winterson cherished his house. n.o.body was going to destroy it and go unpunished.

"Wish they'd come," he said nervously. "Wish they would. The day I left Vermont my brother Enos said, 'Henry, what are you going to do if Indians attack?' Those were his very words. That's exactly what he said to me. 'If the Indians attack,' I said, 'I'm going to shoot them dead in their tracks.' And by gosh, I didn't. But I aim to."

Joe said worriedly, "You might get a chance soon enough."

This was not real, he thought curiously. It was a charade that all of them were acting out, and as soon as they were finished acting the Wintersons would hitch their horses and go home. Jim Snedeker might have waited in a house such as this one while Indians prepared to attack it, but such things did not happen to Joe Tower. Then he reminded himself forcibly that they were happening to Joe Tower. A cold shiver ran through him.

"Hey, Pa!" Tad breathed. "Look at Mike!"

The dog was standing very still, ears alert and nose questing. He moved a step, as though to verify some elusive message that was reaching him faintly. His hackles rose and a low growl rumbled in his throat. He was looking toward the rear of the house, and when a door was opened for him he padded into a back bedroom. At the same time they heard the crack of a rifle and a sodden "splat" as a bullet thumped into an outer log.

Joe's fear and nervousness departed and he knew only a terrible, white-hot anger. This was his house. He had built it with his own hands and now it was threatened. At all costs he must avert that peril. No enemy could enter. Rifle ready, Joe peered through one of the rear windows.

He could see nothing except the mowed swath, the tall gra.s.s beyond, and the green trees on top of the hill. It was as though a real bullet had been fired by a ghost. Then the tall gra.s.s rippled slightly. Winterson leveled his rifle through another window, shot, and the gra.s.s stopped rippling.

"What'd you shoot at?" Joe queried.

"I didn't see any Indian," Winterson a.s.sured him, "but you don't see the critters. Still, that gra.s.s wasn't moving itself."

"Think you got him?"

"Nah," Winterson said sadly. "I don't think so. We'll--"