The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp Part 25

Alberdina groaned, "Mein lieber Gott," and sank upon a couch with the expression of a condemned man about to be executed.

It was some moments after the whistle before the enemy made its next advance. That also was unexpected and terrifying,--loud knocks on the wooden shutters of the large entrance.

n.o.body moved or spoke. Again the knocks came and a voice called:

"We want that gal and her father. You ain't got no right to shelter criminals. Open in the name of the law. I reckon a sheriff will make you listen to reason."

"Break the door down, Lupo," said another voice. "The law's in its right to git what it wants. They ain't n.o.body that kin refuse the law without payin' for it."

Although they were so confident of the law, the girls felt sure the mention of a sheriff was a blind, and that the mountaineers were not going to do anything so incriminating as to break in the doors. Then there followed a period of consultation outside. Footsteps could be heard along the galleries; the stout shutters on all the openings were shaken and pounded upon; but Sunrise Camp was indeed as strong as a fortress when it was closed. Storms had beaten against it in vain, and unless the mob outside resorted to hatchets and saws, it would not be easy to break in.

At last the voice of Lupo spoke from the front gallery.

"Ladies, I'm only askin' justice. You got two dangerous people in this here house. The law wants 'em. We don't mean no harm to you an' we'll leave peaceable if you'll hand over the prisoners. I'm goin' to give you five minutes to decide in an' if you don't open the door, we're goin' to break it open with this here axe."

"You'll do nothing of the sort, Lupo," cried Miss Campbell, her voice ringing with indignation. "And I warn you that unless you wish to serve a long term in the penitentiary, you'd better leave this place at once with your friends. Mr. Campbell would never stop until he saw all of you well punished for this night's work. You've already broken into the house and robbed our maid----"

"Who said I did?" shouted Lupo. "It was Frenchy done that, too. He's a dangerous man to live in a peaceable place. We've been puttin' up with him and his daughter for too long, and we citizens ain't goin' to put up with 'em no longer. They gona' be punished first, and then they gona'

give up that there home that ain't theirs by rights and leave this here part of the country forever."

Miss Campbell decided not to reply to Lupo's outburst. It only excited him and it was evident her arguments had no effect.

And now, after what seemed an interminable time, the door resounded with the blows of a woodman's axe.

"Go up into the gallery, Phoebe," ordered Miss Campbell, trembling in spite of her determination not to be frightened.

Phoebe rose and walked to the middle of the room. Her face was transfigured and she looked almost unearthly.

"I am not afraid," she said. "I believe that I will be saved from my enemies. G.o.d is sending someone to save me."

But the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell had no such faith to bolster up their faltering courage. During the long, lonely evenings on the mountainside when Phoebe had read aloud to her father from the New Testament, which he seemed to like best, there had grown in her mind a belief as strong as it was simple. There had never been any people to shake her convictions with arguments, nor books to suggest doubts. And now in her soul she had called for help and she believed it would come even at the eleventh hour.

Billie, whose faith in prayer was not unmixed with a desire for action of a very vigorous and immediate variety, seized an old rifle hung from a nail on the wall. She had no idea whether there were any loads in it, but she had made up her mind to use the b.u.t.t-end on the first man who entered the room. In the meantime, the axe had crashed through one of the thick, hardwood panels, making a slit broad enough to see through.

"I'll shoot any man who comes into this room," called Billie. "Keep out."

An eye was placed at the hole in the door. Billie felt instinctively it was Lupo's.

"That there old rusty gun ain't got no loads in it, Miss. You kin shoot all you like."

There was another pause, and the blows began again. Alberdina gave evidence of wishing to speak, but Miss Campbell interrupted her.

"Never mind, Alberdina," she said impatiently. "You may go up into the gallery if you like. You are quite safe. They only want Miss Phoebe."

But Alberdina would not be silenced. Perhaps somewhere in the remote history of her ancestors there had been a warrior who had ranged the German forests dressed in the skins of wild beasts, his helmet decorated with a pair of fierce upstanding horns. Who knows but a drop of his fighting blood had come down through the generations to stir this sluggish descendant into action just at this particular moment when something had to be done?

"Come," she called, with unexpected energy. "I asg you, come. We will a high wall mag already. You will see. Hein?"

Again the axe crashed through the door and without a word they followed her into the gallery, Billie carrying the rifle and Elinor the breakfast horn. Alberdina hurried into the locker room and presently returned with a trunk hoisted on her shoulders. This she placed at the top of the stairs.

"Good," exclaimed Billie. "Why didn't we think of that before? It will keep them off for a little longer, at any rate."

Alberdina did not listen to these honeyed words of praise, however. She never paused until she had piled three trunks, one on top of the other in a very effective barricade. At the far end of the gallery, Elinor and Mary appeared to be very much occupied at a little window placed in the roof for ventilation, but now closed. Finding the bolt rusty, Elinor took off her slipper and broke a pane of gla.s.s. Mary, her lieutenant, then handed her the breakfast horn. It was like Elinor to wipe off the mouth piece carefully with her handkerchief before she placed it to her lips. But the blast she blew must have startled the mountaineers outside, for the blows on the door ceased for a moment. Again and again she signaled, always the same long agitated note.

"I think anybody would recognize that as a call for help," she said, pausing for breath; and while the axe crashed through the door, she continued to blow the bugle with all her strength.

Billie, however, felt fairly certain that a trunk barricade and a bugle blast for help would not keep off the savages long.

"We need some kind of ammunition, Nancy," she said. "If only this rifle was loaded."

"Did you look through the barrel?" asked Nancy, slightly more experienced with firearms than Billie. She seized the rifle and held it up before a lamp that Alberdina had set in a corner of the gallery, c.o.c.ked it and looked through with one eye professionally squinted.

"Why, it is loaded," she announced. "It only has two empty what do you call them--chambers?"

"Must I shoot at somebody?" asked Billie.

"You could try and I could try," answered Nancy, "but I don't think either one of us would hit an elephant."

Just then Miss Campbell put out the light. At the same moment the axe made a breach in the door and a man crawled through. Billie lifted the rifle and, taking a long breath, aimed at his foot. The man was looking about him in a bewildered way. It was the innkeeper, second leader of the gang. Billie pulled and pulled, but nothing happened, and in another moment a dozen mountaineers had crawled through the opening. The one lamp cast a small circle of light near the fire-place. The rest of the room was in darkness. In the gallery the anxious watchers were invisible to the band of men, but the watchers themselves could see the outlaws plainly now gathered in a group in the center of the room, rather uneasy after breaking down the door of Sunrise Camp.

"Ladies, I'd advise you to give up the prisoners," called Lupo, addressing the darkness. "We ain't goner touch none of you, but we wants them two furriners right away."

"Git some torches," ordered the innkeeper, who seemed really to be the boldest man in the lot.

Several men disappeared and in a moment returned with pitch torches which cast a lurid, flickering light through the room. It was a weird scene, looking down from the gallery. All of the men wore masks except Lupo and the innkeeper, who were boldly undisguised. They peered about the room. Suddenly Lupo's eye caught a corner of the staircase at the far end.

"They're upstairs. Come on, men," he called.

Billie raised the shotgun to her shoulder.

"I'll shoot the old thing off this time if it flies to pieces," she said, and pulled the trigger with all her might.

"Bang!" went the gun, and down she sat very hard, not knowing where she had aimed. There was a great confusion of voices below and she thought she heard someone cry out with pain.

"Could I have shot anyone?" she asked herself tremulously as she picked herself up from the floor. Her shoulder ached and her finger was bruised, but she put the gun into position again.

"I'll shoot any man who comes up those steps," she called.

The outlaws had gathered under the gallery now, holding their torches high and gazing with some curiosity at the women grouped above them.

Miss Campbell stood with her arm around Phoebe's waist. Elinor and Mary were still at the window. Nancy was with Billie, and Alberdina crouched behind the barricade.

Lupo fell back angrily.

"I guess you ain't got but one load in your old shotgun," he called.

"Come on, men. We'll make a run for it."

Billie turned the gun straight on him. She felt almost more afraid of the unwieldy thing than she did of the man himself.