The Young Trailers Part 12

lick them fellers."

"And save our salt," added the master.

"Of course," said Ross emphatically. "We didn't come all these miles an'

work all these days just to lose what we went so far after an' worked so hard for."

They retreated rapidly upon the great jutting peninsula of rocky soil, which fortunately was covered with a good growth of trees, and tethered the horses in a thick grove near the end.

"Now, we'll just unload our salt an' make a wall," said Ross with a trace of a smile. "They can shoot our salt as much as they please, just so they don't touch us."

The bags of salt were laid in the most exposed place across the narrowest neck of the peninsula and they also dragged up all the fallen tree trunks and boughs that they could find to help out their primitive fortification. Then they sat down to wait, a hard task for men, but hardest of all for two boys like Henry and Paul.

Two of the men went back with the horses to watch over them and also to guard against any possible attempt to scale the cliff in their rear, but the others lay close behind the wall of salt and brushwood. The sun swung up toward the zenith and shone down upon a beautiful world. All the wilderness was touched with the tender young green of spring and nothing stirred but the gentle wind. The silky blue sky smiled over a scene so often enacted in early Kentucky, that great border battle ground of the white man and the red, the one driven by the desire for new and fertile acres that he might plow and call his own, the other by an equally fierce desire to retain the same acres, not to plow nor even to call his own, but that he might roam and hunt big game over them at will.

The great red eye of the sun, poised now in the center of the heavens, looked down at the white men crouched close to the earth behind their low and primitive wall, and then it looked into the forest at the red men creeping silently from tree to tree, all the eager ferocity of the man hunt on the face of everyone.

But Paul and Henry, behind their wall, saw nothing and heard nothing but the breathing of those near them. They fingered their rifles and through the crevices between the bags studied intently the woods in front of them, where they beheld no human being nor any trace of a foe. Henry looked from tree to tree, but he could see no flitting shadow. Where the patches of gra.s.s grew it moved only with the regular sweep of the breeze. He began to think that Ross and Sol must be mistaken. The warriors had abandoned the pursuit. He glanced at Ross, who was not a dozen feet away, and the leader's face was so tense, so eager and so earnest that Henry ceased to doubt, the man's whole appearance indicated the knowledge of danger, present and terrible.

Even as Henry looked, Ross suddenly threw up his rifle, and, apparently without aim, pulled the trigger. A flash of fire leaped from the long slender muzzle of blue steel, there was a sharp report like the swift lash of a whip, and then a cry, so terrible that Henry, strong as he was, shuddered in every nerve and muscle. The short high-pitched and agonizing shout died away in a wail and after it came silence, grim, deadly, but so charged with mysterious suspense that both Henry and Paul felt the hair lifting itself upon their heads. Henry had seen nothing, but he knew well what had happened.

"They've come and Ross has killed one of 'em," he whispered breathlessly to Paul.

"That yell couldn't mean anything else," said Paul trembling. "I'll hear it again every night for a year."

"I hope we'll both have a chance to hear it again every night for a year," said Henry with meaning.

The master crouched nearer to the boys. He was one of the bravest of the men and in that hour of danger and suspense his heart yearned over these two lads, his pupils, each a good boy in his own way. He felt that it was a part of his duty to get them safely back to Wareville and their parents, and he meant to fulfill the demands of his conscience.

"Keep down, lads," he said, touching Henry on his arm, "don't expose yourselves. You are not called upon to do anything, unless it comes to the last resort."

"We are going to do our best, of course, we are!" replied Henry with some little heat.

He resented the intimation that he could not perform a man's full duty, and Mr. Pennypacker, seeing that his feelings were touched, said no more.

A foreboding silence followed the death cry of the fallen warrior, but the brilliant sunshine poured down on the woods, just as if it were a glorious summer afternoon with no thought of strife in a human breast anywhere. Henry again searched the forest in front of them, and, although he could see nothing, he was not deceived now by this appearance of silence and peace. He knew that their foes were there, more thirsty than ever for their blood, because to the natural desire now was added the tally of revenge.

More than an hour pa.s.sed, and then the forest in front of them burst into life. Rifles were fired from many points, the sharp crack blending into one continuous ominous rattle; little puffs of white smoke arose, whistling bullets buried themselves with a sighing sound in the bags of salt, and high above all rang the fierce yell, the war whoop of the Shawnees, the last sound that many a Kentucky pioneer ever heard.

The terrible tumult, and above all, the fierce cry of the warriors sent a thrill of terror through Paul and Henry, but their disciplined minds held their bodies firm, and they remained crouched by the primitive breastwork, ready to do their part.

"Steady, everybody! Steady!" exclaimed Ross in a loud sharp voice, every syllable of which cut through the tumult. "Don't shoot until you see something to shoot at, an' then make your aim true!"

Henry now began to see through the smoke dusky figures leaping from tree to tree, but always coming toward them. It was his impulse to fire, the moment a flitting figure appeared, gone the next instant like a shadow, but remembering Ross's caution and their terrible need he restrained himself although his finger already lay caressingly on the trigger.

Around him the rifles had begun to crack. Ross and Sol were firing with slow deliberate aim, and then reloading with incredible swiftness, and down the line the others were doing likewise. Bullets were spattering into trunks and boughs, or burying themselves with a soft sigh in the salt, but Henry could not see that anybody was yet hurt.

He saw presently a dark figure pa.s.sing from one tree to another and the pa.s.sage was long enough for him to take a good aim at a hideously painted breast. He pulled the trigger and then involuntarily he shut his eyes--he was a hunter, but he had never hunted men before. When he looked again he saw a blur upon the ground, and despite himself and the fight for life, he shuddered. Paul beside him was now in a state of wild excitement. The smaller boy's nerves were not so steady and he was loading and firing almost at random. Finally he lifted himself almost unconsciously to his full height, but he was dragged down the next instant, as if he had been seized from below by a bear.

"Paul!" fiercely exclaimed the schoolmaster, all the instincts of a pedagogue rising within him, "if you jump up that way again exposing yourself to their bullets, I'll turn you over my knee right here, big as you are, and give you a licking that you'll remember all your life!"

The master was savagely in earnest and Paul did not jump up again. Henry fired once more, and a third time and the tumult rose to its height.

Then it ceased so suddenly and so absolutely that the silence was appalling. The wind blew the smoke away, a few dark objects lay close to the ground among the trees before them, but not a sound came from the forest, and no flitting form was there.

CHAPTER IX

THE ESCAPE

Henry and Paul, with their eyes at the crevices, stared and stared, but they saw only those dark, horrible forms lying close to the earth, and heard again the peaceful wind blowing among the peaceful trees. The savage army had melted away as if it had never been, and the dark objects might have been taken for stones or pieces of wood.

"We beat 'em off, an' n.o.body on our side has more'n a scratch,"

exclaimed Shif'less Sol jubilantly.

"That's so," said Ross, casting a critical eye down the line, "it's because we had a good position an' made ready. There's nothin' like takin' a thing in time. How're you, boys?"

"All right, but I've been pretty badly scared I can tell you," replied Paul frankly. "But we are not hurt, are we, Henry?"

"Thank G.o.d," murmured the schoolmaster under his breath, and then he said aloud to Ross: "I suppose they'll leave us alone now."

Ross shook his head.

"I wish I could say it," he replied, "but I can't. We've laid out four of 'em, good and cold, an' the Shawnees, like all the other redskins, haven't much stomach for a straightaway attack on people behind breastworks; I don't think they'll try that again, but they'll be up to new mischief soon. We must watch out now for tricks. Them's sly devils."

Ross was a wise leader and he gave food to his men, but he cautioned them to lie close at all times. Two or three bullets were fired from the forest but they whistled over their heads and did no damage. They seemed safe for the present, but Ross was troubled about the future, and particularly the coming of night, when they could not protect themselves so well, and the invaders, under cover of darkness, might slip forward at many points. Henry himself was man enough and experienced enough to understand the danger, and for the moment, he wondered with a kind of impersonal curiosity how Ross was going to meet it. Ross himself was staring at the heavens, and Henry, following his intent eyes, noticed a change in color and also that the atmosphere began to have a different feeling to his lungs. So much had he been engrossed by the battle, and so great had been his excitement, that such things as sky and air had no part then in his life, but now in the long dead silence, they obtruded themselves upon him.

The last wisp of smoke drifted away among the trees, and the sunlight, although it was mid-afternoon, was fading. Presently the skies were a vast dome of dull, lowering gray, and the breeze had a chill edge. Then the wind died and not a leaf or blade of gra.s.s in the forest stirred.

Somber clouds came over the brink of the horizon in the southwest, and crept threateningly up the great curve of the sky. The air steadily darkened, and suddenly the dim horizon in the far southwest was cut by a vivid flash of lightning. Low thunder grumbled over the distant hills.

"It's a storm, an' it's to be a whopper," said Shif'less Sol.

"Ay," returned Ross, who had been back among the horses, "an' it may save us. All you fellows be sure to keep your powder dry."

There would be little danger of that fatal catastrophe, the wetting of the powder, as it was carried in polished horns, stopped securely, nor would there be any danger either of the salt being melted, as it was inclosed in bags made of deerskin, which would shed water.

"One of the men," continued Ross, "has found a big gully running down the back end of the hill, an' I think if we're keerful we can lead the horses to the valley that way. But just now, we'll wait."

Henry and Paul were watching, as if fascinated. They had seen before the great storms that sometimes sweep the Mississippi Valley, but the one preparing now seemed to be charged with a deadly power, far surpa.s.sing anything in their experience. It came on, too, with terrible swiftness.

The thunder, at first a mere rumble, rose rapidly to crash after crash that stunned their ears. The livid flash of lightning that split the southwest like a flaming sword appeared and reappeared with such intensity that it seemed never to have gone. The wind rose and the forest groaned. From afar came a sullen roar, and then the great hurricane rushed down upon them.

"Lie flat!" shouted Ross.

All except four or five who held the struggling and frightened horses threw themselves upon the ground, and, although Henry and Paul hugged the earth, their ears were filled with the roar and scream of the wind, and the crackle of boughs and whole tree trunks snapped through, like the rattle of rifle fire. The forest in front of them was quickly filled with fallen trees, and fragments whistled over their heads, but fortunately they were untouched.

The great volley of wind was gone in a few moments, as if it were a single huge cannon shot. It whistled off to the eastward, but left in its path a trail of torn and fallen trees. Then in its path came the sweep of the great rain; the air grew darker, the thunder ceased to crash, the lightning died away, and the water poured down in sheets over the black and mangled forest.

"Now boys, we'll start," said Ross. "Them Shawnees had to hunt cover, an' they can't see us nohow. Up with them bags of salt!"