Betty Zane, Zane Grey [top 10 books to read txt] 📗

band of schoolgirls at a May party. They wrestled with and hugged one another; they hopped, skipped and jumped, and in every possible way manifested their fiendish joy.

The British took no part in this revelry. To their credit it must be said they kept in the background as though ashamed of this horrible fire-war on people of their own blood.

“Why don’t they fire the cannon?” impatiently said Col. Zane. “Why don’t they do something?”

“Perhaps it is disabled, or maybe they are short of ammunition,” suggested Jonathan.

“The blockhouse will burn down before our eyes. Look! The hellhounds have set fire to the fence. I see men running and throwing water.”

“I see something on the roof of the blockhouse,” cried Jonathan. “There, down towards the east end of the roof and in the shadow of the chimney. And as I’m a living sinner it’s a man crawling towards that blazing arrow. The Indians have not discovered him yet. He is still in the shadow. But they’ll see him. God! What a nervy thing to do in the face of all those redskins. It is almost certain death!”

“Yes, and they see him,” said the Colonel.

With shrill yells the Indians bounded forward and aimed and fired their rifles at the crouching figure of the man. Some hid behind the logs they had rolled toward the Fort; others boldly faced the steady fire now pouring from the portholes. The savages saw in the movement of that man an attempt to defeat their long-cherished hope of burning the Fort. Seeing he was discovered, the man did not hesitate, nor did he lose a second. Swiftly he jumped and ran toward the end of the roof where the burning arrow, now surrounded by blazing shingles, was sticking in the roof. How he ever ran along that slanting roof and with a pail in his hand was incomprehensible. In moments like that men become superhuman. It all happened in an instant. He reached the arrow, kicked it over the wall, and then dashed the bucket of water on the blazing shingles. In that single instant, wherein his tall form was outlined against the bright light behind him, he presented the fairest kind of a mark for the Indians. Scores of rifles were leveled and discharged at him. The bullets pattered like hail on the roof of the blockhouse, but apparently none found their mark, for the man ran back and disappeared.

“It was Clarke!” exclaimed Col. Zane. “No one but Clarke has such light hair. Wasn’t that a plucky thing?”

“It has saved the blockhouse for tonight,” answered Jonathan. “See, the Indians are falling back. They can’t stand in the face of that shooting. Hurrah! Look at them fall! It could not have happened better. The light from the cabin will prevent any more close attacks for an hour and daylight is near.”

XIV

The sun rose red. Its ruddy rays peeped over the eastern hills, kissed the treetops, glinted along the stony bluffs, and chased away the gloom of night from the valley. Its warm gleams penetrated the portholes of the Fort and cast long bright shadows on the walls; but it brought little cheer to the sleepless and almost exhausted defenders. It brought to many of the settlers the familiar old sailor’s maxim: “Redness ’a the morning, sailor’s warning.” Rising in its crimson glory the sun flooded the valley, dyeing the river, the leaves, the grass, the stones, tingeing everything with that awful color which stained the stairs, the benches, the floor, even the portholes of the blockhouse.

Historians call this the time that tried men’s souls. If it tried the men think what it must have been to those grand, heroic women. Though they had helped the men load and fire nearly forty-eight hours; though they had worked without a moment’s rest and were now ready to succumb to exhaustion; though the long room was full of stifling smoke and the sickening odor of burned wood and powder, and though the row of silent, covered bodies had steadily lengthened, the thought of giving up never occurred to the women. Death there would be sweet compared to what it would be at the hands of the redmen.

At sunrise Silas Zane, bare-chested, his face dark and fierce, strode into the bastion which was connected with the blockhouse. It was a small shedlike room, and with portholes opening to the river and the forest. This bastion had seen the severest fighting. Five men had been killed here. As Silas entered four haggard and powder-begrimed men, who were kneeling before the portholes, looked up at him. A dead man lay in one corner.

“Smith’s dead. That makes fifteen,” said Silas. “Fifteen out of forty-two, that leaves twenty-seven. We must hold out. Men, don’t expose yourselves recklessly. How goes it at the south bastion?”

“All right. There’s been firin’ over there all night,” answered one of the men. “I guess it’s been kinder warm over that way. But I ain’t heard any shootin’ for some time.”

“Young Bennet is over there, and if the men needed anything they would send him for it,” answered Silas. “I’ll send some food and water. Anything else?”

“Powder. We’re nigh out of powder,” replied the man addressed. “And we might jes as well make ready fer a high old time. The red devils hain’t been quiet all this last hour fer nothin’.”

Silas passed along the narrow hallway which led from the bastion into the main room of the blockhouse. As he turned the corner at the head of the stairway he encountered a boy who was dragging himself up the steps.

“Hello! Who’s this? Why, Harry!” exclaimed Silas, grasping the boy and drawing him into the room. Once in the light Silas saw that the lad was so weak he could hardly stand. He was covered with blood. It dripped from a bandage wound tightly about his arm; it oozed through a hole in his hunting shirt, and it flowed from a wound over his temple. The shadow