In Kentucky with Daniel Boone

A swift glance showed Oliver Barclay that there were perhaps twoscore Indians in the band. Directly in front were about half this number fighting from behind stumps, logs and tree trunks.

“At them at top speed,” said Oliver, “and each pick an important man if you can see one. After you fire, shout as loud as you can!”

Like thunderbolts the three lads swept down upon the war party of Shawnees. Shooting from the saddle, with horse going at top speed, was one of the tricks of marksmanship cherished and practiced by the youths at the frontier; and so, as the three long weapons cracked, three savages sprang into the air with tossing arms and fell dead upon the ground. Then yelling like demons the lads plunged among the others.

Taken utterly by surprise the redskins were demoralized. Evidently they thought, judging by the boldness of the attack, that what they saw was but a part of a large force of whites; so in the panic of the moment they turned and fled.

Never checking the speed of their horses the boys dashed up to the cabin which was now in full view. Throwing themselves from their horses they proceeded to wipe and reload their rifles.

As they were so engaged the door of the cabin was flung open and an old man with a flowing white beard appeared upon the threshold. He had a blood-stained bandage about his head, and a rifle was gripped in his hand. Behind him the boys caught glimpses of a number of anxious faces.

“Glad to see you, lads,” cried the old settler, welcomingly. “How many of you are there?”

“Just the three,” answered Eph, a grin on his face.

The man with the white beard looked the amazement he felt.

“Only three, and come a-plunging into the critters that way?”

A murmur went up from those behind him.

“I reckon the Shawnees thought we were a regiment, at least, the way they ran off,” said Oliver, laughing at the recollection.

“Yes, and by this time they’ve seen their mistake and will come——”

“Whizz! Thud!”

The feathered shaft of an arrow quivered from one of the logs just below Sandy Campbell’s shoulder; a hail of others flew all about them.

“They’ve found it out!” cried a man from within the house. As he spoke he sprang out and threw open the heavy door of a building adjoining the cabin. “Quick,” said he. “Drive your horses in here.”

The boys led the horses through the doorway; the man followed them in and threw a heavy oaken bar into place. The sounds from the cabin showed that the door there had also been made secure, and then the siege was once more begun.

There was a doorway leading into the cabin from the building which was crowded with horses and cattle. Through this came the white-bearded man and some others.

“We’re obliged to you, young strangers, for what you tried to do for us. And we are sorry that you’ve run into this danger.”

“We rode this way on the word of Captain Boone that some settlers were perhaps unwarned of the Indian rising,” said Oliver. “Perhaps you are one of them, sir.”

“My name,” said the old man, “is Curley.”

“Do you know anything of the McAfees and Baldwins who live hereabout?”

“They are all here,” said Mr. Curley. “They grew suspicious of things yesterday, and rode over, thinking if the worst came we’d all be together, and so have a better chance for defense.”

There were at least a dozen grown men gathered in the Curley cabin, and almost as many boys, some of whom were old enough to take part in the defense. The wives and daughters of the settlers were, in the main, courageous and accustomed to the idea of danger; some of them, indeed, looked capable of taking up a rifle and using it as well as brother or husband. The heavy timber walls of the house were pierced by small openings, each of which permitted the barrel of a rifle to be protruded.

At each of these port-holes was stationed a man; keen eyes watched the movements of the Shawnees upon the edge of the clearing, and now and then a shot rang out or an arrow whizzed through the air as a red marksman sought to drive bullet or barb through an opening.

While Oliver talked to Mr. Curley and several of the other settlers and gave them all the information he possessed as to the state of the border, Eph Taylor selected an unguarded port-hole and protruded the eager muzzle of the faithful Jerusha.

“Take care of yourself, youngster,” said a man in buckskins at the next opening. “Don’t trust too much to your port-hole being narrow; there’s an Injun there on the edge of the timber who’s doing some almighty good shooting with the bow; several times he’s put one of his shafts right on through.”

Keenly, Eph scoured the timber line; from one place or another a rifle cracked, or a bowstring sang almost constantly. But he was not long in locating the marksman of whom the settler had spoken. He lay behind the uprooted butt of a huge tree which had resisted both axe and fire; a thick growth of weeds had sprung up about it, and it afforded a splendid vantage place for a marauder with a quick eye and a steady hand.

Twice Eph saw an arrow speed from behind this shelter and bury itself in the timbers upon the edge of a port-hole. Then a cry told that a third shot had flown through and found a mark.

“Through the arm,” said the man who had spoken to Eph. “That varmint out there has an eye like a hawk.”

Carefully Eph watched the uprooted stump and studied the method of the savage sharpshooter behind it. Never once did he catch sight of any part of the Shawnee; not for an instant did even so much as a tip of a plume show above his breastwork. Satisfying himself as to this, Eph took to examining other parts about the tree butt. A stirring in the growth about its largest end took his eye; the movement was of the slightest, but the eyes of the boy were fixed upon it with all the eagerness of a practiced hunter.

The shadows from the trees had grown enormously; but the great red sun sent slanting bars of light through the maze of trunks here and there; and one of these caught a metal point just as it was steadily poised for a shot from behind the butt, and the glitter attracted the eye of Eph. The brain of the boy worked like lightning; from the position of the arrow-head he calculated the position of the arm that held the bow. The black eye of Jerusha turned grimly upon the spot in which Eph’s judgment fixed the Shawnee’s arm; then the rifle spoke. A cry of pain made answer and an arrow flew wild, burying its point in the ground.

“I reckon that Injun will need some care and considerable rest before he’s much of a success as a fancy shot in the future,” remarked young Taylor, with a grin at his neighbor.

“That was a good shot,” said the man. “I sort of felt that Injun was behind the stump there; but I couldn’t get any signs of him nohow.”

Darkness drew on; supper was cooked and eaten in the cabin; part of the defenders sat down to the meal while a part manned the port-holes; when the first lot had satisfied their hunger they changed places with the watchers. But with the coming of the night the attack of the Shawnees did not abate; the cracking of their rifles went on, the whizzing of the arrows continued. Finally there came a flare through the darkness; it was as though a ball of fire had described an arch, and then fallen with a thud on the roof.

The faces of the settlers blanched.

“A fire arrow!” said one.

“The varmints are trying to burn the house over our heads,” cried another.

But old Mr. Curley took the matter coolly enough.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “As it happens, friends, the roof is of new green wood, cut and put on only this summer; so the arrows won’t set fire to it in a hurry.”

Ball after ball of fire, each attached to a cunningly aimed arrow, fell upon the roof. But the green wood would not take the fire readily, as the old settler had prophesied. Seeing this the savages ceased throwing the fire arrows, and there fell a silence over all outdoors as complete as the darkness.

“Something is going forward,” spoke Sandy, his eye at a port-hole endeavoring to pierce the black pall which enveloped everything. “The villains are not so quiet as that for nothing.”

There was, indeed, something ominous in the silence; the night seemed crowded with the grotesque forms of fear; a feeling that there was something—a dreadful something—pressing toward them, settled upon the defenders.

“Ready all!” said the man in the buckskins. “We’ll have them down on us in a moment.”

“And remember, lads,” warned old Mr. Curley, “our powder is not too plentiful. So don’t waste a shot. Be sure of your Injun before you pull trigger.”

The prediction of the man in buckskin was, a moment later, fulfilled. Silent as ghosts the Shawnees had formed a complete circle about the cabin and crept across the clearing toward it. Now they were close enough for a rush; the war-whoop, that thing of fear on the border, rang out; the red braves, dusky and but faintly seen, were under the log walls.

“Be sure of your shots!” cried old Mr. Curley; “pick your redskin, lads, and don’t waste the good black powder!”

THE RIFLES SPOKE THROUGH THE PORT-HOLES

With cold precision the rifles spoke through the port-holes, and in each case a yell told of a warrior hit. But the Shawnees were not idle. Unseen, they had borne with them great armfuls of dry brush; under the fire of the rifles they heaped them against the door of the cabin. Like cats others scaled the walls and gained the roof.

The first flare of the fire when the brush was ignited acted badly for the Shawnees, however. Apparently they had failed to foresee that they would be thrown into full relief by the glare; at any rate the deadly rifles of the whites swept a rain of lead among them, and a dozen fell to the earth. Enraged, the remainder charged the house, brandishing tomahawks and scalping knives; bowstrings sang and rifles cracked; the flames about the door mounted higher and higher.

Calmly the backwoodsmen went about the work of defense; steadily they loaded and fired; watchfully they peered through the port-holes.

But up to this time all had failed to hear those savages who had mounted to the roof. Safe out of the fire of the deadly rifles, a half score braves were here collected, cunningly planning their next move.

At one end of the log house there was a wide-mouthed chimney, built of green wood and thickly lined with mud. The fire over which the settlers’ supper had been cooked had died down and peering down the smooth interior of this shaft, the Shawnees grinned with dreadful satisfaction.

“That fire outside there is taking hold,” said old Mr. Curley below in the big room of the cabin. “The timber in the door is heavy, but as dry as tinder.”

Anxiously the men looked at each other; the faces of the women were fearful. And in this tense moment there came a scrambling sound, a cloud of dust arose from the fireplace together with a shower of dull sparks. A woman screamed as the tufted head of an Indian appeared in the great fireplace to be followed an instant later by another and still another.