CHAPTER XIX.
THE NIGHT ATTACK.
Mr. Fothergill picked up the flattened lead and dropped it with an exclamation.
"Didn't you know it was hot?" Dinny Pack grinned. "The twist of the riflin' does it. Keep your head down." For Mr. Fothergill had raised it dangerously.
"Don't be in no hurry to shoot," Toft advised. "Nothin' worries the other feller more than to act like his shootin' didn't bother you. By and by he gets careless or nervous, and gives you a chance."
"You talk as if you'd been there before," said Jim.
"Me?" Toft replied mildly. "Oh, well, I've talked with men that ought to know."
"You could get some pretty fair pointers just talkin' to yourself," said Dinny. "Now look: There's some feller down by that big rock in the middle of them saskatoons."
"I don't see nothing," said Toft.
"The bushes moved," Dinny asserted. "Somebody's there, all right. I've a notion to stir him up."
"Save your ca'tridge till you get a good chance," Toft advised.
For a long time after that first shot nothing happened. We saw nobody, but we heard the sound of a distant ax.
"Makin' a camp of it," said Toft. "That shows they ain't in no hurry."
"Bluffing!" said Mr. Fothergill, with conviction. "Pretty soon that old rascal, Ballou, will come along with a new proposition."
"He wants to have a bullet-proof proposition when he does come," Dinny commented grimly.
"Oh, he ain't bluffing," said Toft. "There ain't no bluff about them. Only thing is, they ain't made up their minds yet how to play the hand. They may wait till dark."
"And then rush us?"
"More'n likely. But they may shoot us up a little before that."
The latter prediction came true. Presently we could see half a dozen of them in the distance. And then they vanished. Not a man was visible. The front seemed absolutely clear; but we knew that they were worming their way into range, taking advantage of tree and rock and bush, after the manner of the old Indian fighters.
A bullet spatted on a rock and glanced, leaving a gray streak of lead. As if this had been a signal, half a dozen rifles opened on us. Here and there, in front and to right and left rose white smoke puffs; but so carefully did the marksmen keep under cover that we could see nobody.
"Lay low," Toft advised. "This don't cut no ice. They can keep this up all day and not hit no one except by accident."
It is astonishing how readily one becomes accustomed to being shot at. At first I was nervous, not needing Toft's injunction to lie low. But in a few minutes I listened to the popping of the rifles and the sing and rap of lead with comparative indifference. Only I earnestly desired to do some shooting myself.
"That sport over there in them bushes," said Dinny, "is too durn reg'lar in his habits. Also he's got too good an eye. He's hit the chink between these here rocks twice. Next time he shoots let's all take a chance about two foot under his smoke. Somebody might catch him."
I wiggled around on my stomach and trained my sights upon the distant clump of saskatoons. I stared and stared just above the sights until my eyes blurred, while my heart pounded hard in my ears. A white puff, like so much wool, rose among the bushes. I caught it fair with the bead, dropped my muzzle a fraction of an inch, and pulled. The report of my rifle blended with Dinny's, and on the heels of it came others. Leaves and twigs flew in the distant bushes as the lead swept them. I thought I could see a movement, and fired again, but whether I had hit anything or not I could not tell.
"Do you think we got him?" I asked, fervently hoping that we had; for, while human life is theoretically sacred, it is quite a different matter when the gentleman whom it animates is trying his best to deprive you of yours.
"I sure hope so," Dinny replied. "Anyway, I'll bet he's a durn sight more careful."
There was no more shooting from that particular clump of bushes, but a few moments afterward a shot came from the right of it, where there was an old, uprooted windfall. But from there the hawk-eyed marksman, whoever he was, had lost his pet target, the chink between the rocks.
Soon the firing ceased altogether. The afternoon passed, and night came.
"If they come swarmin' in on us," said Toft, "a little light would be handy. There's kerosene for that lantern of yourn. I'll-just keep it handy to douse onto a sack rolled around a rock. Touch that off and fire it out in front, and they'd be in the light and we wouldn't."
Among other plunder which I considered quite superfluous Mr. Fothergill had brought a lantern and a big can of oil. Now it seemed likely to come in handy. Dunleath and Pack had the first watch, and after that Toft and Fothergill. They told me to sleep, and I was quite ready to do so. I rolled up in a blanket, curled down in the lee of a rock, and knew no more till I was shaken hard. I started up.
"Quiet, Bob!" said Toft's voice. "I guess they're comin'. Keep down low, and shoot low when you have to."
I made sure that my magazine was full, and found myself crouching beside Jim Dunleath.
"How are the nerves, Bob?" he asked, in a whisper.
"Pretty jumpy," I confessed. "But I'll be all right when she starts."
"Of course you will. I'm shaky myself. Always was before anything big. It's good to be a little high strung. You can go farther on your nerve if you can get it working. But this is a new game to me. Bob"—he hesitated for a moment—"Bob, if anything happens to me, I'd want Peggy to know about how I felt toward her—you understand?"
"That you wanted to marry her, you mean? Sure. I'll tell her—if I get through myself and you don't."
"That's the idea. Only not just that alone. Tell her that I loved her—a lot—and used to talk to you about her and make plans for the future."
"When did we do that?" I asked densely.
"We didn't. But that sort of thing helps a woman at times. And take good care of her. She's to have my share of the furs. I've told Fothergill."
"Quit talkin'!" hissed Dinny. "Listen!"
At first I could hear nothing but the pound of the blood in my ears. But as I listened intently I could catch faint sounds—an occasional cracking of twigs or low grate of displaced stones.
"Get ready!" Toft whispered. "I won't touch off the flare till they rush."
What happened immediately after that has always been so confused that in all the intervening years I have never been able to sort it out clearly in my mind, in spite of the fact that my own part in it was exceedingly short.
Toft's rifle stabbed the darkness with a ten-foot lance of flame. Momentarily it lit up a narrow lane walled with black. At the farther end of it a man crouched, with stubbly cheeks and working jaws and eyes fierce as a beast of prey's, and I knew him for Nootka Charlie. His rifle flamed in answer. The night was streaked by swift lines of fire, rent by shots and oaths; and through the din of the fight there came a sudden, high-pitched scream.
Of my brief part I can say but little. Forgetting caution, I was on my feet, emptying my rifle at those streaks of flame which momentarily outlined figures. A form, giantlike in the darkness, sprang up in front of me, and I jammed my rifle muzzle against it and pulled trigger, only to hear the hammer click with sickening emptiness. The next moment it was wrenched from my hands. And the next thing the world collided with the sun, or the other way about. At any rate, I lost my grip on things material and fell a long way through space into outer and utter darkness.