SERGEANT DICK OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED POLICE
[Illustration: SERGEANT DICK TOOK IN ALL THESE PARTICULARS.]
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SERGEANT DICK OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED POLICE
A Thrilling Story of the Canadian Woods
By JOHN G. ROWE
AUTHOR OF “CRUSOE ISLAND,” “LIGHTSHIP PIRATES,”
“THE MYSTERY OF THE DERELICT,” ETC.
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
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SERGEANT DICK OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED POLICE
By JOHN G. ROWE
Large 12 mo. Illustrated. Jacket in Full Colors.
ROWE BOOKS FOR BOYS
CRUSOE ISLAND
THE ISLAND TREASURE
THE MYSTERY OF THE DERELICT
THE SECRET OF THE MYSTERY IDOL
THE LIGHTSHIP PIRATES
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, New York
Copyright, 1929, by
Cupples & Leon Company
Sergeant Dick of the Royal Mounted Police
Printed in U. S. A.
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CONTENTS
I. The Hooded Rustlers
II. Muriel Arnold
III. The House in the Lake
IV. Inside “Water Castle”
V. A Running Fight
VI. The Trapper and His Sons
VII. Howling Wolf
VIII. The Siege of “Water Castle”
IX. The Ark in Danger
X. An Unexpected Illumination
XI. The Defense of the Ark
XII. Saved by a Woman’s Wit
XIII. Sergeant Dick’s Determination
XIV. The Ambush
XV. Lost in the Woods
XVI. A Startling Discovery
XVII. A Surprise, and a Rescue
XVIII. Back at “Water Castle”
XIX. The Second Siege of “Water Castle”
XX. A Cooler for the Invaders
XXI. The Dash for the Ark
XXII. The Rout of the Besiegers
XXIII. The Plan to Round up the White Hoods
XXIV. In the Hands of Merciless Foes
XXV. On the Track
XXVI. The Threatening Letter
XXVII. The Clew of the Lamp
XXVIII. The Return to “Water Castle”
XXIX. The Failure to Surprise “Water Castle”
XXX. The End of the White Hoods, and of the Story
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SERGEANT DICK OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED POLICE
CHAPTER I--THE HOODED RUSTLERS
Sergeant John Dick, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was
leading his horse up a steep and rugged gorge in the great southwest
region of Canada. It was close by the United States border, and
practically in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains.
A fine, military-looking figure, Sergeant Dick cut, in his scarlet
tunic, riding-breeches, and “Stetson” or broad-brimmed, bell-crowned
hat. He carried his rifle at the trail in his left hand, and had the
bridle of his horse looped over his right arm.
The animal was limping painfully. It had got a thorn in its hoof
lower down the trail, where this was on the open prairie, and had
gone dead lame before its master discovered its injury and could
extract the thorn.
The accident was particularly annoying to Sergeant Dick, for it was
almost imperative he should be at the Paquita Island Reservation,
just over the United States border, by sundown, and the lord of day
was already well down the western sky.
A howling hurricane of wind made progress still more difficult,
blowing dead in his teeth as it was. No ordinary gusty gale was
this, but a ceaseless avalanche of wind tearing with a terrific howl
along the gorge, raging against man and beast in insensate fury.
At times Sergeant Dick would turn his back to the storm, and the
horse, with head also turned, would sidle along almost broadside to
it, the better to keep its feet and hold its own.
Man and horse were thus maneuvering one of the turns in the gorge
when, high above the howl of the hurricane, rang the sharp,
air-splitting crack of a rifle close by--just in front--and
simultaneously Sergeant Dick staggered and nearly fell, feeling a
sudden numbing, burning pain upon the right side of the head, above
his ear.
His Stetson hat, which had so long resisted the tugging of the wind,
was whirled from his head, and went rolling like a wheel, on its
brim, away down the pass before the gale.
With a thrill of anger, rather than of any bodily fear, the sergeant
promptly dived behind his horse, drawing it by the reins at the same
time fully broadside across the rocky pass.
As he did so, he beheld for the first time a startling tableau or
drama being enacted ahead, round the bend in the gorge.
The track still ascended, but the precipitous, seventy to two
hundred feet high cliffs, which shut him in and almost excluded the
westering sun, became at the scene gentle acclivities, thickly
covered with dense undergrowth and forest trees from the edge of the
road to their summits.
It was an ideal spot for an ambuscade, and such was what had taken
place. The stage-coach from Settleford, to Paquita Springs over the
border, was halted in the dim twilight of the leafy avenue, and the
driver and passengers were all lined up at one side of the road,
with their hands in the air--women as well as men--under the menace
of two _ghost-like_ bandits or “rustlers,” pointing an automatic
pistol in either hand and with rifles on backs.
Ghost-like indeed the bandits were. There was no other word for
their bizarre and spectral appearance.
There were four others, likewise attired, busy around the coach,
from which they were taking bags and boxes, and loading up a round
dozen of horses. Two of the horses had evidently been taken from the
traces of the coach, which was always drawn by four.
All six “rustlers” were clad in loose white linen frocks, which
descended to mid-thigh or even lower, and had great white peaked
hoods, like monks’ cowls, drawn completely over their heads and
faces!
Only two holes for the eyes showed in each hood; so the reader can
well imagine how weird and ghostly they looked in the twilight of
the leafy archway, in spite of the rifles slung across their backs
or the Browning automatic pistols in their hands, and the top boots
showing under the white frocks.
Sergeant Dick took in all these particulars--the whole thrilling
tableau before him--at a single glance of course. And, even as he
did so, he comprehended that it was not one of the six hooded,
ghostly figures beside the stage-coach who had shot at him and so
narrowly missed ending his career.
The marksman was clearly a seventh member of the gang--on the
look-out, and without a doubt perched upon the rocks at either hand.
Sergeant Dick swiftly removed his eyes from the tableau under the
storm-tossed trees ahead, and ran them over the two bold cliffs
forming the jaws of the pass at that end. He caught sight of a small
cloudlet of smoke, still hanging limply in the air above a ledge
just below the summit of the right-hand rock.
The rock behind the ledge acted as a wind-screen, and, although a
hurricane was shrieking overhead and sweeping the rocky pass below,
the air at the point was as still as if there were no wind at all.
Just as the Sergeant sighted the cloudlet of smoke, a jet of flame
darted from behind a boulder on the ledge, the gorge rang again to
the echoing detonation of a rifle, and he felt the noble animal
shielding him give a convulsive shudder, which told him it had been
hit.
It yet stood stockstill and upright before him, however, and so he
was satisfied that it could not have been struck in a vital spot.
Swift as the thought itself, Dick brought his own rifle to his
shoulder, and leveled it across the saddle at a white triangular tip
of cloth, showing above the boulder on the ledge, alongside the new
cloudlet of smoke. That white triangular tip he knew was the peaked
headgear of another of the dreaded White Hood Rustlers.
He got that triangular tip of white cloth dead in front of his
sights with the quickness of considerable practice and rare skill;
and simultaneously he pressed the trigger.
As the report of his rifle, blown along by the furious wind, went
echoing down the rocky pass, a white-clad, hooded form leaped up
from behind the boulder and went scuttling into a little cleft
beside the ledge, vanishing as swiftly as a rabbit diving into its
hole.
Sergeant Dick smiled a little grimly. He was used to seeing well
entrenched foes skedaddle--vacate their quarters as a little too
warm--under his straight shooting.
He knew for a certainty that his bullet had gone clean through the
white hood of the fugitive rustle-sentinel, within an inch or two of
its rascally wearer’s skull. The bullet would have bored a hole
through _that_ if only a little more than just the tip or peak of
the white hood had been showing.
It was a splendid shot, like hitting a card torn in half and stuck
on the chimney pot of a three- or four-story house.
Besides, the shot was such a swift reply to the one preceding it. No
wonder it scared its recipient from his strong position--“shook him
up some,” to use the language of the country.
The six bandits in the leafy avenue in front of Sergeant Dick had
all turned in his direction at the first shot. The four who had been
removing the loot from the coach were now making warily for
him--scattered in a line across the avenue, with rifles at the
ready, like hunters stalking game.
He turned his attention to them, wondering not a little why they did
not pour a volley into him or his breastwork of horseflesh. It was
evident they considered him their “meat”--a “dead goner” already,
and were anxious to take his horse, if not himself, alive.
A live horse is always desirable property in the Far West.
But the ghostly, white-robed and hooded ruffians speedily discovered
that they were reckoning without their host. Their attention was
somewhat distracted by the sudden appearance of the comrade they had
posted as “look-out man” upon the bluff, and
then--crack--crack--crack!
Sergeant Dick’s rifle pealed out sharply, and as many of the four
rustlers advancing upon him staggered or stumbled.
But to the police officer’s amazement, none of the three fell,
although he believed he had hit all three badly.
Recovering immediately from the effects of their hurts, the fellows
rushed forward, firing wildly and furiously at the plucky young
policeman. Then, suddenly, in a lull of the hurricane, came the
clatter of rapidly approaching hoofs _behind Sergeant Dick_, and
immediately afterwards two shrill, sharp whistles from the bluff or
cliff above him.
He caught a fleeting glimpse of the hooded sentinel within the cleft
in the rock, evidently returning to that coign of vantage, with a
view to helping to shoot him down--saw the fellow put his left hand
under his hood.
It was this man, undoubtedly, who had uttered those two warning
whistles, for he now immediately vanished again inside the cleft.
Simultaneously the four rustlers firing at Dick wheeled about, and
ran for the shelter of the woods on either hand.
CHAPTER II--MURIEL ARNOLD
With only one cartridge remaining in the magazine of his Mauser,
which he preferred and was allowed to carry instead of a Ross rifle,
Sergeant John Dick was thinking of falling back upon his revolver,
when the unexpected retreat was beaten by the rustlers.
With the rapidly approaching hoofs hardly sounding now in his ears,
with the hurricane again tearing past him, Dick turned his head. He
beheld a two-horse top-buggy whirling swiftly up the pass toward him
in the teeth of the storm.
These vehicles generally have only a single seat, capable of
accommodating two persons, however; and this one contained two young
women--mere girls, both of them, the elder not more than twenty
years of age!
Dick saw that the girls were not unaware of what was transpiring.
The one who was not driving, the younger and--even in that moment of
excitement he could not help noticing--by far the prettier, held a
rifle at the ready, with a grim, determined look upon her charming
face, while her companion was urging the horses to their fastest up
the rocky and broken incline.
“Say! Who are they? Why should we cut and run?” came a shout borne
on the wind from the direction of the four rustlers to Sergeant
Dick’s ears.
“They’re the--”
He did not catch the end of the answer from the fellow on the cliff.
The word, whatever it was, was lost on the raging wind.
But apparently it was heard by one or more of the gang in the road,
for they immediately communicated the tidings to one another, and
then shouted and waved to the pair guarding the driver and
passengers of the stage-coach.
Sergeant Dick had edged his horse partly against the angle of the
cliff. He now dived under the animal’s head and, rushing round the
rock, fired at the fleeing quartet with his revolver.
He hit one in the broad of the back, he was certain. The fellow only
stumbled, however, and, promptly recovering and wheeling about, sent
a shot back at him with lightning speed, but fortunately with
nothing like accuracy.
Then all four plunged into the thicket out of his sight, and he
could hear them trampling and bursting through the thick growth in a
line parallel with the road, bawling as they ran, and
unintelligibly, so far as he was concerned.
The pair guarding the people of the coach backed hurriedly to their
horses, what time the sergeant hurriedly slipped another clip of
five cartridges into the magazine of his rifle.
Gaining their horses’ sides, the two rustlers bounded into the
saddle, firing a couple of shots apiece from their pistols over the
heads of their late prisoners, to overawe them still. Then digging
their spurs deep into their mounts’ flanks, away into the wood on
the windward side they tore, dragging the other horses after them by
a long lariat which had been passed through all the bridles.
Seeing the pair thus making off, Sergeant Dick threw all further
prudence to the winds, and, running forward, pumped two shots with
swift accuracy into the leafy covert, even as it closed over their
retreating forms.
[Illustration: THEN DIGGING THEIR SPURS DEEP, AWAY THEY TORE.]
The shrill, almost human-like scream of a horse badly stricken came
out of the thicket. Sergeant Dick ran on along the woods, pelting
two more shots into these at random in the direction he knew the
fugitives were taking.
Then, suddenly, all became red and blurred before him. He reeled
blindly and fell upon his hands and knees, his rifle flying far out
of his hands.
He had forgotten his wound in the excitement of the fight, had been
losing blood profusely from it all the time, and the consequent
weakness came suddenly and unexpectedly upon him.
When he opened his eyes again, he looked into the most beautiful
face he believed he had ever seen--the face of the younger of the
two girls who had come, in so surprising and plucky a manner, to his
reënforcement.
He was lying on the ground, and she was kneeling beside him, binding
up the injury to his head, while some one supported his shoulders
behind. On the other side of him was kneeling the elder girl, with
her face buried in her hands, and sobbing bitterly, great salt tears
oozing through her fingers and dropping to the ground.
Around were standing the robbed passengers of the stage-coach,
rueful and vindictive-looking, none of them in their bitter
resentment against Fate taking any notice of the weeping girl.
“Thank you--thank you! You are very kind,” murmured Dick. “But--but
I’m all right now, and the rustlers--they mustn’t be allowed to get
away. My horse, quick! Men, who’ll follow me? Any of you?”
The weeping girl lifted her head with an ecstatic cry.
“He will not die--he will live? Oh, Heaven be praised! Ah, and you
have hidden the blood upon his face, Muriel! I cannot bear the sight
of blood. It--it always makes me feel sick. But, then, of course, I
am weak-minded, you know--not like other people, or like Muriel
here, who is as good as she is brave.”
“Be quiet, Jenny,” said the younger girl, flushing hotly. “It is
impossible, sergeant, for you to follow the robbers. Your horse is
lame, you sure forget.”
Sergeant Dick rose to his feet with the aid of the two men who had
been supporting his head. He saw that two horses remained in the
traces of the rifled coach.
“Lend me one of your horses, driver,” he cried. “I must follow these
ruffians without delay.”
“Sorry, sergeant, but one horse ’ud be no power o’ use in pulling
the coach from here to Paquita Springs; and, asides, you yourself be
in no fit condition I guess to go man-trailin’ arter seven rustlers
of their type. You are noo to these parts, that’s plain, or I reckon
you’d have heard of the White Hood Gang--the worstest, most desp’rit
gang this region has ever yit seen, I calculate.”
“I _have_ heard of the gang. But its notoriety would not deter me
from following it, only spur me on, if I had my strength back, and
my horse, too, were equal to the call I should have to make upon it.
Driver, you have been robbed of the gold you were carrying to the
Indian Reservation on Paquita Island?”
“Sure,” was the characteristic reply, with a doleful nod.
“Then I must let the gang go, even if I were equal to following
them, and accompany you in the coach with all speed to the
Reservation. What the result will be when the Indians learn that the
gold sent them has been stolen, I shudder to think of--judging from
the frame of mind they have been lately showing.”
“Guess they’ll go on the war-path, and jist raise Cain around here,”
growled the stage-coach driver, amid horrified ejaculations from all
the passengers.
“I know of a quicker means of reaching the Reservation than by the
stage,” said the girl Muriel, her lovely face flushing again at thus
once more attracting the attention of all. “My cousin here and I
live near by on Lake Paquita, as some of these people may know--the
coach-driver certainly does--in a house built on piles over a shoal
out in the middle of the lake. We keep a large sailing scow, which
my uncle calls his ‘Ark’; and we can convey you in it to Paquita
Island at the lower end of the lake in the shortest time possible.”
“Why--why! Your uncle has surely taken the idea of his lake-dwelling
and his scow or ‘ark’ from Fenimore Cooper’s famous novel, the
‘Deerslayer,’” gasped Sergeant Dick.
“That is so. My uncle was so charmed with the idea of the
lake-fortress in Fenimore Cooper’s tale, the ‘Deerslayer,’ that he
determined to adopt the same mode of living when he first came here.
We have the book at Water Castle, as we call our lake-home, and it
is the most-read book in our little library, I believe, except as
regards Jenny, who, just like poor, half-witted Hetty Hutter in the
novel, is always reading her Bible. Uncle Alf has said that having a
half-witted daughter like Hetty Hutter also helped to put into his
head the idea of living like ‘Floating Tom Hutter’ in ‘The
Deerslayer’; and poor Jenny herself models her life on Hetty
Hutter’s, reading the Bible regularly, and trying to do good always
in her own simple way. You will come with us in the buggy? Uncle Alf
contrived an extra seat at the back, on which we might carry extra
marketing. Our name, by the way, is Arnold.”
“Thank you. I shall be glad to avail myself of your kind offer, Miss
Arnold. Certainly I must reach the Indian Reservation before news of
the robbery of the stage, and the gold they were to receive by it,
gets to their ears.”
Sergeant Dick was helped on to the back seat of the buggy, all the
marketing being disposed under it inside a kind of locker; and then,
parting from the stage-coach people, away the two girls and he
whirled at top speed along the leafy avenue. His lame horse, of
course, he left behind, to be brought along in the rear of the
stage-coach, which would perforce proceed at a walk as far as the
next stopping-place.
At the speed it traveled, the buggy was soon out of the gorge, and
at a point where the road forked, the coach road continuing on in a
straight line, and the other--a mere grass-grown cattle track,
barely perceptible--leading away at right angles through dense
woods.
Along this second leafy avenue the two girls and the sergeant bowled
more rapidly still. They presently came out on the shores of a
lovely lake, lying placidly in the bosom of the mountains, which
dense woods covered from the water-line to their rounded summits.
“Behold our lake home--Water Castle!” cried the younger girl,
pointing out across the storm-ruffled water to a most
strange-looking structure--a house like a huge Madeira-cake standing
on innumerable legs, about a quarter of a mile from the shore.
CHAPTER III--THE HOUSE IN THE LAKE
“It is certainly a most admirable situation for safety and defensive
purposes,” said Sergeant Dick, regarding the distant lake-dwelling
with great curiosity and interest.
“You will find it even stronger than it looks,” laughed Muriel
Arnold. “My uncle has been quite ingenious, I consider, in the way
he has fortified it. He has improved on Fenimore Cooper’s idea; and
I am sure that you will say that the place is almost impregnable
when you have seen over it. We keep our horses and the buggy on that
little island you see just behind the castle.”
“Signal to mother, Muriel,” said her cousin Jenny, a little
impatiently.
They had all three alighted from the buggy. Muriel drew an automatic
pistol from her belt, and fired three shots into the air.
At the southern end of the strange dwelling out in the lake appeared
to be a kind of platform; and, quickly on the echoing reports of the
pistol shots--which would carry far in the light mountain air and
across the water at any time, but were now blown directly towards
the house by the strong wind--the figure of a woman appeared on the
platform.
She seemed to regard them through a spyglass, and remained gazing at
them a long time, so long, in fact, that Jenny Arnold asked:
“What ails mother? Surely she can see that it is you and I, Muriel,
through the field-glass. And the sergeant’s red coat ought to
reassure her. She knows the uniform of the Mounted Police.”
Muriel was waving her long white scarf vigorously to the distant
figure.
“Naturally she does not know what to make of you being in my
company,” said Sergeant Dick.
“Of course,” said Muriel, “she is concerned, and fears something
terrible must have happened to us or to my uncle and cousins.”
The figure on the platform of “Water Castle” turned and hurried to
the farther end, where she evidently stepped into a boat of some
kind, concealed by the house.
A minute later Sergeant John Dick saw a long, low craft, not unlike
the ordinary conception of Noah’s ark, slowly emerging into view
round the far side of the platform and house.
As it came round the corner of the “castle” into full view, Sergeant
Dick saw it was furnished with a short, stumpy mast, upon which a
ridiculously small leg-of-mutton sail was being hoisted by the only
apparent occupant.
Small though the sail was, it served its purpose well, and, bellying
before the wind, caused the great, clumsy-looking craft to slip with
considerable speed through the choppy little waves caused by the
moaning wind. The figure aboard ran aft, and, taking a long sweep
which was rigged astern to act as tiller and rudder combined,
brought the ark’s broad nose steadily round almost into the eye of
the wind, and headed the craft for a point close to where the two
girls and the police officer stood.
Leading the horses, Muriel made along the shore for the point the
ark was steering towards. Her cousin and Sergeant Dick followed
leisurely, the last-mentioned feeling his wound very slightly now,
to his great satisfaction and surprise.
As they went, his eye traveled up and down Muriel Arnold’s trim,
graceful figure with increasing interest and approval, and finally
rested with evident admiration upon her sunny brown hair, drawn back
in many a clustering curl and knotted so charmingly in the nape of
her lovely white neck.
Her simple blue print dress, belted at the waist with a broad
leathern cincture, supporting a pistol holster, became her well, as
did the exceedingly small and dapper Wellington boots which were
shown almost to their tops beneath the rather short dress, and the
great broad-brimmed, flapping “wide-awake” hat, set so rakishly upon
her head and ornamented with a single upright eagle’s feather.
About her shoulders and her neat little waist was wound a long
flimsy white veil or muslin wrap.
Her cousin’s costume was very much the same, save that there was no
feather in the hat, and this was not set at a rakish angle, but as
squarely as that of the inmate of an orphanage, while the print
dress was a pale, washed-out pink.
“Gee!” muttered Sergeant John Dick. “She’s almost as lovely a
creature as the novelist, Fenimore Cooper, described Judith Hutter
to be in his story, ‘The Deerslayer.’”
Of course he referred to Muriel, not to poor, uncomely, dowdyish
Jenny, whose Wellington boots were squaretoed instead of round-toed
like her cousin’s and fully twice as large in the feet.
“What a curious chain of coincidences or circumstances,” Dick went
on musing; “here we have almost exactly what the American author,
Cooper, imagined; two girls--one quite a beauty and the other
half-witted and otherwise rather poorly favored, certainly not as
pretty--living in a wonderful lake-dwelling, built to resist a
siege. I wonder what sort of a man the uncle and father of the
girls, this ‘Floating Tom Hutter,’ of real life, will be. He ought
to prove a rather interesting old fellow.”
And then, with sparkling eyes, his thoughts ran again on the girl in
front of him; and he nodded and murmured:
“Yes, she’s the sort of girl I’d like. She’s not tall, but she
strikes me as being just the right height a girl should be, and
she’s just as plump, too, as I like them. I owe them both a debt of
gratitude. It was plucky of them and no error, to come to my help as
they did, and not turn and bolt as most girls would have done.”
They reached the little spit of land for which the scow or “ark” was
making; and, while they stood waiting for it to come in, Muriel drew
Dick’s attention to the scenery around them--the lovely wooded
shores of the lake. She asked him, with enthusiastic eyes, if he had
ever seen finer views.
He had to admit that he had not.
The sun was throwing a golden, glittering track now across the
waters of the lake, which were gradually subsiding into their usual
peaceful serenity as the gale dropped to mere fitful, ragged gusts.
It was about a mile across the lake where they stood, but both
higher up and lower down, that is to northward and southward of
them, the water was much broader, then narrowed again, and curved
round prettily out of sight.
All around, the trees grew close to the water--in some places they
overhung it and dipped their branches in it--and on the farther
shore the woods, rising steeply to the crests of the low but gently
rounded hills behind, were faithfully mirrored in the stiller pools
and backwaters.
Sergeant Dick and Muriel were still pointing out the more charming
prospects to one another when the ark drew within hail, and its
occupant called out:
“What’s that policeman doing with you, Muriel--Jenny? Anything
wrong?”
“No, Aunt Kate, there’s nothing wrong,” Muriel answered, with her
hand held trumpet-wise beside her mouth. “Nothing, that is, so far
as we are concerned. But the sergeant was wounded in the head, as
you may see, in a fight with the White Hood Gang, who held up the
stage-coach in Crooked Gulch. As his horse was lamed, and he must
get to the Indian Reservation on the island at the south end of the
lake as quickly as possible, we brought him along. Jenny and I have
promised to take him to Paquita Island in the ark.”
“Oh, indeed!” her aunt responded, in a rather ungracious tone.
“Allow me to tell you, Muriel Arnold, that it is not for you, or
Jenny either, to make use of the ark without first consulting _my_
wishes, or those of your uncle and Jenny’s father. However, as you
are a police officer, sir, I don’t suppose my husband ’ill object to
the girls taking you down to the Reservation, and I’m sure I shan’t.
But you must first come to the ‘castle,’ and get your wound dressed
properly. Reckon, too, you could do with something to buck you up.”
“You had better do as mother says,” whispered Jenny, the half-witted
girl, “that is, come to the ‘castle’ first, and take something and
have your wound redressed. She doesn’t like any one not to do as she
says, and, asides, you might just as well humor her.”
Dick looked at Muriel and capitulated.
“I’m rather pressed for time,” he said, “but still, I don’t suppose
just visiting your home for a few minutes will delay me much; and I
never believe in crossing old ladies if it can be avoided--or
anybody else for that matter, I may add.”
The ark came sailing in, and softly grounded her forefoot on the
spit. As her square bow projected fully five feet over the bank,
Muriel was able to leap on board dryshod.
She swiftly cast free a wide, sliding gangway in the bow, and thrust
it out, so that, as it dropped outboard, it formed a gentle
gradient, up which her cousin at once led the two horses in the
buggy.
Behind the sliding gangway, and covered by it when it was inboard,
was another gentle, boarded slope; and the space between it and the
cabin or “house” was sufficiently long, as well as broad to
accommodate the vehicle and the two horses abreast.
CHAPTER IV--INSIDE “WATER CASTLE”
As Sergeant John Dick followed the buggy aboard the ark, a big,
powerful woman of middle-age and rather unprepossessing looks came
hurrying out of the door of the fore-cabin.
“Are you badly hurt, sergeant?” she asked, in a voice like a ship’s
siren, but not in an unkindly tone.
Dick answered in the negative, and said that he was ashamed that his
injury had even been mentioned.
Aunt Kate gave him a swift, searching glance, then, evidently
satisfied by her scrutiny, emitted a non-committal grunt and turned
to help her niece to draw the gangboard in again and hook it in
place.
Sergeant Dick would have helped them, but Muriel smilingly waved him
back, and the operation was easily and quickly performed.
Mrs. Arnold then pushed the scow off the spit with a boat hook, and,
sending her daughter to the sweep astern, turned the sail again to
the wind, and they swung round and headed for the “castle.”
As they slipped along towards it, she eagerly and curiously
questioned her niece as to what had actually transpired in Crooked
Gulch.
“This White Hood Gang of road-agents and rustlers is fast creating a
panic in these parts, sergeant,” she said, when Muriel had finished
her recital. “You may consider yourself lucky that you have come
through your meeting with ’em as well as you have. I guess you’ve
been sent down here to try and round ’em up. But are the Government
mad, to send you by yourself--to only send one man?”
“Oh, it was more with regard to the trouble with the Indians of the
Paquita Island Reservation than anything else I was sent along. But
you may take it from me, Mrs. Arnold, that this last exploit of the
gang’s will be about their last. Government is bound to send a
strong force to put ’em down after this.”
Mrs. Arnold said that the sooner that happened the better, and then
she turned to the stores in the carrier of the buggy, and was
speedily discussing with her niece what the latter and Jenny had
paid for the things--and should have paid in her estimation.
This discussion lasted until they were almost at “Water Castle,”
which Sergeant Dick surveyed, as they approached, with the greatest
interest.
A shoal existed or had been contrived at the spot, and into this
Alfred Arnold, Jenny’s father, aided by his four grown sons--all
big, powerful men like himself, as Dick was subsequently to
learn--had driven stout piles, upon which they had erected their
dwelling.
It was square in shape, and built of tree-trunks, each two feet
thick, and squared on three sides, so that they made a smooth inner
wall and rested solidly on one another without any chinks between
them.
In each of the four exterior walls were six windows, set equidistant
apart; and before the front door, which was plated with iron an inch
thick, inside and out--to make it as strong as the walls--was a
platform or verandah, seven or eight feet wide, running the whole
length of that side of the building, and covered by the projecting
roof.
The roof itself was a flattened cone, that is, with very little rise
in it, and consisted of strips of corrugated iron, bolted down
securely, to resist high winds, upon an inner roof of timber, almost
as thick as the walls.
Surmounting it was an iron stove-pipe, and a skylight was set in
each of the four gentle slopes.
All around the house were set palisades--stout trunks of trees
driven firmly into the shoal, like the piles supporting the building
itself.
These palisades completely ringed the “castle” round, and were not
more than nine inches apart anywhere, while they all stood about
three feet above the water. Consequently they formed an outer
rampart or stockade, which would prevent possible assailants in
canoes or rafts getting in under the windows.
There was a wide gateway, fastened by a strong padlock and chain, in
these palisades, just in front of the platform or landing stage, and
the space within the enclosure was large enough to admit of the ark
being kept inside.
All the piles under the edges of the house, moreover, were
strengthened, as well as made into an inner ring of defense, by
braces and cross-timbering closing up the spaces between them. Thus
a boat could not pass under the house except through another,
smaller gateway contrived in them, and also secured by a padlock.
Mrs. Arnold had, of course, on this occasion left the outer
gateway--that in the palisades--merely hooked to; and, freeing it
with a pole, she and her niece and daughter, amid Sergeant Dick’s
loudly expressed admiration, deftly maneuvered the ark within, and
ran its bow up to a short wooden ladder hanging from the verandah.
Muriel sprang nimbly up the hanging ladder on to the verandah of the
house, and the sergeant mounted quickly after her. Then Mrs. Arnold
pushed the scow backwards with so vigorous and dexterous a push with
her pole, that the stern of the craft was carried well out again
through the gateway in the palisades. She and Jenny meant to convey
the horses and buggy to the islet, and stable them there.
“I knew you would be keenly interested in our lake home,” said
Muriel, as she lifted the latch of the door of the building, and
ushered her companion into the living-room. “Now if you will sit
down in that easy chair of Uncle Alf’s, I will soon get you
something to put new life into you, and then re-dress your wound.”
“No, no, there is no need, I assure you. My hurt is so slight it
will do very well dressed as it is, until I reach the Indian
Reservation, and can have it attended to at my leisure. And as for
alcoholic refreshment I never take anything of that nature. A glass
of cold water or a cup of milk will be all sufficient, thank you. I
am really more curious to be shown over your wonderful lake-home,
than I am thirsty or exhausted.”
“Oh, I will soon gratify your curiosity then,” Muriel laughed; and,
going to a cupboard or pantry at one end of the living-room, she
reappeared promptly with a jug of milk, from which she filled a
tumbler she took off a rude dresser, standing at the back of the
apartment.
As she did so, Sergeant Dick looked around this, and saw that, with
the pantry, it took up the whole front of the house.
It showed signs, however, of being regularly divided into three
compartments, for two rods ran across the ceiling at about the same
distance from either end, and on these rods were hung thick, rather
shabby curtains, on rings.
Right round the three outer walls of the room ran a “bank,” almost
as high as the sills of the windows--that is breast high.
“You are wondering what that high bank all around is for?” asked the
girl, as he drank off the glass of milk, and just as if she had read
his thoughts. “That is to form an additional breastwork against shot
penetrating, in case of a siege. We keep it filled, you will see, if
you peep in, chiefly with firewood for the stove.”
Dick looked the astonishment he felt; and Muriel now led him through
a door, which stood between two others.
“The other two doors,” she said, “lead into bedrooms. This door, as
you see, leads into a central passage or hall, from which all the
other rooms open. You will notice it is lighted by a skylight. It is
here that we women would be placed in case of a siege so as to be
out of danger--I don’t think,” she added, laughingly.
John Dick saw that there were no less than six doors around him,
including the one he had just come through.
“This is--” Muriel was beginning, advancing to the first door on her
right, when there dully resounded in their ears two gunshots in
rapid succession, evidently fired some distance away. The shots were
followed after a momentary pause by two more.
Muriel started violently, and gasped hoarsely:
“_There is something wrong!_ That’s our danger-signal--four shots
fired like that!”
She wheeled and darted back into the living-room, followed by the
sergeant.
They flew to the nearest window, which was open to admit the air,
and looked out.
The ark, which could not possibly have had time to get to the islet,
was only a short distance from the “castle.” Mrs. Arnold stood in
the stern with a rifle in her hands.
She saw their faces at the window, and immediately stabbed her
finger excitedly towards the southern end of the lake, and bawled
with all the strength of her lungs:
“Your uncle and the lads--chased--_chased by Indians_!”
With a half-stifled ejaculation, Sergeant Dick flung open the front
door beside him, and sprang out on to the verandah.
Muriel was immediately beside him; and, looking in the direction her
aunt had pointed, they saw two canoes, containing three or four
white persons apiece, paddling madly for the “castle,” while behind,
just rounding the bend in the shore of the lake, appeared several
more canoes full of Indians, all half-naked and bedecked in
war-paint and feathers.
CHAPTER V--A RUNNING FIGHT
“It is what I expected and feared,” groaned Sergeant Dick; “the
Indians of the Paquita Reservation have revolted over the delay of
the Government in sending them the promised compensation for the
wrongful arrest of their chiefs last year in regard to these White
Hood outrages.”
“Pray Heaven that my uncle and cousins will be able to gain the
shelter of the ‘castle,’” panted Muriel. “My two cousins-in-law, the
wives of my cousins Abel and Aaron, are with them. What can we do to
help them?”
“Nothing as yet that I can see,” rejoined Dick; “they are too far
off for the carry of a rifle. Ah, they can hold their own, and will
win here safely, I think.”
Seven puffs of smoke had spurted from the two leading canoes.
Evidently the shots had found human billets in the pursuing crafts,
for two of these yawed wildly, and were run foul of by two of their
fellows with such force that all four canoes were upset, and their
occupants flung into the water.
And then from the right-hand side of the pair on the “castle”
verandah--from a point on the western shore, somewhat to the
northward--came the echo, loud and distinct, of the fusillade from
the fugitive canoes--seven separate reports in quick succession.
Sergeant Dick was surprised at the sharp-cut clearness of the echo,
and could almost have believed that it was no echo, but that seven
shots had been fired at the point whence the sound came.
But for that wonderful echo the reports of the fugitives’ rifles
would have been unheard by the two on the verandah of “Water
Castle,” and the pair in the ark. It accounted also for their
hearing the alarm-signal fired so far away down the lake.
Muriel read in the young trooper’s face his amazement at the echo,
and said:
“It is a curious phenomenon, and was known long before my uncle
built this house. A shot fired anywhere round the margin of the lake
is repeated from that shore and tossed to our ears here as if the
sound came directly from there.”
“Wonderful!”
“That was one of the reasons why my uncle chose this particular site
for his fortress. Of course, he and his sons, aided by some of the
other settlers and their cowboys, made the shoal by dumping into the
lake at the spot boatloads of rock blasted from the hills behind the
woods yonder.”
She pointed to the shore whence the echo had come.
“There are a lot of great cliff-like rocks over there. You can see
some of them peeping above the trees, and it is supposed that the
echo comes from them. The Indians used to call this lake ‘The Lake
of the Wonderful Echo.’”
A ringing chorus of derisive laughter now came across from the
western shore, clearly the echo of that with which Trapper Arnold
and his four sons and two daughters-in-law, in their canoes, had
hailed the temporary discomfiture of their red-skinned foes.
Sharp on the laughter came the echoing crash of rattling volley
after volley, broken occasionally by a stray shot or two.
Sergeant Dick and Muriel, even while they had been discussing the
wonderful echo, had seen the two fugitive canoes simply spouting
smoke and flame for several seconds, pouring in a ceaseless fire
from every rifle they contained into the embarrassed Indians, who
could be seen thrown into the utmost confusion.
Only one or two redskins replied to the devastating fire of their
white adversaries, and they were quickly silenced.
All the pursuing canoes fell behind; and, amid triumphant hurrahs
and more derisive laughter borne to the ears of those in the ark and
on the castle-verandah by the remarkable echo, the fugitives came on
again with redoubled speed in their direction.
In a few minutes the fleeing whites had put a considerable distance
between themselves and their red foes, who, making no further
attempt to pursue, fired after them in a desultory, enraged way.
“Hurray! Hurray! Your uncle and the lads and their wives have beaten
them off, Muriel!” roared Aunt Kate from the ark.
And she and Jenny now, having put that clumsy craft about, stood
away at full speed, with the wind abeam, to meet the fugitives.
“Yes, thank Heaven they have beaten them off!” cried Muriel. “The
red ruffians will probably now abandon the chase. My uncle and
cousins are safe.”
“The Indians are not in any great numbers,” said Sergeant Dick,
shading his eyes from the dazzling rays of the setting sun as he
peered in the direction of the fighting. “That means, I suppose,
that most of the bucks are raiding and murdering elsewhere. God help
the inmates of the more lonely ranches that the painted demons may
attack.”
The police officer and the girl remained on the verandah, watching
the ark and the two fugitive canoes rapidly approach each other, and
the discomfited redmen gradually evolve some order among themselves
again, and follow more warily, keeping up a dropping but impotent
fire at long range.
Slowly the red sun sank from sight behind the cliffs from which the
wonderful echo came; then rapidly the red streaks died out of the
western sky and dusk began to settle down over the lake and the
woods enclosing it.
It was almost dark, and the ark and the two leading canoes had
nearly met, when Muriel Arnold suddenly uttered a startled cry.
She had brought a pair of binoculars from the living-room, and was
attentively watching the ark and the canoes of her people through
it.
“More Indians! A great fleet of canoes has just come round the
southern bend, sergeant,” she gasped, handing Dick the glasses.
He looked through them and saw, as she had said, a great flotilla of
canoes--fully forty or fifty--rounding the bend and paddling swiftly
to join the half-dozen craft which had originally been chasing the
trappers.
“By Jove!” he murmured. “We are in for it with a vengeance. Thank
goodness your people have almost met, and the ark sails swiftly with
the wind on her beam. She’ll have it the same coming back, of
course. I wouldn’t have given her credit for so much speed. She can
outstrip a canoe no matter how fast it is paddled.”
“That is so, sergeant,” gleefully exclaimed Muriel. “We have often
run races, Jenny and I, or one of my cousins-in-law in the ark
against the canoes, manned by as many as they could hold. Some of
the cowboys and ranchmen from the nearest ranches have occasionally
taken part in the race--helped man the canoes. And the ark has
always won; that is if anything like a fair wind were blowing, of
course.”
Somehow, Sergeant Dick was not altogether pleased to hear that the
cowboys and owners of the nearest ranches came to “Water Castle” at
times, and were so friendly with its occupants.
He fell to wondering, even while he watched the exciting scene
transpiring upon the southern end of the lake through the
binoculars, whether any of the said cowboys or ranchmen came on
account of the lovely girl beside him, attracted by her beauty and
charm of manner. And he pictured, with a certain twinge of
heartburning and jealousy, her graceful form sitting on the verandah
with several handsome, dare-devil young cow-punchers bending
admiringly over her.
An awful, piercing, long-drawn-out yell or screech rang suddenly in
the ears of the pair on the verandah. It was the echo of the
war-whoop of the newly-arrived redmen.
Much has been written and told of the terrible battle-cry of the
American Indian, but one who has never heard it can have no
conception really of its terror-inspiring and nerve-shattering
shrillness and duration.
It has been likened to the shriek of “some maddened steam-engine,” a
long-drawn piercing screech, modulated by the fingers placed as
stops over the mouth. And it has been said that buffaloes on hearing
it have been known to sink in terror to the ground, and bears to
topple from a tree.
The effect of such a scream issuing in chorus from the throats of a
hundred or more painted savages, deservedly dreaded for their
ferocity and their cunning, might well strike panic to the hearts of
the first white settlers in the wild and woolly west. Especially
when such knew it was but the prelude to the fiercest of bloody
warfare, which, if successful, meant worse horrors--torture in the
most fiendish way before death came as a happy release.
No wonder then that Muriel Arnold shuddered, trembled from head to
foot, and clapped her hands over her ears, with agonized horror upon
her face, to shut out that horrible, ringing, thrilling scream
echoed from the western shore.
“Quick!” cried Sergeant Dick, “we must barricade the windows--put
the house everywhere in a fit state to resist a fierce siege. Those
hundred and more redmen are not going to quit here without a furious
and determined effort to capture or destroy this place and all
within it. We can do nothing as yet to succor your relations, Miss
Arnold, but we can get all in readiness, before their arrival, to
beat off the savages, or at any rate hold the wretches well at bay.
Ah, see!”
And he pressed the binoculars into the hands of the girl.
“The ark has met your uncle and cousins, and they are getting aboard
her. You may count them safe now from all pursuit so long as the
wind lasts; and it is not likely to drop for some time, blowing as
hard as it is. Come! We’ll see to all the windows--make preparations
for a possibly long and determined siege by the craftiest enemies
ever known.”
The first war-whoop of the more distant body of redskins was
answered by another from the half-dozen leading canoes--the original
pursuers, who now concentrated a heavy fire upon the ark as she took
aboard the fugitives.
CHAPTER VI--THE TRAPPER AND HIS SONS
Muriel waited to dart a glance through the glasses in the direction
of her relatives before following the police-sergeant into the
house.
She saw the ark lying almost broadside on, in the act of putting
about, with her cousins and cousins-in-law helping each other on to
the stern-quarter from the two canoes.
A sufficiently wide and high screen had been put up by her aunt to
cover Jenny at the tiller; and, from behind this shelter, Aunt Kate
herself was rapidly firing at the Indians in the leading canoes,
holding them well in check.
The strange echo from the western shore wafted the sounds of the
brisk exchange of shots to Muriel’s ears.
The screen her aunt and Jenny used was as big as two cabin doors
placed side by side. Several inches thick, and covered on both sides
with sheet iron, it was as much as two ordinary men could lift, yet
Aunt Kate had moved it with ease by herself.
It had two collapsing or folding legs on one side, like the back
legs of a pair of steps, so that it would stand upright. Furthermore
it was loopholed for rifle-fire.
Uncle Alf and his sons and daughters-in-law, as they scrambled
aboard from the canoes, were sheltered by the cabin from the fire of
their red enemies. Some of them, rushing inside the two
compartments, at once replied to it briskly--aided their mother in
keeping the assailants back while the canoes were got in.
Then round the scow was turned, the screen astern being moved with
the tiller to keep it or rather those at it still covered, and back
the craft came bowling, with bellying sail, towards the “castle”
again.
Muriel, half-laughing, half-crying with relief and satisfaction, now
ran inside the house after Sergeant Dick.
“Where are you, sergeant?” she called, and he answered from one of
the back bedrooms.
“My uncle and cousins are all safe aboard the ark, and are making
here as fast as the wind can blow them,” she called back. “Of course
they could not hope to hold their own in the ark against so many
canoes. The only thing is to defend the ‘castle’ to the bitter end.”
She passed through, as she spoke, into the central passage, from
which the six rooms of the “castle” all opened, and joined the
sergeant in the left-hand back bedroom.
That apartment contained four small square windows, two in the rear
wall, and two at the side.
Sergeant Dick had already secured two out of the four windows by
letting down sliding shutters set within the embrasures. These
shutters were, like the tiller-screen used on the ark, of stout wood
faced and backed by iron plating, and they were fastened in
position, when let down, by strong bolts, so that they could not be
easily forced from without.
The windows, being of the casement type, opened inward, and could be
hooked back against the wall. In each shutter was a loophole for
firing through.
Sergeant Dick noticed that the corner forming the outside angle of
the house was rounded off by an extra vertical balk of timber,
fitted triangular-wise into it, thus greatly increasing the
thickness of the two outer walls just there.
As the window on either hand was only a mere step from the corner, a
man stationed there could with ease defend both the back and side of
the house; and the extra thickness of the rounded angle would render
his position still more snug and safe.
“This is my married cousin Abel’s bedroom,” explained Muriel, as she
let down one of the shutters and shot home the two bolts on it.
“You’ve seen to all the windows in--which other room?”
“The one through that door,” replied John Dick, pointing towards the
front of the house.
Another door, alongside the one the girl had come in, led into a
bedroom between that they were in and the living-room.
There were no fewer than three doors in every room in the house, so
that it was possible to make a complete circuit of this without
utilizing the central passage, the idea being to enable the inmates,
in case of a siege or other emergency, like fire, passing quickly
from one room to another.
“Aaron and Deborah’s room,” Muriel said. “Come then, the bathroom
must be our next concern.”
She led the way through the third door into a room somewhat smaller,
fitted up with a large enameled iron bath--a piece of furniture
which considerably surprised Sergeant Dick to find in a Wild West
home of such limited dimensions, especially when built over a lake.
This apartment had its three doors like all the others, one in each
of the inner walls, and having shuttered and bolted the two windows
in it, the sergeant and Muriel went on into the next room.
“This is the room my cousin Jenny and I share,” explained the girl.
Had she not told him, Sergeant Dick would have guessed as much from
the female articles of dress and finery hanging around, as well as
the general subtle atmosphere of daintiness that prevailed.
Pictures hung on the walls here, including a pretty water-color
sketch of a lovely woman in evening dress.
There were _four_ windows in this room, and they had all to be
shuttered and made fast in like manner to the others. Then the man
and girl entered Uncle Alf and Aunt Kate’s bedroom adjoining,
secured the two windows there, and, passing through yet another
door, found themselves back in the living-room, the windows of which
they likewise secured.
“Now there only remains the front door,” said Muriel, adding, with a
laugh, “and we can’t very well fasten that up until my uncle and
aunt and the others are all safe inside with us.”
She stepped out again on to the verandah. And Dick, following her,
saw that the ark was coming on fast to the “castle,” and was not a
quarter of a mile away now, while the Indian canoes, although
paddling their swiftest in her wake, were fully half a mile off.
Laughing softly and yet tremulously over the escape of her relations
from their pursuers, Muriel remained at the front door with the
sergeant, while the ark drew nearer and nearer, until at last it was
close enough for its occupants to exchange greetings with her and
Dick.
These greetings were naturally curt and scant.
Sailing up to the open gateway in the palisades, Uncle Alf and his
sons warped the ark in by means of boathooks. Then the gate was
padlocked behind the craft, and she was drawn by a rope, which
Sergeant Dick threw from the verandah, alongside the hanging-ladder.
“Glad to have ye here, sergeant,” greeted Uncle Alf--a huge,
grizzled Hercules of a man--as he sprang up the steps and grasped
Dick’s hand cordially. “The more pairs of eyes behind the sights of
rifles, and hands to use the weapons, the better, in the face of
that crowd of painted, blood-thirsty rips. Ye’re more’n welcome,
sergeant.”
“’Specially if ye can shoot as straight as most of you troopers
can,” grinned the eldest son, Abel.
The rude witticism was received by all with a merriment that spoke
volumes for their dauntlessness, in the face of the red peril coming
on so fast behind them.
The ark was hurriedly moored alongside the verandah, the cabin doors
being locked with ordinary keys and then padlocked as well, so that
they might not be easily burst in if the savages got aboard.
The iron-plated tiller shield was brought into the house, and all
withdrew within this. Then the door was not only locked and bolted,
top and bottom, but also barricaded with stout logs, put
transversely across it, at intervals of only a few feet, within iron
sockets screwed on to the doorposts.
Sergeant Dick and the four women did the barricading, while the old
trapper and his four stalwart sons--all big, powerful men like
himself--hastily arranged as to where each of them should be
stationed.
Bella and Deborah Arnold, Muriel’s two cousins-in-law, had both of
them a certain amount of flamboyant beauty allied to a
devil-may-care air, well suited to the rather picturesque, if
unconventional, costumes they wore.
They were dressed like cowgirls, in short skirts, “wide-awake” hats,
and top boots; and round their waists they had cartridge-belts
supporting cases containing automatic pistols, while slung on their
backs were heavy Winchester repeaters.
“The pelts will be safe enough in the ark,” said old Alf. “The
painted rips are not likely to get inside the palisades ag’in our
rifles. If they do they’re more welcome to the pelts than to our
scalps. Now, sergeant, you and me ’ull defend this ’ere room, the
front of the house, with the old woman and Muriel. Abel, my eldest
son, will go to his bedroom, and hold the back and the right side of
the house with his wife. And, Amos, you will take your stand in the
middle room on the right-hand side--your brother Aaron’s room. Aaron
and Deborah, you two will take Muriel and Jenny’s room; and, Abner,
your mother’s and my room. Jenny, you will remain in the central
passage with all the doors open, and be ready to go to the aid of
any one who needs you, take round fresh ammunition, or refill the
water-buckets if necessary.”
Sergeant Dick, used as he was to the giving and receiving of
commands, as well as to prompt decision and arrangement in crises
like the present, was surprised in no small measure at the
military-like precision of the old trapper, as the latter thus
ordered the defense.
He had fully expected that all would look to him to do this.
But, doubtless, Dick told himself, Old Man Arnold had planned the
defense of the place repeatedly, and all his sons and daughters were
well schooled in the _rôles_ they were to play in it.
They had not long been at their posts--with jugs of drinking water
and water-buckets, in case of fire, placed handy--when the Indian
flotilla came within gunshot in the rapidly deepening darkness.
It at once divided into two parties, each taking opposite sides of
the lake, clearly so as to surround the “castle.”
CHAPTER VII--HOWLING WOLF
“They will land on Stable Islet, sure, and try and carry off the
horses there,” growled Uncle Alf. “They’ll tow the beasts off,
swimming, behind a canoe.”
“Better that,” said Muriel, “than that they should kill the animals
or burn them alive in the stable. Poor old Dobbin and Betty. I’ll
never see you again, I expect.”
“Wait,” said Sergeant Dick. “I will speak to the Indians. It is my
duty to. Perhaps I can pacify them--prevail on the mad fools to
abandon the warpath and return peacefully to the Reservation.”
Alf Arnold guffawed derisively.
“Mout as well try to reason with tigers that hev tasted or smelt
blood,” he said. “They’ll not listen to you, sergeant, but be far
more likely to give ye a volley. You’ll never be so dodrotted
foolish as to put your nose outside the door?”
“It is my duty as an officer of the law to try and avert bloodshed
and reason with them, and I mean to,” answered Dick quietly. “I am
going to unbar the door again.”
“Don’t show yourself, sergeant, for Heaven’s sake,” implored Muriel,
“or if you must, display a white flag first, and--and stand just
within the door, ready to skip behind it if they show any signs of
firing on you.”
She ran to the table-drawer, as Dick started unbarring the door, and
took out a folded, newly washed and ironed white tablecloth.
“Your blood ’ull be on your own head, sergeant,” said Uncle Alf.
“You are asking for it if you go outside that door. Still, in this
darkness you’ve a chance--just a chance--of coming in again unhurt,
mebbe.”
“What’s that? The sergeant going out to talk to ’em?” called the
youngest son, Abner, from his station in his parents’ bedroom. “He
must be dotty.”
“There’s one thing you’ve forgotten, father,” sang out the other
unmarried son, Amos, from the room opposite. “The skylights.”
“Jumping snakes, so I had! Jenny and Muriel--no, Amos, you’d better
see to ’em. You can be spared from your loophole long enough to,
sure, ’specially as the sergeant here’s agoin’ to hold ’em in talk
an hour or two. Ha, ha, ha!”
His sons within hearing and Jenny echoed his laughter; and Amos came
out into the central passage, and, opening a cupboard door in it,
passed inside.
Within the cupboard was a sloping ladder leading up to a trap-door
in the flat ceiling or inner log-roof.
As soon as he had unfastened the front door, Sergeant Dick stepped
out onto the verandah or landing-stage, and waved the tablecloth to
and fro. Muriel had tied the improvised flag of truce to the muzzle
of his rifle.
Putting his open left hand to his mouth trumpet-fashion, he roared
at the top of his voice:
“My redskin brothers, I want speech with you. I am a policeman, a
sergeant of the Royal Mounted Police. Can you hear me?”
It was so dark now that he could hardly make out the black smudges
the canoes made upon the water; and he feared that the Indians would
not be able to discern his figure against the background of the
“castle,” in spite of his red coat.
No answering hail came back from the canoes; but he was satisfied
that his voice had carried to the ears within them.
And the Indians could hardly fail to observe his white flag, if not
himself.
“Miss Arnold,” he called within the doorway, “will you take this
electric torch from me and shine it upon me so that they may be able
to see me plainly?”
“Oh, no, no! That will be to make a target of yourself--to show you
up plainly as a mark for their bullets.”
“Do as I ask. They are coming in; they see the white flag.”
“I can’t have that there door open too long, sergeant,” called out
Uncle Alf. “You know redskin cunning, and I ain’t agoin’ to allow
’em to come in too close with that door open, nor without afirin’ on
’em neither.”
Muriel, without further demur, tremblingly took the proffered
electric torch from Dick and, standing inside the doorway, flashed
it upon his red-coated figure.
“You see and hear me, my redskin brothers,” John Dick shouted again.
“Go back to your wigwams and squaws and papooses, like sensible men,
and give up your foolish idea of going on the warpath, and so
bringing down upon you the terrible vengeance of Government. What is
your quarrel with us white men? It was not the fault of the fathers
of this land, of the Canadas, that the money was not paid before. It
was the delay of our brothers over the frontier--of the Fathers of
the United States. And the money has been sent you now, as I can
swear. My redskin brothers know that they can believe the word of an
officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”
“The chief, Howling Wolf, will speak to the redcoat officer,” came
back a faint shout.
“Mind yourself, sergeant. Howlin’ Wolf’s a chief with no good
reputation to lose. He’s the wickedest of the hull boilin’ lot of
’em red-skinned varmint on Paquita Island, though he ain’t there
now, more’s the pity; for he’s to be dreaded more’n all the others
yonder.”
“Yes, be on your guard, sergeant, for Heaven’s sake. We’ve all heard
of Howling Wolf’s ferocity and cunning,” added Muriel. “I feel sure
you are only risking your life to no good. You’ll not turn them from
their purpose after my uncle and cousins killing some of their
number.”
“That’s right,” chimed in Aunt Kate in her deep, siren-like voice.
“You and the lads, Alf, just now down the lake, sent some on ’em to
the happy hunting-grounds, didn’t ye? It looked so to us, anyways.”
“Sure we did, a good half-dozen on ’em; and more carry the marks of
our bullets on ’em, if they haven’t got the lead still under their
skins. Haw, haw, haw! You’ll never pacify them now, sergeant. They
thirst for our blood in revenge, and they’re not to be turned away
by mere words, as you may find to your cost. But a willful man will
have his way; and, as I said afore, if anything happens to ye, your
blood is on your own head.”
All the canoes remained as stationary black smudges afar off, except
one, which came speeding swiftly towards “Water Castle.”
It came on without a word from any of its occupants, who Sergeant
Dick was soon able to discern were four in number, to all
appearances.
And then suddenly a jet of flame leaped like a fiery bowsprit from
the curved prow of the canoe; and, even as the report of a rifle
rang over the silent waters, waking echoes far and near out of the
black night, Sergeant Dick heard the “zip” of a bullet, felt the
wind from it fan his right cheek, and heard it clang against the
iron-plated tiller-screen which had been set just within the
doorway.
Rebounding upwards on account of the backwardly slanting angle at
which the screen stood, the leaden messenger ended its flight by
burying itself in the wooden ceiling of the living-room.
Muriel screamed, and Sergeant Dick was within the house at a bound.
“Miss Arnold, are you hurt at all?” he asked, anxiously, catching
her in his arms as she reeled against the door.
“No, no; but you?”
His reply that he was untouched was drowned to all other ears but
hers by the sharp “crack-crack-crack!” of the rifles of Uncle Alf
and Aunt Kate as they returned the treacherous shot, concentrating a
ceaseless fire for several seconds upon Howling Wolf’s canoe.
But the four paddlers had promptly thrown themselves prone in its
bottom, and in the thickening darkness the craft presented but an
indifferent mark, so that it was doubtful if a single shot struck
it.
Instantly the dreaded war-whoop of the savages pealed forth, awaking
still greater echoes than the rifle-fire. And, like a pack of hounds
let loose, all the black, indistinct smudges behind the chief’s
canoe came racing for “Water Castle.”
“Quick, secure the door there!” roared Uncle Alf. “Ye see, sergeant,
the folly of your attempt to palaver with ’em.”
Amos came rushing from the ladder-cupboard in the central passage,
and roughly jostled Sergeant Dick aside from the rebarring of the
door.
“Get to your loophole,” he snarled, resentfully, “and show your
mettle wi’ your rifle. You mout hev bin the death of the gal.
Muriel, you take another window! I’ll see to the securing o’ the
door.”
CHAPTER VIII--THE SIEGE OF “WATER CASTLE”
Though inwardly resenting Amos Arnold’s behavior and words, Sergeant
Dick at once went to one of the windows in the front of the house,
and thrust his rifle through the slit in the armored shutter.
Not a rifle “barked” now; all the shooting had ceased. The inmates
of the “castle” were reserving their fire until the canoes should
draw near enough to allow of their taking fairly accurate aim in the
darkness; and the Indians, after that first wild whoop of the onset,
gave their whole attention to getting close in.
There were six windows in the front, and two more to either side, of
the living-room, which therefore contained ten loopholes, as well as
the door.
Uncle Alf had posted himself in the west front corner, and his wife
was in the corresponding corner on the east side.
Sergeant Dick and Muriel took a window on either side of the door;
and Amos, having quickly made this fast again, rushed back to his
prearranged station in his brother Aaron’s bedroom.
Howling Wolf and his four companions, lying prostrate in their
drifting canoe, were the first to resume firing. Five streams of
fire spurted simultaneously from the shapeless smudge their craft
now appeared in the gloom, and as many bullets thudded harmlessly
against the logs of the “castle,” and buried themselves in the thick
walls.
At once all four whites in the front room focused their rifles upon
the canoe and poured in volley after volley.
In the hope of putting a swift termination to the revolt by killing
Howling Wolf, who was evidently, from what he had heard of the man,
the chief promoter and fomenter of it, Sergeant Dick aimed at the
prow where he believed the Indian chief lay.
All his shots flew true to their mark, and on his third shot
striking the craft four dark figures were seen to jump up in it and
literally throw themselves overboard.
Such was their mad haste to get into the comparative safety of the
water that they overset the canoe, and it floated bottom upwards.
“Hurray! One of ’em’s settled, that’s pretty sartin,” yelled Old Man
Arnold, gleefully. “Only four leaped out. The fella in the bows
didn’t, and that should be Howling Wolf hisself.”
“Do you think he’d be fool enough to remain in the bows arter giving
himself away with his first shot?” asked his wife, contemptuously.
“I thought you knowed Indian cunning better nor that, Alf.”
“Anyways, one on ’em’s settled, and it’s as likely to be him as
not,” returned the old man testily.
All the defenders could now be heard firing rapidly--from every
quarter of the house. The Indians on the east side were the first to
reply to the fusillade, and those on the west side and in front
quickly chimed in.
But it was so inky dark now that only the flashes of the redmen’s
rifles revealed their whereabouts to their white foes, who were thus
firing almost at random.
Thud, thud, thud! The besiegers’ bullets rattled like hail against
the stout walls of the castle; but so thick were these that not one
entered.
Clang! An occasional shot found the iron-plated door or a shuttered
window.
On the other hand, the defenders, sighting swiftly in the direction
of a rifle-flash, were gratified again and again by hearing the
death-shriek or scream of pain from a stricken enemy; and Sergeant
Dick’s companions were quick to note that he never fired a single
shot but there came such an answer.
He had realized that it would be madness to hold his hand or seek to
spare the redmen, in the circumstances. It was their lives or the
lives of all in the “castle.”
Under cover of the now pitchy darkness the Indians were likely to
reach the house; and, once they were swarming about it in their
canoes, in such numbers as they were, nothing could prevent some of
them getting upon the roof or bursting in the windows and door.
They must be kept at bay at all costs.
Putting all pitying thoughts for the misguided wretches, therefore,
out of his heart, he grimly watched the successive rifle-flashes in
front of him, and shot back straight for one or another.
None of the other inmates of “Water Castle” knew of the fame and
nickname he had won among his fellow-troopers of the Mounted Police
for his deadly skill with the rifle, but “Sure-shot Jack Dick” never
deserved his reputation and _sobriquet_ better than he did now.
“Jumping snakes, sergeant, but you seem to be makin’ ’em squeal!”
shouted Old Man Arnold delightedly. “Dang me if I don’t hear a yelp
every time you fires!”
“That’s so,” cried Muriel, almost proudly. “I don’t believe he has
thrown away a single shot.”
“Good boy! Keep it up,” roared the lion-like old woman. “He has
cat’s eyes, sure. I wish I had. This blamed darkness beats me. Peg
away, lads! Keep it up or we’ll have the devils on us with this
blamed darkness. I wish them palisades outside were higher, Alf.”
“Reckon they’ll not get over ’em easy all the same, old woman. Say,
wish I had put up a searchlight or somethink of that kind on the
peak of the roof, so as to show up besiegers at night.”
But the hot fire maintained by the defenders, and particularly the
amazingly deadly shooting of Sergeant Dick, checked the onset of the
Indians. Canoe after canoe ceased paddling forward and turned about,
its occupants no longer caring to risk bringing a bullet out of the
darkness into their midst by shooting at the black shadow which
represented the stronghold of their enemies.
So many of their number had been hit that it seemed as if the
pale-faces could see in the dark, and, in their superstition and
ignorance, the redmen were inclined to believe that there was
witchcraft in such swift retribution whenever they fired a shot.
Their firing dwindled. Instead of pressing on to the storm of their
enemies’ stronghold, they began to circle futilely round it, firing
only an occasional shot and then paddling swiftly away to escape the
expected bullet in return.
“We’ve checked them. They’re keeping off, father,” yelled Aaron from
Jenny and Muriel’s bedroom, in the north-east corner of the house.
The words were still ringing in the ears of the four in the front of
the house, which, as already explained, faced southward down the
lake, when Sergeant Dick saw three or four large, roundish black
objects, like pumpkins--or, rather, like Swedish turnips with the
leaves sticking up in the air--suddenly appear as if by magic on the
edge of the verandah!
The strange spectacle was impressed as it were forever on the retina
of his eyes. Ever afterwards he could call up the strange vision at
will of those three or four large round, turnip-like, apparently
leaf-crowned objects, growing, as it seemed, along the edge of the
verandah.
As his startled eyes rested upon them, a horrified gasp burst from
Muriel at the window on the other side of the door, and a curse and
a roar of rage respectively from the lips of Old Man Arnold and his
wife.
The four turnip-like objects were the feather-crowned heads of four
Indians, who had swum silently in through the palisades up to the
house and had climbed up as many of the piles supporting the
verandah.
Even as the four defenders in the living-room of the “castle”
discovered them they swung themselves up like cats, by means of the
pillars of the verandah, on to this and made a dash at the windows.
Muriel, Aunt Kate, and Sergeant Dick had their rifle-barrels
clutched by the invaders. Old Man Arnold managed to whip his back
inside his loophole in time.
The assailants would not, of course, have been able to retain hold
of the rifle-barrels had the defenders not slackened their fire some
time before and allowed the metal to cool.
Swift upon their grab at the protruding tubes, the redmen hurled in
with unerring aim through the loophole-slits a knife or a tomahawk.
It was assuredly only because Providence was watching over the fates
of Sergeant John Dick and Muriel Arnold in that hour that they did
not have a knife apiece buried to the haft in their faces, standing
looking out of the loopholes as they were.
As it was, Sergeant Dick had his left cheek gashed open by one knife
in its passage; and Muriel felt the missile directed at her pass
through her hair.
As for Mrs. Arnold, a tomahawk cleft her gray forelock short off
close to her scalp. Flying onward with the force of its fling, the
weapon struck and bit deep into the pantry door behind her, where it
stuck, quivering from blade to handle-butt.
Her husband, too, had a narrow escape. The tomahawk hurled in at him
whizzing close past his head, as he stumbled sideways after pulling
in his rifle.
As all four in the living-room stood for the moment appalled by
their own narrow escapes, and the belief that one or more of their
number must have been struck down, their assailants outside emitted
the bloodcurdling war-whoop in chorus.
Then, swift upon it, or, rather, while still giving vent to it, the
four daring braves wheeled, abandoned the rifle-barrels they had
grabbed, and, darting to pillars, began swarming up these to the
sloping roof like monkeys.
At either end of the verandah there was a low railing, and, by
stepping on this, two of them were clambering on to the roof almost
before the sergeant and his three companions in the living-room
could recover from the sudden attack.
The whoops of the quartet just outside were promptly answered by a
tremendous yell from the darkness all round about; and it was plain
the Indians in the canoes were again tearing towards the house, as
fast as they could ply their paddles, to help their intrepid and
crafty chief to rush the place.
For, perhaps needless to say, the four braves on the verandah were
Howling Wolf and three of those who had been with him in his canoe.
Aunt Kate had been right. The wily young sagamore had withdrawn from
the prow of the canoe, and wriggled aft, after firing his
treacherous shot at the police-sergeant. And Sergeant Dick might
have fired the three shots he put into the canoe’s prow uselessly
had his third bullet not struck a rifle left there and been
deflected sideways, so that it grazed the head of the fifth warrior
in the craft, stunning him.
On that, at the sagamore’s order, the others had jumped overboard,
and, when the canoe overset, Howling Wolf aided the unconscious man,
supported him on his shoulder, and suggested the daring move of
swimming silently up to the “castle” and taking the defenders in the
front of the house by surprise.
The four, as we have seen, brought off the stratagem fairly
successfully. They had put their senseless companion softly across
one of the ties of the gate in the palisades, had consulted and laid
their plans in the faintest of faint whispers as they had swum up to
these, then slipped through them. And only the proverbial white
man’s luck had saved the four defenders of the living-room from
being struck down, dead or dying, by their deftly in-flung tomahawks
and knives.
CHAPTER IX--THE ARK IN DANGER
Had the four defenders of the front of the “castle” been slain or
disabled through the loopholes by Howling Wolf and his three
companions, these would have got on the roof safely enough, and
might have been able to cause a sufficient diversion, and hold their
own there long enough, to enable their fellow-braves in the canoes
to come up.
But Sergeant Dick, quick to recover from the startling _coup de
main_, promptly thrust his rifle out through his loophole again, and
trained it on the brave nearest him. The man was in the act of
clambering up one of the middle pillars of the verandah.
Crack! The weapon spoke almost simultaneously, and, with a shrill
howl of pain, the Indian--none other than Howling Wolf himself--let
go his grip of the verandah roof, which he had just seized with one
hand, and slid down the pole as swiftly as if it were greased. He no
sooner touched the verandah again with his heels than he either
flung himself or fell headlong off it into the water.
Sergeant Dick swerved his rifle quickly on the man’s plunge, and let
fly at another of the invaders swarming up a pillar. A second
scream, of even bitterer agony, told every ear within hearing that
that shot also had found a true billet.
On that, one of the two remaining braves, who had gained the
comparative safety of the roof--thanks to the assistance of the side
railings and the consternation and unreadiness of the other three
defenders of the living-room--took a flying jump or dive into the
lake astern of the ark, evidently too scared to take advantage of
the situation he had won.
And a second or two later, the fourth Indian, not caring to remain
behind by himself, followed suit.
Then, even as Bella and Deborah, the two daughters-in-law of the
squatter, came rushing after Jenny into the living-room from the
back of the “castle,” to learn if their father and mother were hurt,
the rifles of the four brothers rang out and partly drowned the mad
yelling of the redmen paddling frantically for the spot.
“It’s all right, gals. Me and the old woman air not a bit hurt.” Old
Alf reassured his daughters-in-law and the weeping Jenny. “The old
woman’s had her forelock shorn off, but her scalp’s safe, and she
can wear a false front till the ’air grows ag’in. How are you,
Muriel, gal, and you, sergeant?”
“I’m unhurt, uncle,” gasped Muriel. “The knife only went through my
hair. It’s brought some of it down, and cut some of it; but that’s
all right. Did you escape scot free also, sergeant?”
“Not altogether, I must admit. It is nothing, however; the knife
blade just grazed my left cheek. Never mind that. Back to your
loops, every one of you, quick, or we’ll have the whole band of
redskins clambering over the palisades or breaking open the gate in
them. Ah! quick! Howling Wolf and the braves with him are trying to
make off with the ark!”
He was the only one of the four defenders of the living-room who had
not quitted his post or loophole.
The squatter, on hearing his wife cry out as the tomahawk shore away
her hair so close to her scalp, had at once turned his eyes in her
direction. He saw her fall heavily backwards, for so startled and
horrified was she that for the moment she did not quite comprehend
the narrow escape she had had and almost believed the top of her
skull had been cleft clean away.
The ax tore some of the hairs out by the roots in its passage as
well as cut others clean asunder, and the sudden wrench and sharp,
poignant pain of it, on top of her surprise and the horror of seeing
the ax flashing apparently straight for her forehead, practically
deprived her, strong, masculine woman though she generally was, of
the power of her limbs, and bowled her over like an actual blow.
Fully believing her killed--brained by the weapon--her husband and
Muriel had uttered cries of horror and grief unutterable, and flown
to her side. This accounted for Sergeant Dick being the only one to
fire upon the four daring invaders of the verandah.
At Dick’s fresh admonition and alarm, Aunt Kate, Uncle Alf, Muriel,
and the two sisters-in-law, with Jenny--all six--at once rushed to
the three loopholes before them--that is on the east side of the
front door--and peered out through these.
Before they could do so, there rattled out, above the firing from
the other quarters of the house, the sharp incessant popping of
Sergeant Dick’s service revolver.
Old Alf was the first of his party to look forth, and he saw--first,
the brave whom the sergeant had killed while climbing up the pillar,
lying stiff and motionless upon the verandah, and then the ark, in
the thick darkness, slowly swinging round her stern away from the
“castle.”
The craft was still fast by her head to the verandah, but she was no
longer lying parallel alongside this, but turning her stern away, so
as to lie at right angles to it.
Hanging head downwards over the stern bulwark, still in sight, was
the form of an Indian, and a great dark stain was growing in size
just below him upon the ark’s ribs. The hand of a second redskin
projected at a sharp, unnatural angle above the bulwark alongside.
Sergeant Dick, keeping watchful vigil at his loop, when the others
in the front of the premises had deserted theirs, had suddenly seen
three dusky forms rise above the off stern-quarter bulwark of the
ark, writhe or bound aboard with the swiftness and silence of cats
or snakes, and make a combined rush for the mooring-rope aft.
Before the sergeant had time to draw a bead upon any of the trio,
one Indian was slashing at the rope with a tomahawk, while the other
two were pushing hard, with their dripping rifles, upon the side of
the verandah, so as not only to tauten the mooring rope, and enable
their comrade the better to cut it, but also to get “way” or motion
on the craft’s stern, and force her round “head on” to the “castle”
as quickly as possible.
The rope parted at the second slash. The first indeed might have
done the trick had the savage wielding the tomahawk only been a
little less excited and eager; for no doubt the weapon was as
keen-bitted as a razor.
Even as the rope was severed, Sergeant Dick’s revolver began to
speak, and the two braves thrusting the craft away from the verandah
with their rifles crumpled up and fell dead. They dropped their
pieces over the side, and one of them nearly followed his weapon.
The third Indian--he who had wielded the ax--did not give the
sergeant a chance to hit him. At the first crack of the revolver, he
wheeled and stooping low--almost double--bolted, jumping from side
to side as he ran, round the deckhouse, and got behind it.
Along either side of the deckhouse ran a foot-board, about a foot
wide, on top of the bulwarks, with a handrail above to enable a
person to pass safely from stem to stern. Short ladders, fore and
aft, also gave easy access to the roof of the ark, which was not
high peaked or gabled like the conventional toy ark, but gently
rounded like a railway carriage-roof, or that of the cabin of a
small yacht.
It was Howling Wolf, the intrepid and enterprising, if ferocious,
Indian chief, who had again escaped the deadly fire of Sergeant
Dick. He had been only slightly wounded in his attempt to scale the
roof of the “castle.” The bullet had grazed his thigh, but the
sudden smart had momentarily paralyzed the muscles of the leg, and
so brought him down at a run.
The limb was now almost as good as his other leg--warmed up, as he
was with the battle fever, and thirsting to avenge the smart and the
loss of his braves.
This was the position of affairs when the other occupants of the
living-room of the “castle” looked out of the loopholes.
Before them was the ark, still held fast by the mooring-rope in the
bows, turning slowly at right angles to them with the drift of the
current, accelerated by the little “way” or push given to her stern
by the two Indians whom the sergeant had shot down. And round the
other side of the deckhouse, screened by it from the rifle-fire of
the rightful owners of the craft, was Howling Wolf, whose ax could
already be heard crashing upon the stout, sheet-iron-lined shutter
of the cabin window beside him.
All around, in the inky blackness, invisible canoes were speeding
up, propelled by madly whooping redskins, none of whom was replying
save by shouting, to the wild random shooting of the besieged.
CHAPTER X--AN UNEXPECTED ILLUMINATION
Old Alf Arnold gave vent to a roar of anger when he saw the position
of the ark.
“Thousand furies! That varmint will carry off the scow if he’s not
stopped. Help me unbar the door, quick, some of you! I’m going out
to purvent it. You two girls, Bella and Deborah, take your
brothers’, Amos and Abner’s, places in the side bedrooms, and tell
the lads to follow me. Sergeant, you’ll come too, won’t you? Kate,
Muriel, and Jenny, you three guard the loops here.”
“Oh, no, no, father, don’t go out! You are bound to be shot if you
show yourselves outside!” cried Jenny, in the wildest alarm.
“Yes. Let the ark take care of itself, uncle,” exclaimed Muriel,
also in the deepest anxiety. “The Indians in the canoes will pick
you off if you go out, and that one on the ark is powerless to run
off with her while she is fast by her head to the verandah. He will
not venture to show himself, to cut her loose.”
“No, but it will shelter the riptiles behind it at the palisades,
and a dozen of ’em may git over and swim to it; and then where’d we
be?” growled Aunt Kate, who had quite recovered apparently from the
shock of the loss of her forelock.
And the old woman rushed to the door with her husband, and began
hurriedly unbarring it.
Bella and Deborah raced off to take the places of their
brothers-in-law in the side rooms; and Muriel turned and whispered
something in Jenny’s ear.
“I’m with you, Arnold,” Sergeant Dick said quietly, though he still
stood at his loop, revolver in hand, refilling the discharged
chambers in the weapon, and, with his eye on the stern of the scow,
ready to fire if Howling Wolf showed himself.
The front door was thrown open, and instantly out rushed the old
squatter, automatic in one hand and rifle atrail in the other; and
after him ran Sergeant Dick, likewise armed.
Then, after a short pause, followed Abner and Amos, the two
unmarried sons.
The instant Old Alf and the sergeant appeared upon the verandah,
there were infuriated yells from the canoes in front of the “castle”
and a scattered volley was fired at them. But all the bullets
imbedded themselves harmlessly in the stout logs of the “castle”;
and, racing along the verandah unscathed, the two white men gained
the head of the ark, which, however, was now a good six feet or more
from the verandah--the full length of the mooring-rope there.
The squatter, balked, pounced upon the mooring-rope, and hauled
desperately upon it, bawling to the sergeant to lay hold also and
pull.
Instead, John Dick backed quickly to the “castle,” took a run, and
leaped out beside the rope towards the broad bluff bow of the scow.
He landed just within it on both feet. But he fell forward on his
hands and knees.
Up again the next second, he dashed towards the deckhouse, and,
before the cheer that greeted his fine jump from all who witnessed
it, was bounding up the forward ladder to the roof of the cabin.
He was now fully exposed to the fire of the Indians in the canoes,
but his form was not very distinct in the blackness of the night.
Moreover, the rapidity of his movements made him a still more
difficult target.
Panning along the same side of the deckhouse on which Howling Wolf
had been sheltering, Dick peered over, revolver ready cocked and
presented for a shot.
But the Indian chief was no longer on the side of the scow.
The sternmost shutter, swinging loose and wide open, told Dick where
he was--that he had forced the window and got into the cabin.
The ark was now at right angles with the verandah, and was slowly
swinging round into an obtuse angle with it. If permitted, the
current would eventually swing her right round, end for end--lay her
thus, parallel with the verandah again, but beyond it to the
southward.
“He’s got inside the cabin,” shouted Dick.
He sprang down the aft ladder, rushed to the door there, and
thundered upon it with his rifle-butt, on failing to burst it in
with his shoulder.
There were two loopholes in the stern bulkhead of the cabin, one on
either side of the door. But the Indian chief inside had had his
ammunition and firearms rendered useless by his immersions, and so
could not fire out on his daring white foe.
The deckhouse door was giving way before Dick’s frantic battering
upon it with his rifle-butt, and he could feel the ark moving
through the water up to the “castle,” as the old squatter and Amos
and Abner, lying prone on the verandah, pulled upon the bow-rope,
when there was a scrambling noise at the broken window, succeeded by
a loud plunge and splash in the water alongside.
Realizing that his position was getting too warm for him, Howling
Wolf had leaped out through the window into the lake again.
Sergeant Dick at once rushed to that side, but, filled with generous
admiration for the daring and persevering enterprise of the redman,
forbore to shoot at him when his head rose above the
surface--showing like a black ball upon the less dark surface of the
water.
Howling Wolf dived again immediately, and the shots, fired at random
in his direction by the less chivalrous squatters, only hit the
water harmlessly.
And now there burst a great flood of lurid light upon the scene--an
illumination which lit up the surroundings of the “castle” for a
considerable distance all round, beyond the palisading.
Sergeant Dick, astonished beyond measure, turned his head swiftly in
the direction whence the light emanated, half expecting to see the
“castle” on fire.
Instead, he saw, reared above the skylight on his side of the
apex-like roof of the “castle,” a great blazing tar barrel,
suspended by a small chain from a boathook stuck up through the
skylight.
The glare cast an awe-inspiring ruddy glow on everything, and seemed
to strike fire itself from the dark water flowing within the “dock.”
Not only did it show up the canoes, but their redskinned occupants
in the act, for the most part, of getting upon the palisades, and
lifting their light craft over into the “dock.”
Some of the Indians had slipped through the palisades, and were
swimming everywhere, all round, for the “castle.” But by far the
great majority were trying to get the canoes over. The top of nearly
every palisade was crowned by a half-nude copper-colored,
befeathered human form, lifting and straining, while around him,
within and without the palisading, others were swimming or clinging
to the timbers and trying to help him.
Two canoes had been lifted over and their late occupants were
clambering into them again, preparatory to following those swimming
for the verandah.
Sergeant Dick was unable to do more for a moment or two than stare
helplessly at the thrilling spectacle. But he was speedily brought
to a sense of his own danger by the crackle of over a dozen rifles
from the canoes beyond the storming line, and the thudding of as
many bullets into the bulkhead of the ark’s cabin behind him.
Muriel Arnold had bethought herself of the tar-barrel, faced as she
was with the problem how to provide an illumination which would show
up the besiegers--prevent them getting in their canoes within the
“dock,” and thus rushing the “castle” or ark. It was of the
tar-barrel she had whispered to Jenny; and, leaving Aunt Kate to
guard the partly open door of the “castle,” the two girls had rushed
to the ladder leading up to the loft.
The tar-barrel was stored there with other lumber. They had
hurriedly looped a chain round it and through the bunghole, and put
it, on the end of the boathook, through the skylight on the verandah
side of the house.
Jenny dropped a lighted match into the contents, and then she and
Muriel, exerting all their strength, thrust the boathook up, and
jammed it firmly so that it might not slip.
They had raced back, down the ladder, to the living-room, little
suspecting how near they came to costing Sergeant Dick his life by
the sudden and wholly unexpected illumination.
As the apex roof of the “castle” was covered with corrugated iron,
there was no risk of any fragments of the blazing barrel setting it
on fire; and the barrel swung well clear of the wooden staff of the
boathook, which was tipped with iron a good third of its length.
Sergeant Dick saw and felt that the ark was being drawn back by the
squatter and his two sons into its late moored position alongside
the verandah; and so he at once ran round to that side of the
deckhouse.
He stepped upon the narrow footboard bordering the cabin wall, and
was safe from the fire of all the Indians except those on the west
side of the “castle.” And as he sidled swiftly along the plank,
holding to the rail, like the driver or fireman of a locomotive
clambering round it, he presented a difficult mark again,
particularly in the dancing, uncertain glare of the tar-barrel.
He could see Old Alf, Amos, and Abner pulling on the inside bow and
shifting their grip along as the craft swung her stern slowly in
towards the verandah again.
But the sight of the swimmers making for the verandah, as well as
the two canoes within the palisading, told Sergeant Dick that the
best thing he and the three men heaving on the ark’s bow could do
would be to take refuge inside her.
The hail of bullets now being poured upon the ark and the front of
the “castle” from the reserve canoes outside the palisades seemed to
forbid the smallest hope of him or the other three getting back
safely within the house.
He therefore bawled at the top of his voice:
“Bar the door, Mrs. Arnold--Muriel--Jenny! Never mind us out here!
Arnold, we four must get inside the ark, and hold it.”
CHAPTER XI--THE DEFENSE OF THE ARK
Sergeant Dick knew that the old squatter had the keys of the cabin
doors upon him; that there would be no necessity for them to force
an entrance.
“Right you are, sergeant!” Arnold answered; and, as the side of the
ark bumped heavily against the verandah, the old man and his two
sons vaulted hurriedly aboard, and dashed at the door near them.
Even as the key rattled in the lock, and Old Alf pushed the door in,
Sergeant Dick sprang round the corner of the “house” or cabin.
Nevertheless, inside he was within an ace of being shut
out--purposely or accidentally--by Abner Arnold, who was slamming
the door in his face, when he flung himself bodily against it, and,
by main force, thrust it open sufficiently to slip inside.
“Did you want to shut me out?” he demanded, in fierce suspicion of
the young squatter. Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned
and helped to shoot home the bolts and put up the heavy wooden bars
which stood ready for the purpose.
Old Alf and Amos were rushing through into the second cabin, to make
sure of the door and broken window there.
The rattling of musketry continued unabatedly outside, and bullets
thudded against the door and the stout log-walls of the cabin like
hail. As soon as the door was secure, Sergeant Dick sprang to the
first loop on the south, or offside, of the craft, and looked forth.
He saw the plumed heads of several savage warriors ranged along the
bulwark of the scow. They were in the very act of clambering aboard!
As in the attack on the “castle,” he instantly decided to use his
automatic instead of his rifle, which, however, he had carried hung
upon his right shoulder, ready for instant use. While hurrying along
the footboard at the side of the cabin, he had seen to his
pistol--made sure that it was reloaded to its utmost capacity.
With ten lives in the deadly little weapon, he thrust its short
barrel out through the loophole, and opened a merciless fusillade
upon the Indians clambering aboard.
At every bark of the weapon there was an agonized scream outside.
Four of the redmen either lay head downwards over the bulwarks or
had fallen back into the lake, in less than as many seconds. The
others, with screams of dismay, whipped down again out of
sight--all, that is, in front of his loop.
But in the scow’s waist, and at her far end John Dick could hear the
triumphant yells of the Indians mingled with the crackle of his
fellow defenders’ revolvers.
Abner Arnold had remained at the door by which they had got in, and
was firing out through a loophole he had uncovered in it. A steel
slide was fitted into grooves over a horizontal slit, about two
inches wide, and six or eight long. Through this aperture the young
squatter had his revolver thrust, and was potting fiercely at the
Indians trying to climb over that end of the scow.
“You can hold your own, Abner?” the sergeant asked.
“Yes, curse you, yes!” was the fierce reply.
“Right. Then I’ll go along to the next cabin and see if your father
and brother need me.”
The cabin he was in was fitted up, in rather primitive style, as a
dining-compartment, or “saloon” and kitchen in one. A table-top was
hooked up within a couple of inches of the slightly rounded,
coach-like roof, and might be lowered by cords passing through rings
to the level of an ordinary table.
On either side of the cabin ran a banked seat, which could be
converted into two beds or berths--that is four in all--while there
were hooks for hammocks if there were any call for additional
sleeping accommodation.
Under the banked seats were lockers and drawers, most neatly made,
and on the four walls--over the doors and flanking these, as well as
on the two side walls--were little cupboards and all manner of
cooking utensils and other domestic equipage.
In one corner of the apartment stood a small American iron stove,
the pipe of which passed out through a hole in the eaves of the
roof.
Pursuant to his expressed intention, Sergeant Dick passed hurriedly
through the inner door into the other cabin, which was much better
furnished, and evidently reserved for the womenfolk. There was no
table hooked up, nor any stove, but there were banked seats for four
beds, as well as hooks for hammocks, a couple of
looking-glasses--the worse for frequent use--on the walls, a couple
of lift-up dressing ledges, etc., and four wardrobe cupboards, one
in each corner, for storage purposes, in addition to more lockers
and little cupboards.
John Dick took in only the faintest idea of the apartment, of
course. Naturally his thoughts were elsewhere at that moment than
with the structure of Old Alf Arnold’s strange houseboat.
He saw the old man firing out sideways, with a revolver, through a
loophole nearer him than the window with the broken shutter, and
Amos kneeling at the end-door, shooting through the lower loophole
in it. The younger man was casting anxious glances, ’tween whiles,
at the broken window, which gaped open--a square foot and more--for
any redskin foe to shoot in at.
As a matter of fact, several bullets whizzed in through it and
buried themselves with loud thuds in the opposite wall.
It was to prevent any of the Indians reaching the window that his
father was firing sideways, chiefly through the adjacent loops. Amos
had clearly run past the open window on hands and knees.
Neither he nor his father, Sergeant Dick saw, could be spared from
their posts to try to cover the broken window. Both men had their
hands full, for the time being at any rate, keeping the assailants
from getting aboard.
On the other hand it would not do for the sergeant himself to leave
Abner Arnold too long alone to hold the other cabin. Some of the foe
would be bound to return to the quarter left undefended, and if not
checked would smash in the two loops or shuttered windows at the
point.
With his usual promptitude and decision, the young sergeant of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police at once acted. He rushed forward to
where, by the light from without, he saw the dislodged shutter lying
upon the cabin floor, caught it up, and, stooping so as not to let
his head show above the sill of the opening, dashed up under this
and clapped the shutter, still fairly serviceable and intact, save
for its lack of fastenings, over the aperture.
As he thus closed this several bullets rattled on the outside of the
shutter, almost knocking it out of his hands. But he kept it pressed
tightly over the opening with one hand, and turned and shouted to
Old Alf:
“You run and help Abner in the other cabin, Mr. Arnold. I can manage
here.”
He knocked up the hook which held the slide over the loop or slit in
the shutter, with his pistol muzzle, while he kept the shutter
pressed over the open window with his left hand. Then he pushed
aside the slide and thrust the weapon out, peering forth at the same
time.
There came a loud shout of alarm from Abner, and Old Man Arnold,
wheeling, rushed back to the other cabin.
“They’ve cut us loose, father--Amos!” Abner bawled.
A redskin’s knife or tomahawk had slashed through the solitary
mooring-rope holding his end of the scow to the “castle” verandah,
and the craft began to drift on the current towards the southern
side of the “dock,” or palisaded enclosure.
It was no easy task Sergeant Dick had set himself--to hold up the
heavy steel shutter over the window, and at the same time fire out
through the loophole in it.
All the windows aboard the ark were constructed alike. They were
merely square casements, and in the ordinary way they would be left
open for light or air. The shutters--solid plates of steel an inch
or more in thickness--were fitted in grooves, which rose above them,
and could be dropped down easily over them on the inside and hooked
into position thus.
Howling Wolf had, of course, beaten the steel plate bodily out of
its grooves, and burst the hook away--no light achievement in the
circumstances.
Old Man Arnold had kept that quarter of the scow free of boarders,
but now, on the closing of the open window, which all the Indians in
the canoes opposite had been making their target, several redskins,
swimming alongside, attempted again to board.
The two canoes within the “dock” at the same time closed up and
ranged alongside on that same quarter, and every warrior in them at
once stood up and gripped the side of the scow, making to draw
himself up and over into it.
But in this intention the majority of them were frustrated by the
sudden and by them, as well as by the defenders, the unexpected
release of the scow. This, borne upon by the current as it was,
ceased merely turning or veering round as if pivoted at its bow, and
instead began to move away sidelong, bodily.
How it happened the occupants of the canoes themselves hardly had
time to comprehend, but their dangling feet helped no doubt in the
catastrophe which followed. For coming in contact with the offside
gunwales of their frail craft, they helped to kick these under water
as the inside gunwales rose up with the scow pressing hard upon
them.
In an instant both canoes had filled and sunk, leaving half their
late occupants clinging to the scow, and the other half struggling
in the water, into which they had dropped either from fright or for
lack of a secure hold on the bulwark over them.
CHAPTER XII--SAVED BY A WOMAN’S WIT
Sergeant Dick’s automatic at once spoke rapidly; and, shot through
the brain, three of the would-be invaders fell back from the
bulwark, while the others, fearing the same fate, voluntarily let go
and likewise disappeared.
“Hooray!” shouted Amos. “We’ve done ’em yit again. Keep the shutter
up just a little longer, sergeant, and I’ll be able to help ye.”
He vacated his kneeling posture at the door, slamming and hooking
the slide over the loop in it, and turned and looked wildly about
the cabin for a means of fastening up the shutter. But his dull wits
could think of none on the spur of the moment.
“You’ll have to drop it and let it sweat, sergeant,” he said. “I
don’t see how we can manage it arter all. Look ahere, I’ll take the
loop beside it and guard it that way, and you can take the door
’stead o’ me. The women in the ‘castle’ will pick off all the red
varmints who try to board us on t’other side, you see.”
Sergeant Dick could not help smiling grimly at the young man
resigning the post at the door to him. It was far the more perilous
position if the window he was at had to be left unshuttered.
None of these young squatters commended himself very much to the
police officer. One and all, though fierce and plucky enough, he had
already had plenty of evidence, would prefer to save his own skin at
his (the sergeant’s) expense.
Without a word, however, John Dick at once dropped the shutter again
to the floor, and almost heaved a sigh of relief at being thus rid
of its most tiring weight.
Then he flitted to the door, and knelt by the loop Amos had just
left. Amos, however, redeemed himself somewhat now in the sergeant’s
eyes, for seeing from the loop his father had been so lately firing
through that that side of the craft was free of invaders or
boarders, he at once rushed across the cabin to the other, and
looked out on that side also.
“Hooray! Hooray, sergeant!” he yelled. “There’s not a redskin aboard
on either side. I can see from end to end of the scow, and there
can’t be none at t’other end of cabin neither. I should say, Abner
and the Old Man air firing at the skunks in the water. Ay, give it
to ’em hot, now, sergeant! Don’t spare the skunks. Put a bullet
through every head in sight. Thunder! What’s that blaze out in the
middle of the lake? Cuss it! It’s on Stable Islet! The skunks have
landed a party there an’ fired the stables with the ’osses inside.”
“No, they are carrying off the horses, I can see from here, on two
rafts they have evidently made from some of the timber of the
stables.”
“We’ll have to let ’em go; we can do nothing to purvent ’em. We’ve
got our hands full with the varmints round us. Let ’em have it,
sergeant! Wipe out all who are inside the dock! Hooray! They’re
done, and air all trying to get away now.”
It was true. From the upper loophole in the door, Dick could see all
the redmen in the enclosure before him swimming away desperately for
the palisades, or clambering over these into the canoes waiting
outside.
Such of the Indians as had remained in the canoes were firing
through the palisades at both the ark and the “castle,” to try to
cover the retreat. But both these structures were bullet-proof, and
the excitement, flurry, and exasperation of the red sharpshooters
militated against any likelihood of their getting a shot home
through the tiny slits of loopholes in the shutters.
Almost directly in front of him, the sergeant could see out upon the
lake two large rafts--made of beams and boards, and what had
evidently been partitions between stalls in the stable and the
buggy-house, as well as doors, bound roughly together with rawhide
lariats.
The rafts were beyond Stable Islet, and so beyond the radius of the
illumination of the blazing tar-barrel hung out by Muriel and Jenny.
But a huge bonfire, composed of the flaming remains of the looted
and half dismantled stable and buggy-house lit up another great
patch of the lake, and showed the two captured horses, one on either
raft, surrounded by several Indian warriors paddling and steering
for the western shore.
A couple of canoes were also towing each raft, which, therefore, for
all its clumsy make, moved fairly quickly over the lake.
[Illustration: A HUGE BONFIRE SHOWED THE TWO CAPTURED HORSES.]
Amos Arnold, sharp on his own last words, had thrust his Winchester
repeater through the loop he stood beside, and started vengefully to
take potshots at every plumed head bobbing upon the water before
him.
Sergeant Dick, however, held his fire. He did not believe in such
cruel butchery as that, retribution though it might be called.
“Let the misguided poor wretches go,” he cried. “They’ve had enough
of it. We’ve given them a drubbing--a thrashing they are not likely
to get over in a hurry.”
He was pleased to note that only one rifle seemed to be firing now
from the front or verandah side of the house, although three rifles
had been until the besiegers turned tail. The single rifle could
only belong to the fierce old wife and mother of this tigerish
family.
Muriel and Jenny had been firing out upon the assailants up to now,
but, seeing their foes fleeing, they too were humanely forbearing to
shoot.
“What’s that?” howled Amos. “Let the wretches go! Spare ’em ’cos
they’re runnin’. Not much! Not me!”
And he continued to pot away. But with indifferent success, for the
light from the blazing tar-barrel was getting very bad--very jumpy
and feeble. The barrel was falling to pieces and dropping in flaming
fragments with loud hisses into the water, or rebounding from and
sliding down the iron roof of the “castle.”
Moreover, the swimmers dived incessantly or swam under water until
they reached the palisades, where many of them managed to slip
through instead of having to climb over.
For all their vindictiveness, too, the squatter and his two sons saw
that the current was carrying the ark against the southern end of
the enclosure, and comprehended the peril of allowing this to
happen. Partly screened from the fire of those within the ark by the
palisades, the redmen outside these would easily be able to board,
if it drifted alongside them. The little craft would be bound to be
taken. The Indians, by mounting on the palisades, would be able to
leap aboard in overwhelming numbers, get on the roof where they
could not be reached, and break through with their tomahawks.
“Quick!” shouted Sergeant Dick, on noting the danger simultaneously
with the other three. “We shall drift against the palisades if we
are not careful, and then it will be all up with us. Quick! The
other door! We must get out at all risks and use the sweeps, or we
are done for.”
As one man, the four defenders of the ark rushed to the door by
which they had entered its “house”--which door was still the nearer
to the “castle,” and now almost directly facing it.
Frenziedly the whole quartet flung themselves upon the bolts and
bars. One wrenched back the top bolt; another the bottom. Another
turned the key, and the fourth whipped out the top great wooden bar.
Then the other two bars were removed in like haste and the door was
thrown open.
Out into that end of the scow the four men burst, and seized upon
the two big oars or “sweeps” lying to either side. The cabin
screened them from their nearest foes--those lining the palisading
at the point whither they were drifting. But they were wholly
exposed, save when they stooped double, to the Indians on either
side of them, and in order to use the “sweeps,” they would have to
expose themselves. Not only that. They were now so close up to the
palisading that they might not be able to overcome the inertia of
their craft, plus the resistance of the current, which was dead
against them, in time to avert the threatened calamity.
Woman’s wit proved their salvation. But for it they must assuredly
have, all four, fallen victims to the fury of the already exulting
savages waiting for them. Using the sweeps, they would not have been
able to get back inside the “house” or cabin, and shut out their
foes before these were upon them, once they touched the palisades.
A rope came sailing through the air from the direction of the
“castle.” It fell across both bulwarks of the scow, and in an
instant all four inmates of this had sprung upon it and grabbed it.
As they did so a storm of bullets “criss-crossed” through the space
they had just been occupying. The Indians on the broken arc of
palisading in sight of them had opened a cross fire upon them. The
air above them, as they crouched on all fours, grasping the
rope--below the bulwarks of the scow--was alive with lead flying in
different directions.
To stand upright again would have meant instant annihilation, for
the range was not twenty feet.
“Back inside the cabin! Crawl on your hands and knees. We can haul
on the rope through the doorway!” cried Sergeant Dick.
The four men scrambled madly back inside the open door behind them,
holding tightly, all, to the rope which was pulled hard against
them. It was an experience none of them would wish to go through a
second time.
The leaden storm over their heads never abated for a moment, but
whistled past, thudded against the bulkhead, whizzed in at the open
door of the cabin or came smashing through the sides of the scow,
incessantly.
But once inside the cabin door, they pushed this three quarters to,
and, standing behind it, heaved their hardest, in concert, on the
rope, which they passed around the foot of the mast in the middle of
the compartment.
As the rope had come sailing through the air towards them, one and
all had seen that it emanated from the “castle” window nearest them,
looking out onto the verandah.
Muriel Arnold had seen their imminent deadly peril, and with a
woman’s quick wit had realized that only a rope thrown them from the
“castle” could save them.
“Aaron! Abel!” she had screamed to her two married cousins. “Quick,
here! Quick! Drop everything and come quick!”
The two brothers came tearing from their respective posts and found
her gripping a coil of rope. She then thrust the rope into the
eldest brother, Abel’s, hands, threw up the shutter within the
embrasure of the window, and hurriedly explained that he must toss
the rope to his father and two brothers on the ark.
An adept at throwing the lasso, it was the easiest thing in the
world for Abel Arnold to send the rope sailing out through the open
window into the near end of the scow. And the moment he and Aaron
felt it tugged upon, they began to haul with all their might upon
it, aided by their mother, Muriel, and Jenny, overcoming the “way”
on the craft, and drawing it back towards the verandah.
CHAPTER XIII--SERGEANT DICK’S DETERMINATION
The Indians howled with baffled fury and concentrated their fire
upon the open window of the “castle.” Several of their bullets
actually frayed the rope, while others entered the open window.
But Abel and Aaron’s wives rushed in, and, from the other,
shuttered, windows looking on to the verandah, opened a dropping
fire upon the discomforted redmen. In less time almost than it takes
to tell it, the near end of the ark bumped against the verandah, and
the craft was safe.
Hurriedly making fast the rope in the “castle” and the ark, the
occupants of both were able to man their loopholes again in full
strength. They fired into the besiegers with such effect that these
saw the hopelessness of continuing the struggle and broke and
paddled away for dear life out of the radius of the light.
“We’ll have our horses back. If we are sharp we can manage it,”
roared the squatter inside the ark. “Quick! Amos, Abner, sergeant,
let us get up the sail.”
“No, no, uncle, you’ll be captured--you’ll all go to your certain
capture or death!” screamed Muriel, inside the “castle.”
“Not us!” cried Amos. “The Injins air all running like sheep. We’ll
chase ’em. The burnin’ stable will give us all the light we need.”
“It would be the height of folly, squatter,” said Sergeant Dick
quietly. “Out in the open lake and darkness the canoes would be
buzzing round you immediately, like wasps around a jampot. Besides,
do you think for a moment the Indians would let you recover the
horses _alive_? No, they would cut the animals’ throats if they had
to abandon them. And, look at the distance the rafts are from us,
and how near to the shore. We couldn’t possibly do it, fast as I
know the scow sails, with the delay in opening and warping out
through your dock-gate.”
“You hold your tongue until you are asked for your advice, me bold
policeman,” snarled Abner.
“All the same it would be downright, dod-rotted madness, Alf, and
you’ll do no such thing!” bawled the squatter’s wife. “Let the
’osses go. They’re not wu’th my brave lads’ lives, if you don’t
vally your own. Ain’t you got the sense to know when to come in out
of the rain?”
That settled it.
Old Man Arnold grinned a little sheepishly at Sergeant Dick, then
faced sharply upon his son Abner.
“You hold _your_ tongue, me lad, and l’arn a little more respec’ for
a man who’s proved hisself to be a man all through this ’ere night.
Never you mind him, sergeant. He allus had a spiteful tongue. Don’t
know why ’zactly. Didn’t get it from me, anyways, though he mout
from the old ’ooman.”
The redmen were now in full retreat on all sides, and the majority
of them were already swallowed up in the inky shadows surrounding
the circle of light still feebly cast by the almost burnt-out
tar-barrel.
Without fear of being shot at, therefore, Sergeant Dick, the
squatter, and Amos and Abner emerged from the open door of the ark,
and followed each other on to the verandah of the “castle,” to the
accompaniment of sounds of the door of this being hastily unbarred
and unbolted.
Jenny was the first to rush forth, and greet her father and
brothers. She threw herself, sobbing and laughing together
hysterically, into the old man’s arms, while her cousin Muriel
advanced to the young police officer, and said:
“Sergeant, on behalf of my uncle and aunt and cousins, as well as
myself, I thank you sincerely for the excellent help you gave us. I
am sure we are all very grateful to you.”
“What did he do more’n the rest of us?” asked Abner. “Wasn’t it for
his own life as much as yourn or anybody else’s, he was fightin’. He
on’y done wot we all done, and had to do.”
“You are ungenerous, Abner. At least have the decency to hold your
tongue if you can’t be grateful for the excellent service our guest
rendered us, and remember that he is our guest.”
“Hoity-toity, gal! Can’t the lad speak in his own ’ome? Since when
did you put up to l’arn my sons manners?”
This from the aunt and mother.
“That’ll do--that’ll do, Kate! The gal was quite right, and Abner’s
an ungrateful young pup as wants l’arnin’ different. Come, let’s git
indoors. Mother, and you, gals, put the pot on, and let’s have
somethink to eat, and give us somethink to drink while it’s
a-cookin’. I’m that thirsty I could nigh drink the lake dry, and you
must be the same, sergeant.”
Dick admitted that he was dry, but said that a glass of water would
serve him. Whereupon Muriel at once rushed off and brought him one,
to the scowling and muttered resentment of Abner.
The old woman promptly put a big pot on an oilstove, and Muriel and
she proceeded to lay the table, while her husband and sons, throwing
themselves into chairs, were served with tin mugs of whisky by Jenny
and the two daughters-in-law, Bella and Deborah.
Occasionally one of the young men would rise and look out through a
loophole in front or at the side, to see that all was well without;
and while they drank and filled and smoked their pipes, they agreed
that it was most unlikely that the rebellious Indians would renew
the attack upon them.
“They’ve had their bellyful of fightin’ with us, there’s no doubt
aboot that,” guffawed Abel, the eldest brother. “They’ve gone off
right enough; they’ll not show up here again in a ’urry, though I
’spects they’ll carry on their devilish games elsewheres--range all
over the country, raisin’ Cain. But that don’t matter a red cent to
us s’long as they leaves us alone.”
“It matters a lot to me, though,” said Sergeant Dick. “As one of the
custodians of law and order in the country, my duty demands that I
delay no longer here, but hurry at once back to the nearest
police-station, an’ put myself at the disposal of my
superiors--assist them in whatever measure they see fit to take to
cope with this revolt.”
“You must stay the night with us, sergeant,” said the old squatter.
“Don’t go and say later on as ’ow we druv you away. You mustn’t take
no heed of that surly young pup, Abner, there.”
“No, I don’t think I ought to wait until morning. It makes my blood
run cold when I think of the atrocities these rebel braves may be
guilty of all over the defenseless country while I am snug and safe
here. I couldn’t sleep comfortably in my bed, Mr. Arnold. My plain
duty is to get away back to my fellow-troopers, and help in checking
these redskin raiders--putting a stop to their wild work. And so you
must really excuse me for apparently running away from you and not
availing myself of your kind invitation. I will partake of your
hospitality, however, so far as to remain until after supper, for I
am just about famished, and it’s no use starting out on the
back-trail faint with hunger. But, after that, I will trouble one or
more of your sons”--he purposely did not look at Abner--“to put me
ashore somewhere, on the north shore preferably, when I will make
the best of my way on shank’s pony to Lonewater, the nearest of our
stations about here, I believe.”
“Please yourself, sergeant,” responded the old man, “but, harkee!
You needn’t go on foot. There’s an old fellow lives wi’ his wife,
and no ’un else, back of the cliffs wot the echo comes from on this
lake. You heerd the echo, no doubt?”
“I did.”
“Waal, this old chap--name of Seymour--is an old shepherd on the big
sheep ranch that stretches for miles on miles t’other side of them
cliffs--the Lonewater Ranch it’s known as; and he keeps a couple of
horses allus for gallopin’ round looking arter stray sheep, and if
you tells him or his missus you comes from me they’ll let you have
one of the nags ’ithout a word.”
He was frowning in a strange, deprecatory way at his four sons, who
had all looked quickly and suspiciously at him and one another when
he first mentioned about the shepherd.
Abel, Aaron, and Amos nodded back at him, plainly reassured. But
Abner shrugged a shoulder and turned away, the gesture signifying,
as plain as plain could be, in the vernacular of the country, “Oh,
the old man’s fair dotty, and, as for me, I give him up as
hopeless.”
Sergeant Dick did not fail to notice these strange looks and signs
passing between the father and sons. It was his business to be
observant, to keep his eyes about him and notice such little things.
But he could not understand the meaning of them, the reason for
them, and was considerably puzzled.
He feigned, however, not to notice anything, to be absorbed in the
contemplation of the glass of milk which Muriel had insisted on his
having.
He was to wonder afterwards why he was not sharper--why he did not
tumble to the significance of this wireless telegraphy.
“Oh, thank you!” he said. “I shall be glad if you will direct me to
this Seymour’s cabin. But possibly the poor old man and his wife
have fallen victims to the Indians’ fury. The fiends are bound to
scour the country all round, and murder every living soul they come
across.”
“They’ll not get hold of old Bill Seymour or his missus. You can lay
to that.”
Again his sons frowned and shook their heads at him, and he frowned
back at them in a way that clearly meant, “Mind your own business,
lads. I know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t mind a-tellin’ _you_, sergeant, that he’s had his cabin
burnt over the heads of his missus and hisself afore now by
redskins, and bad whites, an’ nary a ’air of either of ’em has been
singed. And for why? Waal, as I said I don’t mind a-tellin’ _you_,
but it mustn’t go no further, mind. Acause the cabin’s abuilt close
by the cliffs, not thirty yards from ’em, and he and his missus hev
a hunderground passage that they dug out a-runnin’ from th’ ’ut to a
hidden cave in the rocks--a cave that the redmen wouldn’t find if
they s’arched for donkeys’ years.”
His sons on this, exchanged nods that implied, like Abner’s shrug,
that their father was clean crazy thus to give away Seymour’s
secret. Aaron jumped up quickly and noisily, and shouted, clearly in
order to put a stop to the old man’s confidences:
“Come on, mother, Deb, Bella, Muriel, Jenny! What are you all so
long about? Let’s have something to eat for goodness’ sake. I’m just
starved. Hurry up, do!”
CHAPTER XIV--THE AMBUSH
Thus exhorted, the women, with many protests that they had been
getting the supper ready as quickly as they could, set an appetizing
stew on the table and all eleven of them sat round and fell to, with
exceeding relish after their late terrible fight for life.
As before, one or other of the party from time to time rose during
the meal, and looked out upon the lake to guard against any surprise
attack by some of their late besiegers. Sergeant Dick sat between
Muriel and Jenny, and was scowled at the whole time by Abner, who
sat opposite him.
The two girls did their best to dissuade the sergeant from starting
out before daylight, when, as they said, he might be able by a
little reconnoitering, to learn whether the Indians were still in
the neighborhood and likely to intercept him.
“And if they were,” he answered, “I should then be stuck here until
nightfall again; it would be hopeless to think of getting away. But,
if I slip off now, I have everything in my favor, and should be able
to get ashore safely and reach Seymour’s cabin before daybreak.”
All the men and the other women agreed with him; and, at his
request, old Alf Arnold, exchanging again sundry mysterious winks
and nods with not only his sons, but his wife and daughters-in-law
as well, proceeded to give him minute instructions how he would get
to the shepherd Bill Seymour’s lonely dwelling.
And then, the meal being at an end, Dick asked which of the young
men would put him ashore in a canoe.
“Oh, we’ll take you ashore in the ark, sergeant--me and three of the
lads--you, Aaron, Amos, and Abner. Abel, you and the women ought to
be able to hold the ‘castle’ until our return, although I doan’t for
a minute think as ’ow it’s likely to be attacked ag’in, or us
either, for that matter. So get ready you three, Aaron, Amos, Abner!
Buckle on your cartridge belts ag’in and let’s be moving, for I can
see the sergeant wants to be off.”
John Dick offered his hand to each of the women in succession, and
he could not help noticing what flabby handshakes all save Muriel
and Jenny gave him.
“Good-by! I hope to see you all again soon, under better
circumstances,” he said, as he followed the squatter and his three
sons out the door on to the verandah.
It was quite dark outside now. The tar-barrel had long since burnt
itself out, as had also the stable and buggy-shed on Stable Islet;
and the light had been extinguished in the front or living-room of
the “castle,” so that any watchful eyes on the shores of the lake
might not see the door open, and what was ado.
As all the adieux had been said inside the house, the five men did
not linger on the verandah, but ran at once to the near end of the
ark and sprang aboard.
Old Alf unlocked the cabin door in case of a sudden necessary
retreat. Then while Abel, inside the “castle,” cast off the
mooring-rope secured through the window, Abner hauled it in, and
Aaron, Amos, and Sergeant Dick hoisted the sail on the mast, and got
out two long sweeps as well.
As silently as possible the scow was worked towards the dock-gate,
which was found considerably the worse for the siege.
One of the padlocks was smashed, and the other so battered that the
key would hardly fit the lock, while the stout oaken beams and pales
were all hacked and chipped from the free use of Indian tomahawks.
Unfastening and opening the gate, they warped the ark out. Then
Arnold _pater_ secured the gate again and, spreading their sail
fully to what breeze there was, they shipped their sweeps and stood
silently away round the east side of the “castle,” so as to deceive
any Indian eyes that might have them under observation.
They made as if for the landing-spit on the east side for a short
distance, then tacked and steered northward up the lake, and, when
they were approaching the narrow curving neck there, they shifted
sail again and headed at top speed for the western shore.
By this erratic course they hoped to deceive and leave behind any
Indian canoes that might be out on the lake spying about.
It yet wanted a good two hours to daylight, as they backed in slowly
to the western bank, and gently grounded their broad stern on a
little jutting point similar to the landing-place on the opposite
bank.
All was still save for the low murmuring of the trees in the night
breeze, and an occasional ripple of the placidly lapping water
against the bank and the sides of the scow. The trees were very
dense at the point, the same as everywhere else round the lake, and
in the darkness they seemed to present an impenetrable wall.
But as Old Alf had explained to the sergeant of mounted police, a
trail of blazed trees, which would show up white and thus be plainly
visible even on so dark a night, led right from the point to the
foot of the high cliffs behind the woods. On reaching the cliffs all
he had to do was to skirt their base northward, turn with them and
follow them round, and he could not miss Seymour’s hut on their
farther side.
“Well, good-by, sergeant, I ’opes as ’ow you’ve enjoyed yourself
while you’ve bin ’ere,” said Old Alf, in grim humor, as he shook
Dick’s hand. “Now, your trail’s as cl’ar as daylight, and ye’ll only
hev yourself to blame if you go astray.”
“He can’t go astray nohow, onless he doan’t know his right ’and from
his left,” growled Aaron. “So long, sergeant! Don’t forgit to give
us a call next time you are in these parts.”
“Ay, don’t fail to drop in next time you’re passin’ the lake,”
grinned Amos, cracking an old chestnut which had done hoary service
in the family since one of their early visitors first cracked it.
Abner was not present. He had purposely kept to the other end of the
scow.
Sergeant Dick pressed the hands of the three men again, and sprang
lightly ashore. He turned and waved his hand, then plunged into the
bushes out of sight--to be seized suddenly by the throat with a
strangling grip by a dark form which appeared to spring out of the
ground itself!
At the same time his arms were pinned to his sides by other shadowy,
plume-bedecked forms.
Sergeant Dick was unable to utter a cry with that choking grip upon
his throat, and he was powerless to wrench his arms free. But he had
been in many a similar predicament before--in drinking saloons and
other wild places into which his profession took him in chase of the
malefactor, or the maintenance of law and order--and he had learned
certain tricks of defense even when taken at such a disadvantage.
Quick as thought he jerked up his right knee with all his strength.
It came in contact with something soft and yielding--the chest of
the man gripping him by the throat of course.
There was a gasp, and the Indian relaxed his grip upon his windpipe.
Immediately he sent up a ringing warning shout to the occupants of
the ark.
“Help! Redskins!”
At the same time he ducked his head and drove it forward at the
winded savage’s face, while wrenching with all his strength to free
his arms, and curling one of his legs round in a sweeping motion
sideways and backwards.
His maneuvers were highly successful. In fully a dozen cases he had
found them work just as well before.
The winded savage was sent flying headlong backwards against a tree
with his nose nearly flattened by the top of the white captive’s
head; and another redman, with legs scooped clean from under him,
went down sidelong, amongst the bushes on the brave young police
officer’s right hand.
With that hand thus released, Sergeant Dick promptly drove it into
the chest of the Indian, pinning his left hand. And as the man
staggered back, tripping over the bushes and nearly falling, the
thicket rang to the piercing war-whoop of the Indians, and became
alive with madly rushing, be-plumed shadows.
Two of these aimed fierce blows at Sergeant Dick’s head, but,
luckily for him, in striking down the Indian on his left, he had
slipped upon a fallen twig. He fell heavily upon the broad of his
back, and the tomahawks of the two fresh assailants missed him.
One of the pair, indeed, fell over him, and the second man,
satisfied that he could not escape with his late captors also to
reckon with, ran on after the others towards the ark.
There came the sharp popping of revolvers from that craft, and
several screams of agony intermingled with the Indian whooping.
Old Alf Arnold and his sons were not taken unawares. They had caught
the alarm from Sergeant Dick’s devoted shout, and instantly wheeled
about and dropped, crouching upon one knee in the stern, in the act
of pushing the craft off the point.
All three had their holster flaps open, so that they might whip out
their automatics instantly. In fact, as they had approached the
shore every man had his pistol ready cocked in his hand.
Partly screened, in their kneeling attitudes, by the high sloping
stern and sides of the scow, they met the onrush of the Indians with
a fusillade which quickly checked it.
Old Alf, Aaron and Amos were in the stern, as already stated. Abner
was in the bows with the long, double-roomed cabin between him and
them.
He was out of the fight so to speak, but, a quick glance round the
side of the “house” or cabin showed him the forms of his father and
brothers firing at the redskins ashore, and hurriedly he grabbed a
rope that came in over the bow and was attached to an anchor some
little way out in the lake.
He heaved upon this rope quickly, hand over hand, with all his
might, and drew the light, easily moved ark, swiftly through the
water away from the shore.
This was another of the many “wrinkles” or ideas that Old Alf Arnold
had taken from the famous American author, Fenimore Cooper’s story,
“The Deerslayer.” Like “Floating Tom Hutter” in that novel, Arnold
and his sons always dropped an anchor well away from the shore of
the lake when about to land from the ark, and paid out the rope. By
hauling on the rope a prompt retreat, if necessary, from the shore
could always be easily effected.
CHAPTER XV--LOST IN THE WOODS
Even as Sergeant Dick went down under the redskin armed with the
tomahawk, he had whipped out his revolver and retained a firm grip
of the butt.
His antagonist aimed a furious stroke at his head, but the blow
missed through his falling, and the keen blade only bit deep into
the mold beside his left ear.
Swift as thought the young police officer clapped the revolver to
the broad, naked, painted chest lying over him and pressed the
trigger.
The crack of the weapon was instantaneously followed by the
death-shriek of the foeman, who rolled limply off him, and lay
spread-eagled, face upward, upon the ground alongside.
John Dick was on his knees in a flash, pointing the revolver at the
Indian whom he had only sent staggering on his left hand, and who
was now rushing at him with clubbed rifle.
A swift stab of flame, accompanied by the whip-like report, and the
redman crumpled up in his tracks, and tumbled on top of his dead
companion.
Only one more enemy in sight remained to be dealt with--the man on
the right, whom Sergeant Dick had tripped up. The fourth savage, the
one in front of him, was still _hors de combat_--too winded and
stunned to take a hand in the fight as yet.
A shot through the brain ended the life of the third man, while in
the act of sighting at him with a rifle. Then the sergeant scrambled
upright, and looked wildly about him, with smoking revolver ready to
pot at the first fresh assailant he saw.
He meant to rush back to the aid of those in the scow, feeling that
to do so was his duty--that he could not consider his own safety and
leave them to be butchered possibly.
But in the same instant, through an opening in the trees before him,
he saw the ark some fifteen feet away from the bank. The craft was
slipping swiftly out towards the middle of the lake, with three dark
figures in the stern--almost indistinguishable from the background
of the cabin--spitting fire rapidly, evidently with automatics, at a
howling pack of plumed forms waist-high, and deeper, in the water.
The squatter and his sons were safe, and there was no hope of his
rejoining them. He must consult his own safety by immediate and
headlong flight in the opposite direction.
Wheeling promptly, therefore, Sergeant Dick fled away through the
timber, and only in the nick of time. Half a dozen braves, alarmed
by the shooting and death-shrieks of their comrades in the rear,
were rushing back to learn the cause.
They just caught sight of his vanishing red coat, and with yells of
rage sent a hasty, scattered volley after him, ere starting in hot
and furious pursuit.
One of the bullets went through the skirts of his red tunic, but all
the other messengers of death only smacked against the trees behind
or around him, or went swishing, equally as harmlessly, through the
bushes.
Sergeant Dick ran as he probably never ran before in his life. He
could not pick his way in the intense darkness of the woods, nor had
he time or the inclination to do so.
He just hurled himself bodily at the thick, high-growing bushes,
burst through them anyhow, leaving fragments of his garments
attaching to them, and sustaining pricks and scratches all over his
body and legs, even through his clothing.
He protected his face with his hands and rifle held up before him,
and his keen eyes were just able to discern the trunks of the
trees--a blacker black than the darkness itself.
Guided by the crashing he thus unavoidably made, the Indians
followed hard on his heels, uttering the most blood-curdling
war-whoops and threats of vengeance, occasionally firing in the
direction of the sounds ahead of them.
They were so close upon him he could hear what they threatened to do
to him quite plainly in the otherwise still night air; and he did
not need any better incentive to try and increase the distance
between them.
Presently the dense, tangled undergrowth came to an end. Such is
generally found only on the outskirts of colonial forests.
In the deeper depths there is hardly any, and the great boles of the
trees stand up nakedly like so many mighty poles stuck in the
ground, often rising to an immense height before a single branch
juts out.
Now his boots made next to no noise on the soft pine-needles, and he
flitted as noiselessly as a shadow through the thick-growing trees
and the darkness. Even though running at top speed, he trod with the
caution and silence he had learnt to do on many a trail farther
north--the stealth his like and all backswoodsmen have picked up
from the redmen themselves.
Here, therefore, his pursuers were at fault--could not longer follow
him by the sounds he made; and so they halted to make torches of the
pine wood around, with which to try and follow his tracks.
This was so much loss of time, which the quarry made good use of in
covering ground; and very shortly he came to some hard and rocky
ground on which his feet would leave no impression.
The trees here were fewer, but the night was so dark he felt he
might safely trust to its screen, and he ran forward at increased
speed, still as softly as possible, the ground all the time rising
under his feet and growing more rugged and difficult.
He stumbled suddenly down a deep water-course, which he did not
discover until he was over its edge.
It ran at right angles to the way he was making. But as he had
already lost all sense of locality, knew not in which
direction--north, east, west or south--that he was making, he
decided at once to keep to the stream and walk up it.
To go down it, he knew would take him back to the lake, for no doubt
the stream ran into the lake.
He wanted to put as wide a distance between himself and the lake as
he could before daylight, and run no risk of capture by the redmen.
If he had no longer any real idea as to where he was, he had also
lost all trace of his pursuers, left them far in the rear; and he
could breathe more freely and take things more quietly.
The stream did not reach to his knees, and so his service boots kept
him dry. But it was running very fast, its rocky bed rising steadily
in a steep incline.
Soon he came to where the water boiled and frothed and roared in a
great cauldron-like basin, above which was a positive slide of
water, the stream pouring down a smoothly-worn slope of rock at
something like thirty degrees.
Sergeant Dick could not see the top of this slope or slide of water
with the darkness, and the fact that the banks were shut in by trees
which completely over-arched it.
The banks themselves, too, were high and rocky, in places beetling.
Just beside him they overhung the water to a height of twenty feet
or more.
“I’ve come to the cliffs of the Wonderful Echo, that’s evident,” he
murmured; “but it would be madness to try and follow them to the
right now. Besides I’d have a job just here I should say, and I’m
dead beat--just about done up. And for another thing, I might only
blunder into the arms of the redskins I have escaped from. Better
stay where I am until the morning’s light, anyway. ‘Go farther and
fare worse’ is an old saying I believe in. Still, I can’t stay here
exactly. I’ll have to go back a bit and scale the bank.”
He did so, and climbed out where the ground was easy. Then,
satisfied that he had thrown off all pursuit, he hunted about him
among the rocks for some sort of a niche or cave into which he might
crawl, and so be safe, while he slept, from any prowling bear or
equally to be dreaded bull-moose.
By the greatest good fortune, he came across a kind of grot formed
by two mighty, tabular-shaped fragments of rock having been thrown
up against each other at some time in the world’s history. A
triangular shaped archway ran between the two rocks, and strewn all
round in front of it were a number of fair-sized boulders, some as
much as he could roll along, others smaller.
“Eureka! The very thing,” he crowed jubilantly at sight of the
place, “it might have been made for me.”
He crawled inside the archway, and found that it went back for about
twenty feet, then narrowed so much that nothing bigger than a rat
could possibly get in at that end.
Delighted beyond measure, he returned to the entrance, and, rolling
some of the heavier stones in front of it, made himself a bed of dry
leaves and brushwood within it.
He piled more stones on top of his barricade, and then, with his
rifle and revolver beside him, stretched himself comfortably on his
litter and composed himself for sleep.
Dead tired as he was, hardly able indeed within the past quarter of
an hour or so to keep his eyes open or prevent himself sinking
exhausted to the ground, he was immediately in the land of
dreams--slumbering heavily and soundly.
When he opened his eyes again, he lay for some minutes in a pleasant
half doze, unable to realize fully, and, in fact, careless of, where
he was, too comfortable to move.
And then gradually, as his wits came together, he became conscious
of a bright reddish golden glow surrounding him.
He opened his eyes again, saw the slanting rocks above, and
comprehended where he was, and that the reddish light filling the
cave must come from the sun _setting again in the west_.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed, as he pushed some of the stones of his
barricade over, and looked out for confirmation of his belief, “I
have slept the clock round nearly--been asleep, let me see, a good
sixteen hours at least.”
CHAPTER XVI--A STARTLING DISCOVERY
He crawled out of the cavity and looked about him.
Away to the southeast he could see the lake gleaming like a sheet of
molten fire in the rays of the setting sun. Between him and it, as
well as stretching all round as far as he could see, were
densely-wooded declivities backed by equally densely-wooded heights.
The view northward was cut off by a high ridge of splintered scaurs,
or cliff-like rocks, rising in terraces upon one another.
“H’m!” he said, “my way to Bill Seymour’s hut lies over those rocks,
or else round them to west or east. Across the ridge, due northward,
I should say, would be the quicker route, if it can be done; and I
haven’t too much time to spare if I would do it before darkness is
on me again. But how am I going to get up those cliffs?”
Piercing right through the ridge, he saw, was the tree-arched
water-slide. It cleft its way cleanly through all the rocky
terraces. From where he was standing close beside the water-course,
he could see the blue sky on the other side of the ridge through the
chasm or gorge it had carved or channeled for itself, probably
through countless ages.
“If I could get up the water-course against the stream,” he
muttered, “I should be past those unscalable cliffs anyway, and
possibly on a plateau which I might easily get across to the farther
side, where I want to go.”
He walked to the edge of the water-course, just where the first of
the terraced cliffs began and prevented him keeping on the bank
itself any longer.
A tree overhung the swift flowing current below. He climbed out on
to the branches as far as he could in safety--until they began to
dip and crack under him.
Parting the leaves around him, and craning his neck, he looked
up-stream. He saw that the slide went up--if such an expression may
be rightly used--about fifty more feet, overshadowed the whole way
by stunted trees clinging to the almost perpendicular sides of the
cleft.
It would be impossible to try to walk up the bed of the stream. The
slope was too acute, the power of the current would sweep his legs
from under him, and he would have absolutely nothing to drag himself
up by.
But there was nothing to prevent him clambering from tree to tree up
the cleft like a monkey, passing from one branch to another! The
trees all grew so close together and their branches were so
intertwined it would be easy enough.
He had his rifle slung upon his back. He slackened the sling
somewhat, and gave it a twist round his left arm near the shoulder
so as to guard against its being knocked off his back by a branch or
creeper entangling it. Then, making sure that his pistol-holster was
securely buttoned, he started on the gorilla-like feat.
It was, as he expected, the easiest task imaginable to swing himself
along and up, from branch to branch and tree to tree. He was quite
enjoying it, and telling himself laughingly that he was certainly
acting out the theory that men came from monkeys originally, when
his head rose above the top of the water-slide or sloped fall.
He could see over it and through the cleft in the gorge on to the
plateau beyond. And what he saw filled him, at first, with the
greatest astonishment, and then with supreme satisfaction.
The water-course continued on the level for only some ten feet; then
it swerved sharply to the right hand, and was a mountain torrent,
fed by several little rills around, tumbling from the greater
heights of the ridge in easy cascades.
Beyond where the stream curves round, the ground rose suddenly again
for a few yards, consisting of bare and fairly smooth rock; then it
fell away apparently like a precipice.
And across the wide valley, past this drop, on the gentle grassy
slopes of his opposite side, which rose considerably higher, _a
number of horses and cattle and sheep were peacefully grazing_!
“I must have reached Lonewater Ranch; be close to it,” Sergeant Dick
muttered, delightedly. “I must have traveled much farther than I
thought I had last night, and I’ve saved myself the trouble of
calling on Bill Seymour, the shepherd, and borrowing his horse.
“And yet--yet I can hardly credit that I’ve got so far--and I
understood Arnold to say that the ranch was northward--fifteen miles
or thereabouts northward of these cliffs. It can’t be Lonewater
after all that I have struck. But--but they did not mention any
other farm or ranch. In fact, they assured me there was no other
nearer than twenty miles.”
Puzzled beyond measure, therefore, he clambered on through the
remaining trees until he was over the verge of the slide, when he
swung himself down lightly and dropped into the bed of the stream.
In another minute he was standing on the rock at the edge of the
precipice, staring stupidly at what lay before him.
It was a great cup-like valley, completely enclosed by the high
circular ridge upon which he stood. There seemed to be no outlet
whatever to it, and the only sign of a human habitation that he
could see was a lean-to shed, or log-hut, built against the face of
a scaur or cliff just below on his left hand.
As he looked towards this hut, he discovered to his further surprise
that a zigzag track led down to it _from where he stood_.
He turned and looked about him in quest of where the path began, and
he saw that rude steps had been cut in the rocky escarpment beside
the cascading torrent on his right hand to the top of the ridge.
It was only on his side of the valley that the earth fell away
precipitously. The other three sides rose in the gentlest of slopes
to a greater height.
All over the great cup were scattered horses and cattle. There were
fully two hundred head of cattle, twice as many sheep, and some
fifty or sixty horses.
“Well, this is an enigma to me--a puzzling riddle if you like,” he
was murmuring, when, like light from heaven, came the startling
reading of the mystery, the true solution of the strange problem.
His eye had rested inadvertently--casually--upon the brands of three
of the sheep closest to him--just below near the hut. Their brands
were plainly visible in the rarefied mountain air, and--_they were
not the same; they were different_.
One was a circle with lines radiating from it all round--evidently
the sun in glory--with an eight-pointed star inside it.
Another was B.E. in a triangle, all three angles of which were cut
by a circle.
The third brand seemed much older and simpler than the other two,
and consisted merely of a triangle with P.F. within it.
“My Heaven!” gasped Sergeant Dick, recoiling a step under the shock.
“The place is plainly a cattle-thieves’ ‘duffing-yard’ or
ground--the secret place where they conceal the stolen cattle,
sheep, and horses, and change the brands on these before taking them
to some other part of the country and selling them.
“And--and there can be only one gang operating on such a scale as
this--the mysterious White Hood Bandits.”
The thought had no sooner occurred to him than he realized the
danger he was in, standing there exposed upon the ridge to any of
the desperate band who might be in the valley or on the cliffs
around.
Without a doubt the log-hut below was occupied by some of the gang.
It was fairly commodious, and would contain at least three
apartments. A stovepipe protruded from the sloping roof, but there
was no smoke issuing from it.
Sergeant Dick promptly whipped back into the cleft or little gorge
again, out of sight of any one who might possibly be in the valley.
Flattening himself against the rock, he hurriedly freed the flap of
his holster and drew his revolver, looking anxiously the while to
either side and behind him towards the water-slide.
No whistle or other alarming signal was heard.
He breathed more freely again, but with all his pulses throbbing
excitedly, he removed his Stetson hat from his head and unslung his
rifle from his back. Carrying the revolver and his hat together in
his left hand, his rifle in his right, he crawled back on his knees
to the edge of the precipice.
He close-hugged the side of the cleft as he went, and kept his eyes
ranging warily, searchingly, over the ridge down which the pathway
came.
Reaching the precipice again, he crouched behind a convenient
boulder close to its edge, peering cautiously round the rock, so as
only to show the side of his face and one eye. He surveyed the hut
again, closely.
“There can’t be any one at home!” he told himself presently, “or
else the gang deem themselves so secure as not to trouble about
keeping any watch. And really I don’t suppose any one but themselves
knows about this valley--has ever been inside it.
“There must be some other way they use for the ingress and egress of
the cattle. It is probably on the extreme west or northwest side of
the valley; the ridges seem rather tangled over there.
“Well, I can do nothing alone--single-handed. The gang are said to
number nine in full strength. I couldn’t possibly hope to tackle so
many at once. I’ll go back the way I came, and try in some way to
communicate with the Arnolds again. I shouldn’t be surprised that
the redskins have left the vicinity of the lake by this, realizing
the hard nut ‘Water Castle’ is to crack. The Arnolds, father and
sons, are five in number, and with myself would make six.
“If we crept up this water-slide in the dead of to-night or at dawn
to-morrow we ought to have all the advantages of a surprise, and
wipe out or round up the entire gang. If not all at once, well, in
two affrays--by lying in wait for the rest of the gang after
settling the batch we catch at home.”
With this design, he wriggled back to the edge of the water-slide
and, still keeping his chin on his shoulder and his eyes scanning
the ridges in sight, he climbed up into one of the trees overhanging
the water and began hurriedly to descend the side as he had ascended
it, that is, by clambering down from branch to branch and tree to
tree.
“Yes,” he said, half aloud to himself, when about halfway down,
“that brand ‘B.E.’ in a triangle, with a circle cutting the angles,
was undoubtedly originally ‘P.F.’ inside a triangle--was faked from
it.
“What could be simpler than to alter a ‘P’ into a ‘B,’ and an ‘F’
into an ‘E,’ and then stamp a circle over the triangle. ‘P.F.’ is
plainly the Pelson-Fellowes ranch brand--the next ranch, as Arnold
told me, to the Lonewater. And I shouldn’t be surprised that the
other brand I saw was Lonewater’s, faked or altered in some similar
way so as to render it unrecognizable.”
He was soon at the bottom of the water-slide again and then, with
the setting sun as his guide, he struck away down the mountain-side
and through the dense forest clothing it, due east.
Keeping on long after the sun had sunk to rest and it was night
again, he at length saw the lake gleaming faintly through the trees
ahead of him.
CHAPTER XVII--A SURPRISE, AND A RESCUE
In another minute Sergeant John Dick was standing on the western
shore of the lake, looking across its dark waters at a bright light
shining out in the middle of these, almost directly opposite him.
The light came, of course, from a window of “Water Castle.” It was
so small and ray-like that he knew it must be issuing from the open
loophole of a closed shutter.
He was considering whether it would be quite safe to fire the three
shots that Muriel Arnold had told him was the signal “want to come
off shore,” when suddenly a guttural voice spoke quite close to
him--a word or two in the Indian tongue.
Startled beyond measure, he faced in the direction of the sound, and
crouched down instinctively as he did so, pointing his revolver,
which he was already gripping in case of need, and breathing hard
and fast.
A light flared, and became a great blaze of dancing flame, amid the
loud crackling of burning brushwood. Some one had lit a bonfire--no
ordinary camp fire that--within a hundred feet or so of him!
The guttural Indian words told him that he had to deal with foes. He
thanked his stars that he had been prudent enough to approach the
lakeside with every caution of woodcraft.
Softly parting the bushes beside him, he craned his neck round a
tree which partly stood in the way, and saw that the fire had been
made in a fairly open space abutting right on the lakeside--a sort
of wide glade or avenue extending some thirty feet or more back from
the water’s edge.
The flames were shooting high into the air, lighting up the glade
and casting a ruddy glow out over the dark waters of the lake.
And in the lurid, flickering glare, Sergeant Dick saw a sight which
filled him with consternation.
Being set against three trees by a number of the rebellious redmen,
were Muriel Arnold, her uncle, and his son Amos, while just in
front, nearer the water’s edge that is, was poor half-witted Jenny
in the grip of several more hideously painted braves!
Near by, evidently directing operations, was a most truculent
looking athletic young sagamore or chief!
Some two score or more warriors stood, leaning on their rifles and
looking on, on the farther side of the glade.
Muriel and her uncle and cousin were being bound to the three trees,
with their faces towards the lake and the distant light in “Water
Castle.” The fire being slightly to one side of them would reveal
them plainly to anybody looking out of “Water Castle” on that side.
“Ugh! The white girl, beloved by Manito, and therefore sacred to all
true redmen, will now go in canoe to her home on the water, dat is
when I have fired my rifle to attract the attention of her friends.
She will then, on arriving at her home, say that all within ‘Water
Castle’ must come ashore in the ark and give themselves up, when we
will spare their lives and the lives of their friends here. But if
they do not agree to this--do not come ashore and surrender, then
they will see their friends here--that is the two white men, not the
beautiful white girl--put to the torture. The beautiful white girl,
the Lily o’ the Valley, she become my squaw. I have spoken--I,
Howling Wolf, the War Chief of the Ogalcrees.”
The Indian chief made this declaration in a slow, deliberate, and
dignified manner, with his rifle-butt resting on the ground, and the
weapon held in his left hand at arm’s length.
With the last word he caught up the piece, put it to his shoulder,
and, pointing it into the air and out over the lake, pulled the
trigger.
Sharp on the report, a flood of light streamed forth from the
southern side of “Water Castle”--its front really--displaying part
of the verandah. And then out on to this, in the glare of the light,
rushed in a body the rest of the squatter’s family--his wife, and
three other sons, and his two daughters-in-law.
The six stood as if transfixed, staring across the water at the
spectacle on the lakeside, which must have been plainly visible to
them.
It was too far for even a modern rifle to carry with effect, and the
light on both sides, of course, was of the poorest for such long
range. Moreover, the men and women on the verandah were partly
screened by the waist-high, boarded-in end of this.
“Put the child of the Manito in the canoe and let her depart with
the message of Howling Wolf,” said the chief, with a grim chuckle.
The North American Indians have always considered persons of feeble
intellect as under the direct protection of the Almighty--“Manito”
as they call Him--and therefore invariably treat them with respect,
and a reverence that is half-pity, half-awe. What a lesson for our
own much-vaunted civilization, where the half-witted are too often
regarded as fair butts for all manner of rough practical joking!
Jenny Arnold was led to the water’s edge, where Sergeant Dick now
saw a score and more canoes had been beached. His eye noted in the
same glance that some half-dozen of the canoes--farthermost from
him--which could not be drawn up on the limited strip of shelving
sand under the bank like the others, were floating, moored to trees
by their painters.
Jenny was put in the nearest canoe and given the paddles. Then three
of the Indians pushed the craft off, and she paddled away
frantically across the lake towards “Water Castle.”
Sergeant Dick racked his brains to think how he might effect a
rescue of the three prisoners. His heart was full of bitter grief
and anxiety as regarded the sweet girl before him, whom he now knew
he loved with all the strength of his deep-feeling, but not easily
moved, nature.
“I would sooner see her dead before me--kill her with my own hands
than that she should become the squaw of that villainous young
chief, Howling Wolf,” he reflected, his heart surcharged with
poignant rage. “He would treat her worse than his dog after awhile,
and her life would be a misery to her. I will deliver her and her
uncle and cousin, or share their fate. But how to effect my purpose?
That’s the question.”
He could think of no plan which at all held out a promise of
success, and he was still hopelessly regarding the scene in the
glade and ransacking his brains, when suddenly three spears of flame
darted from the thicket on the opposite side of the glade to him,
and the reports of as many rifle-shots rang out almost as one.
Howling Wolf had been standing, leaning on his rifle, and peering
out under his shading left hand after Jenny. He reeled, clapping his
left hand to the back of his feather-plumed head, and then crashed
heavily upon his side.
Two other redskins standing near, also fell and rolled over, then
lay still with feebly twitching limbs. And the forest aisles
promptly resounded with furious shouts of “Down with them! Give ’em
it, boys! Let ’em have it,” and the swift popping of revolvers.
But the redskins, though taken so completely by surprise, were quick
to note that they had apparently only three foemen to deal with.
Even as they broke and scattered for the nearest trees, they shouted
this to one another.
In a flash every redskin except the chief and some half-dozen others
who had been shot down by the first volley or by the quick
revolver-shots, had vanished behind a tree; and a brisk fusillade
now took place between the unseen trio in the thicket and the
Indians.
Only a few seconds, however, did the fusillade last--just while the
redmen were reassuring themselves that they had but three foes to
deal with. Then with a ringing war-whoop one of them burst from his
tree and ran, doubled up, and jumping from side to side towards the
surprisers’ place of concealment.
As one man the rest of the band followed him, yelling like so many
railway engines; and, to Sergeant Dick’s astonishment, Howling Wolf
bounded to his feet as if unhurt and raced after them, adding his
quota to the terrific whooping.
The three men in the bushes fled incontinently before that
overwhelming rush. The police officer could hear them tearing away
madly through the undergrowth without waiting to shoot back.
Quick as thought, he himself darted forward towards the open space.
He ran at full speed, and yet made hardly the slightest sound, on
account of his backwoods’ training, and with the firelight showing
him his path.
Into the glade he burst, just as two of the Indians lying there
showed symptoms of life and struggled into reclining postures.
Paying no heed to them, he flew to the prisoners, and hurriedly
began to slash through the ropes, which bound Amos, the nearest of
the trio. He used his clasp knife, which he had opened even as he
sprang into the glade; and the blade was as sharp as any razor.
As the cords parted, and Amos stood free in body and limb, Sergeant
Dick handed him his revolver, exclaiming:
[Illustration: HE FLEW TO THE PRISONERS, AND HURRIEDLY BEGAN TO SLASH
THRU THE ROPES.]
“Get one of the redskins’ knives, and free your father, while I free
Muriel. If you are quick we should get away in one of their canoes.”
Without a word, Amos grabbed the revolver, and, rushing to the
nearest dead Indian, snatched his scalping-knife from his belt, then
ran to liberate the old man; what time Sergeant Dick had sprung to
Muriel’s side, and was cutting the cords confining her wrists.
CHAPTER XVIII--BACK AT “WATER CASTLE”
“Courage! Courage, Miss Arnold! You know me. It’s all right. Keep
silent, and we’ll get away in safety.”
“Oh, thank Heaven--thank Heaven!” the girl breathed in tones of
ineffable relief, as he drew her free from the tree.
Something bright and shining whizzed past his head, and struck with
a loud thud against the tree.
It was a tomahawk, and it remained with the blade imbedded deep in
the tree-trunk, the haft quivering with the force with which it had
been thrown.
Simultaneously, a shrill, peculiar, ear-piercing cry rang out close
behind him. He wheeled--to see one of the wounded Ogalcrees
kneeling, bleeding like a stuck pig from a wound in the chest, and
still in the final attitude of hurling the hatchet at him.
The Indian made to catch up his rifle lying beside him. But, before
his fingers could close upon the weapon, there was a whiplike crack,
and he doubled up and fell forward, writhing, upon his face.
Amos had shot him with the revolver.
Sergeant Dick threw one arm quickly around Muriel to support her,
and, carrying his rifle “a-trail,” ran with her at full speed for
the nearest canoe. The police officer saw Amos finish freeing his
father in the same instant, and put a second well-aimed bullet from
the revolver through the head of the other wounded redskin, who was
weakly sighting at him with a rifle.
All four fugitives reached the canoes practically together, for Old
Alf and Amos got over the ground more quickly than Dick, hampered as
he was with the girl.
Amos brought up the rear, ready to fire the revolver again at the
first foeman to reappear.
Sergeant Dick hurriedly lifted Muriel in, then pushed the craft off
the sandy strip, retaining hold of it, however, so as to enable the
other two to get in.
“To the far end--to the bow, gal!” panted her uncle. And Muriel went
scrambling across the thwarts to the other extremity of the canoe.
Then with a curt “Thank ’ee, sergeant,” he leaped in, and scrambled
after her. Amos clambered in on the other side; and, throwing one
leg in, Dick thrust off well with the other.
Muriel and the old man had already caught up and dipped a paddle
apiece, and, propelled by their deft strokes, away the canoe shot
across the lake, just as there came a furious howl ashore, and loud
tramping of the bushes.
Amos promptly shot with the revolver, twice in rapid succession, at
the dark, plumed figures he saw amongst the trees, and the sergeant
swung his rifle to his shoulder, and sighted it, but forbore to
press the trigger.
“Fire--fire into them. Why don’t you?” screamed Amos.
His question was drowned by the noise of the discharge of the police
officer’s piece a fraction of a second before that of one of their
enraged foes on the bank.
Dick, who could see as well in the dark as any man--a matter of
practice always--had noted an Ogalcree about to shoot at them, and
had promptly anticipated the man.
He was not in time to prevent the shot being fired, but his bullet
pierced the Indian’s brain even as the trigger was pressed, with the
result that the hostile bullet flew wide of them.
Such deadly accuracy checked the ardor of the rest of the three or
four braves in the view of the fugitives. One hurriedly took shelter
behind a tree, and potted at the fleeing craft, while the others
rushed to launch more canoes and follow in pursuit.
Both Amos and Sergeant Dick, however, banged away wildly in the
direction of the solitary marksman to distract his aim. The
first-mentioned fired off the two remaining cartridges in the
revolver, and then, catching up a paddle, assisted in propelling the
canoe.
Light as a feather, and with next to no draught of water, it skimmed
along swiftly. It was speedily out of reach of the firelight in the
glade, and hidden by the dense shadows of the night from the
marksman on the bank.
The three paddlers, however, did not relax their exertions. They
still paddled desperately on, and the sergeant now laid down his
rifle, no longer of any use, and likewise took up a paddle, and
plied it.
“We all three owe you our lives, sergeant,” growled Old Man Arnold.
“You and the boys planned it well, and no error. You couldn’t hev
arranged it neater, nohow. But I do hope as ’ow the lads hev got
cl’ar as well, I much bedoubt that they hev. And yet if they hadn’t
a-gotten cl’ar we’d hev surely heerd the riptiles acrowin’ and
hooraying like, don’t ye think?”
“Yus, that’s so,” said Amos. “They’ve got cl’ar right enough, or
we’d ha’ heerd the painted demons a-screechin’ with joy. Strange,
though, none of the riptiles seem to be coming off arter _us_. How’s
that?”
“I should say the sergeant’s straight shooting is the deterrent,”
said Muriel, who spoke considerably better than her uncle and
cousins.
“H’m! P’raps,” growled her cousin, “but I don’t hear the ark
neither--nor see anythink of her.”
“You can hardly expect to see anythink of her in this darkness,”
said his father, adding no less anxiously, however, “I could wish it
weren’t quite so pesky dark now, so’s we might be able to look round
us and see if they’ve got cl’ar. How did you manage to get to the
‘castle,’ sergeant? And wot brought ye back ’ere again? Did ye lose
your way? Didn’t ye find Bill Seymour’s place, then?”
“No, I only escaped last night from the ambush by the skin of my
teeth, so to speak,” John Dick answered. “I had to run my hardest
through the woods to get away from the Indians, who followed me hard
and long. When they abandoned the chase I was lost, and dead beat; I
crawled in between two rocks and I didn’t wake until near sundown
to-day. Then I climbed a height, and saw the lake, and something
else I will tell you about later, and so returned here. I haven’t
been to the ‘castle,’ and your rescue was none of my planning. Who
are the boys you mentioned as having planned it, you thought, with
me? Who are those you hope are in the ark?”
“Who are them we hope are in the ark! Why, my other three sons,
Abel, Aaron and Abner,” replied the old squatter.
“But I saw them on the verandah of ‘Water Castle’ just before the
attack, along with your wife and your two daughters-in-law,” was
John Dick’s rather astonished remark, for surely, he thought, the
three ex-prisoners must likewise have seen the six on the verandah.
The police-sergeant’s astonishment was increased when his three
companions gave vent to subdued half-laughs and chuckles.
“You _thought you saw_ my three cousins on the verandah with my aunt
and cousins,” said Muriel, softly, “but really you only saw Aunt
Kate and Bella and Deborah, with three dressed-up dummies to
represent my cousins Abel, Aaron, and Abner. It is an old dodge that
we often resort to when we don’t want undesirable parties on the
lakeside to know exactly how many are at home in the ‘castle.’”
“I see. Well, well, I was completely taken in, as also it is evident
were all the redmen. A rare ruse, squatter! I congratulate you upon
it.”
“Oh, it worn’t my idea; it wor Muriel’s,” chuckled Old Alf. “But you
say you weren’t actin’ in partnership with my three lads?”
“No; or at least our partnership was quite accidental. I didn’t know
they were there, though it’s just on the cards that they may have
seen me on the other side of the glade, and have acted as they did,
knowing I would be bound to set you free if they succeeded in
drawing off the band in pursuit.”
“That’s more’n likely,” grunted Amos. “I wish I was sure, though,
that they had got away all right ag’in, in the ark.”
“How did you come to be captured by the Indians?” asked Dick.
“Before I made off into the woods last night, I saw you and your
sons had got clear of the ambush, Mr. Arnold.”
“It was all on account of Jenny, confound her,” replied the old man.
“She thought she might do the same as Hetty Hutter did in that
blamed story of ‘The Deerslayer,’ you know, that we all think so
much of, and got the idea of our water-abode out of. What does she
do but slip off just at dusk in one of the canoes to have a talk
with the Indians and try and bring ’em to see the evil of their
ways--make them abandon their wicked designs upon the ‘castle’ and
our lives, and go back peaceful, like lambs, ag’in to their
Reservation. Muriel spied her when she was more’n halfway ashore. We
could see the redskins’ campfire towards the southwest of the
‘castle,’ and the foolish child was making for it. O’ course some of
us had to follow her, at once, and stop her; and so, Amos and Muriel
and me, we jumped into another canoe and started arter her for all
we were worth.”
“My three brothers were to follow in the ark if we didn’t overtake
her,” Amos took up the narrative. “We didn’t; she was too near the
bank. But we were close behind her when she landed, almost right on
her, and so we all three risked jumping ashore and chasing after her
into the bushes, when we was immediately pounced upon and made
prisoners of by Howling Wolf and a good score or more of his bucks,
who had seen us a-chasin’ of her, and hurried along the bank to
ambush us, which they did neat enough, cuss ’em.”
They had nearly reached the palisading around “Water Castle,” and
Muriel and the old man now hailed Aunt Kate and Jenny, who were
standing together in the doorway of the house. The girl’s mother
seemed to be abusing her roundly for what she had done. As Muriel
hailed her aunt, the old woman pushed Jenny angrily inside the
house, and called back anxiously to know if they were all there and
unhurt.
“We are all here--all, that is, ’cept Abel, Aaron, and Abner,
mother,” answered Old Alf, “and nary a one of us ’as as much as a
scratch. The ark will be along presently, I’ve no doubt. The lads
worked it fine, though it couldn’t ha’ bin worked so well, and we
mightn’t ha’ got cl’ar, if it hadn’t bin for Sergeant Dick here.”
“He’s come back ag’in, and he come just in the nick o’ time whar we
was consarned--jist in time to set us three free arter the boys had
drawn the redskins off. But you saw it all, like as not, from ’ere
in the light o’ the fire they’d lit, so’s ye might--the painted
varmints.”
“Yus, yus, the gals and I seen it all from ’ere, but we didn’t
recognize the sergeant; we thought it must be Abner. The light was
so bad, and it was too far off. Ye’re doubly welcome this time,
sergeant, arter what father’s just told me.”
They had passed through the gate in the palisading, which Jenny had
left open for them; and they in their turn also left it open in the
hope of the ark’s speedy arrival. Paddling up to the verandah, Dick
was giving his hand to Muriel, to help her to step on to the little
landing-ladder, when her aunt and uncle and Amos simultaneously
cried out in tones of relief and satisfaction:
“Hooray! Here’s the ark. They got clear all right. Abel, Aaron,
Abner, are you all right?”
Sergeant Dick followed Muriel quickly on to the ladder, and up it on
to the verandah. He turned then and saw the ark working in through
the stockade-gate in rather a clumsy way.
Three dark forms in cowboy hats and long great-coats could be dimly
seen warping the craft in behind the cabin.
No answer was returned from the ark, however, to the anxious
inquiries of the squatter and his wife, who now called out again to
know if all three aboard were quite all right.
Again no answer was vouchsafed, but the ark, having cleared the
gateway, came shooting swiftly, still propelled by its sail,
straight for the verandah.
CHAPTER XIX--THE SECOND SIEGE OF “WATER CASTLE”
Sergeant Dick, in vague suspicion that all was not as it should be
on the ark, when no answer was returned to the second hail by the
squatter and his wife, hurriedly bundled Muriel and the old woman
inside the open door of the castle.
Deborah and Bella and Jenny had run to the edge of the verandah to
greet the supposed occupants of the scow.
The craft’s broad nose struck the landing-stage close by the little
ladder, just missing running into the canoe in which the old man and
Amos still were.
In the same instant the rear door of the cabin of the ark was thrown
open and out poured a great throng of redskins, led by Howling Wolf
himself.
Shrieking their war-whoop exultantly, they rushed _en masse_ for the
bow and bounded on to the verandah. The three women lining its edge
were nearly knocked down by the rush, and were promptly secured by
some, while the chief, with the main body, tore across to the door
of the castle.
Half a dozen of the redskins leaped down into the canoe and seized
Old Alf and Amos, upsetting the frail craft, however, in their
eagerness and wild haste, and plunging them all, captors and
captured, into the water.
Sergeant Dick, as may be supposed, was not taken so completely by
surprise as the others. As he stood in the doorway, suspicious and
alarmed at the strange silence aboard the ark, he held his rifle at
the ready.
On the rush of the Ogalcrees he promptly aimed from the hip at the
foremost and pressed the trigger, then hastily retreated inside the
door--seeing the others outside taken and no hope of rescuing them.
He slammed it to, flinging his whole weight against it while he
turned the key.
“Guard the left window, quick!” he yelled. “Muriel, you shoot the
bolts. Fire out on them, Mrs. Arnold, or they’ll be in.”
He darted himself to the right-hand loophole, leaving the door only
on the lock. But Muriel at once sprang to it and thrust home first
the bottom bolt and then the top, while a dozen musket-butts
battered thunderously, but otherwise fruitlessly, upon its armored
iron plating outside.
All the steel shutters had been drawn and secured over the windows,
and, thrusting open the loophole in his, Dick poked the muzzle of
his rifle quickly through. He pointed it at a sharp angle across the
doorway without, and pressed the trigger.
Without waiting to hear the three simultaneous screams of agony that
followed the shot, he whipped back the bolt of his rifle, ejecting
his spent cartridge, then forced it home again, bringing another
cartridge into play from the magazine, and pressed the trigger
again.
Two agonized howls answered the shot this time. And old Mrs.
Arnold’s revolver cracked rapidly out of the left-hand window,
eliciting more yells of pain and terror from the Indians attacking
the door.
Through the narrow slit before him, the young police officer saw the
redskins give back from the door, some running to either side along
the verandah, ducking as they went; others--the greater
body--retreating across to the ark.
Five of their number lay in their death-throes just outside the
door, and three more were dragging themselves after the others,
badly wounded.
Not only had all the shots from the house told amongst the densely
packed assailants around the door, but Sergeant Dick’s first shot
through the window, being fired at such close range, went through
the bodies of two men and mortally wounded a third behind them,
while his second, in the same way, accounted for two more.
His keen eyes, used to seeing in the dark and ranging quickly over
the retreating Ogalcrees, saw some of them carrying the body of
their chief, who lay as one dead in their arms.
Howling Wolf had paid the penalty of his crimes at last--had been
shot dead by the sergeant’s hastily but well aimed shot from the
hip.
Both Mrs. Arnold and Sergeant Dick held their fire the moment their
foes fell back from the door, for fear of hitting the three girls
taken prisoners, and who were being hurried by some of their captors
aboard the ark.
“Oh, my cousins! Jenny, and Deborah and Bella! What has become of
them? Are they killed--murdered?” panted Muriel wildly, in horrified
accents.
“No, and they won’t be. Calm yourself, Miss Arnold, and lend a
further hand. You can help by handing me a brace of revolvers or
automatics. They are better than a rifle for close quarters like
this.”
“Yes. Help, gal! Help! Your cousins air taken prisoners, and--and
your uncle and my brave boys must--must be slaughtered. Oh, the
fiends--the cutthroat villains! I’ll have two Indian lives for every
one of theirs--ay, and more!”
And the grief-frenzied old woman thrust the barrel of her
six-shooter out again through her loophole and blazed away whenever
she saw a foeman, turning her weapon upon the three wounded wretches
trying to drag themselves aboard the ark when the others had all
vanished behind shelter.
She shot the three dead. One tumbled into the lake, another lay
across the bulwark of the ark, and the third just in front of its
fore cabin, inside which he was lugged by his comrades the next
moment.
“Watch all the windows on your side, Mrs. Arnold,” said the
sergeant. “Some of the Ogalcrees have fled along the verandah to
either end. They may try and force one or other of our loop-holes.
I’ll be ready for them on this.”
“And I’ll take the door,” said Muriel, quietly. “I’ll fire through
the lower loop in it if the Indians attempt a second rush.”
“Be careful, and don’t unnecessarily expose yourself, Miss Arnold,”
cautioned Dick. “If they come on, strong, you’d better abandon the
loop and secure it, or they may, if they get up again, be able to
fire in through it on us.”
“Oh, my man and our fine lads!” moaned the squatter’s wife.
Then with a savage execration she blazed away again rapidly through
the loop before her. Three of the half-dozen Ogalcrees who had
jumped into the canoe to capture Amos and his father, and had been
soused into the lake with the pair by the craft capsizing, were to
be seen peering cautiously over the edge of the verandah where the
ladder was.
All six had got upon the steps and were cowering there, dripping
wet, collecting their energies for another rush upon the door in
concert with their comrades cowering at either end of the verandah,
when those aboard the ark should return to the attack.
The scow had not been made fast, of course, to the verandah. Being
run bow on against this, it had hitherto merely been kept in place
by the impulse of the sail.
When, however, the assailants all came tumbling pell-mell aboard
again to escape the deadly fire from the house, the craft had
sheered off and was now a good ten feet and more from the platform.
The death of their intrepid and resourceful leader--a host in
himself--as well as their being shut out of the “castle,” when they
had fully counted on being able to get in by their quick rush,
besides their fresh losses, had considerably damped the Ogalcrees’
ardor.
If it had not been that they could not very well abandon the men
left on the verandah, they were so heartily sick of the whole siege
by now, they would probably have raised this and cleared off in the
ark, satisfied with its contents and the prisoners they had managed
to secure. They would probably have paid no heed to the exhortations
of the Black Panther, the next in authority to the dead chief, and
who now assumed command and was all eagerness--as it was the first
of any importance he had ever held--to retrieve their previous
defeats and win glory for himself.
As it was they decided upon another attack. One of their number,
without exposing himself, flung a rope out of a window in the cabin
to the gang on the landing-ladder.
Drawing very little water, but just skimming along the surface, as
before explained, the ark was very easily moved. All six Ogalcrees
on the steps, keeping their heads well below the level of the
platform--out of sight and reach of Aunt Kate--began promptly
hauling on the rope.
“They are returning to the attack. They’ve got a rope to the steps,
and the fellows there are pulling them in,” Sergeant Dick said. And
leveling his rifle again through his loop, he took steady aim at the
taut rope stretching between the ark and the verandah.
As he was about to press the trigger there came a loud, persistent
knocking upon the floor of “Water Castle”--_somewhere underneath
it_.
Muriel and her aunt uttered cries of astonishment, if not alarm,
likewise helping to distract his aim somewhat as he pulled the
trigger. Nevertheless, his shot struck the rope, severing a couple
of the strands.
“Well done, sergeant!” cried Mrs. Arnold. “Shoot again and cut it in
two--foil ’em! Muriel, that must be your uncle and Amos knocking
underneath. They have swum below the house and are at the trapdoor
for sartin. Go and see girl, quick!”
“Be careful, though, Miss Arnold. It may be some of the Ogalcrees,”
said Sergeant Dick, hurriedly ejecting his used cartridge and
bringing another into the breech. “Call out--ask who is
there--before you open the trap.”
Muriel flew towards the central passage where the trapdoor was; and
Sergeant Dick again dwelt carefully upon his aim.
Crack! His piece spoke and the rope parted, the severed ends flying
up and backwards, like black snakes in the darkness.
“Hooray! You are indeed a dandy shot, sergeant,” cried Mrs. Arnold.
“To hit and cut a rope in this blamed darkness! But, look out!
You’ve not stopped the ark’s ‘way.’”
The “way” or impetus the ark had, made that light though clumsy
craft come on towards the landing-stage, and the next moment it had
again bumped into this.
CHAPTER XX--A COOLER FOR THE INVADERS
The Indians, however, did not make another immediate rush, but
opened a terrific fusillade upon the two open loops from the door
and side-window of the ark’s cabin. The craft swung broadside on to
the verandah; and the gang on the steps, grasping the dangling rope,
made this fast again.
Sergeant Dick and Mrs. Arnold blazed back fiercely with a brace of
pistols each, keeping well to the side of their loops, and so
escaping being shot down by the bullets that now occasionally came
winging their way in.
The voice of the Black Panther rang out, issuing an unintelligible
order.
Sharp upon it, the two doors of the ark, the one in the bow and the
other aft, were thrown open and out poured the Ogalcrees in two
dense crowds.
Yelling and whooping, the one in the bows came swarming on to the
verandah, led by the six dripping braves from the stairs, who
brandished their wet and useless rifles and now more serviceable
tomahawks.
Sergeant Dick and Aunt Kate concentrated the fire of their four
pistols upon this band--fired into it as fast as they could.
The foremost red men stumbled and dropped rapidly, tripping up or
otherwise incommoding those behind, several of whom fell over them.
But, bounding over the fallen, others dashed up to the loopholes,
and the sergeant and Aunt Kate had only just time to slam the
sliding covers over these, to prevent being shot in at and the
apertures taken.
Hastily the two defenders hooked the loop-covers, then ran to the
adjacent windows, which also commanded the verandah.
Quickly, but cautiously, opening the loops there, the pair fired out
again at an inward angle, towards one another, so as to sweep the
doorway once more with a cross fire.
But the angle at which they were both obliged to fire being greater
now, they could not hit the men attacking the door, only pot at
those farther back. The door was trembling and groaning under the
energetic onslaught being made upon it.
And then, all at once, a rifle-barrel was thrust in at Aunt Kate’s
loop, and the deadly muzzle spurted a jet of flame and smoke almost
into her cheek.
A second rifle was quickly beside the first. The brave old woman
managed to push both rifles aside and fire out and wound one of
their redskin owners. But she could not dislodge or thrust the
weapons back, nor close the loop cover altogether.
“To the inner room! Retreat to the middle passage, sergeant,” she
screamed. “They’ve got my loophole.”
She turned and ran for the nearest of the three doors behind her,
firing back as she did so at the loop she was thus forced to abandon
in order to distract the aim of the marksmen outside.
Two bullets followed her, but the shots only imbedded themselves on
either side of the inner door, through which she vanished the next
moment.
Sergeant Dick saw through his loop some half a dozen of the Indians
staggering up the landing steps from the ark, hugging between them a
stout spar--a spare mast-yard--with the evident intention of using
it as a battering-ram against the door.
He turned his two revolvers upon the gang and shot down three men.
Then the same number of rifles were thrust in at _his_ loop, and a
knife and a tomahawk came whizzing in, just missing his face.
Desperately he shot out, at the same time as he pushed the
rifle-barrels aside. All three of these discharged their deadly
contents in the same instant close past his head, the bullets
thudding into the logs of the roof.
One of the rifle-barrels was withdrawn--fell out again, as its owner
slid down with a rubbing, scraping noise and a deep groan, shot
through the shoulder by Dick. But the other two remained, and their
owners strove to work their muzzles round towards him.
“Come away! Run for the inner rooms, sergeant! We can hold them
there,” screamed Aunt Kate. “Quit, and leave ’em the loop!”
Seeing the futility of trying any longer to hold it, the police
officer reluctantly obeyed her, wheeling and darting, crouched, for
the door just behind him.
He fired back as _he_ ran and jumped from side to side, and the old
woman also covered his retreat by firing at his loop inside of the
one she herself had abandoned.
She had closed and locked and bolted the door inside which she had
fled, and was now at the door of the central passage, looking out
through a loop in it. Needless to say, she had closed and was
fastening this door also.
The reader, perhaps, may need reminding that there were three doors
in a line along the inner wall of the living-room of “Water
Castle”--all on the opposite side to the entrance. The middle one
led into the central passage or compartment, and the other two into
Aaron’s and the old couples’ bedrooms respectively, on either side
of it.
Several shots were fired in through the two captured loopholes at
Dick as he darted for the inner door, but, thanks to his own tactics
and Mrs. Arnold’s covering fire, he gained it untouched.
It had been left open for the convenience of passing quickly in the
defense of the house, if necessary, from one room to another--and,
in fact, all round this--and, darting within, he swung it to behind
him, then promptly locked and bolted it.
He was about to open the loop in it--for every door in the house was
provided with such, covered over with a little steel slide that
could be hooked to when shut--when Mrs. Arnold, Muriel, and Old Alf
appeared in the door beside him communicating with the central
passage.
“You are safe, sergeant? Oh, thank heaven!” cried Muriel.
As she spoke, Sergeant Dick saw behind her, inside the central
passage, Amos Arnold on hands and knees in the act of dropping a
trapdoor in the floor into its place.
The squatter and his son on being thrown into the water by the
capsizing of the canoe had contrived below the surface to throw off
the grasp of their coppery antagonists, and with sharpened wits,
and, strong swimmers as both were, they promptly struck away under
the water and rose beneath the verandah.
Under there they were safe, of course, from being seen by their foes
in the ark or on the platform; and, being unpursued by their late
captors, the natural idea occurred to both to slip inside the piles
and braces below the house itself and try and gain admission to this
through the trapdoor.
The darkness, of course, was also in their favor. Indeed, it was so
dark under the “Castle” that they both mistook each other for a foe
when they caught sight of one another crawling through the piles.
Recognizing each other in time, however, they then swam silently to
one of the canoes moored under the house and the trapdoor, and,
clambering into it, tried the trap. As they expected, it was fast,
and they were unable to force it; so, waiting for a lull in the
fighting over their heads, they knocked to let the inmates know of
their whereabouts.
“Sergeant, you’re a brick! The most dandy fighter and man I’ve ever
struck yet,” shouted the old squatter. “Let ’em break in, the
painted rips--the cutthroat varmints! They’ll get a reception they
don’t at all expect--one as ’ill rather cool their ardor and put a
damper on their spirits. Hee, hee, hee!”
“But we’ve got to pay ’em,” screamed his wife. “There are the other
three lads and the three girls to avenge if we can’t rescue ’em.”
“We’ll rescue ’em if they’re still alive, mother,” growled Amos.
“And if my brothers are not, the girls are sure to be.”
He disappeared inside the door of his parents’ bedroom, while they
went to the door leading into the living-room. Muriel stepped inside
the room where Dick was and crossed to his side as he threw open the
loop in the door before him and hurriedly proceeded to reload his
two automatics to their fullest capacity.
“You had better stand to one side, Mu--Miss Arnold,” he said, “so as
to be out of the way of any shots that may come through the door. It
will hardly keep shots out like the front one.”
“The door’s stouter than you think. It’s double, with a plate of
steel between the two sheathings,” she answered. “And the Ogalcrees
will get the biggest surprise of their lives when they burst in.”
Thunderous crashes were resounding through the house from the front
door, upon which the Indians were using the improvised battering-ram
with effect. A couple of their number at either of the captured
loops were firing into the castle, and the living-room was full of
smoke and the acrid fumes of burnt gunpowder.
More of the assailants were trying to force the shutters upon the
other front windows.
Crash! One of the hinges of the front door gave, and a long
triangular crack showed some of the Indians outside.
Crack, crack, crack, crack! spoke the rifles of the four defenders,
and the bullets, surging across the intervening room, rattled upon
the window shutters or flew out the widening gap of the door.
A scream of pain outside told that the sergeant’s shot, as usual,
had found its human billet. The Indians, using the spar--carrying it
by means of short ropes noosed round it--retreated until their
rearmost man was on the very edge of the verandah; then forward they
all rushed again and dashed the “ram” once more violently against
the door.
With another splintering, rending crash the second hinge was burst
from its hold, and the door rolled open, precipitating the foremost
of the ram-bearers inside the living-room.
Two of them were at once shot down by the sergeant and Amos, while
two more fell back, dropping their end of the log and clasping their
arms.
With a united yell of triumph the rest of the Ogalcrees came
swarming in, however, and charged across the room for the three
doors opposite. Out rang six revolvers as rapidly as such weapons
can speak, and as many ceaseless streams of fire flew at different
angles through the rushing ranks of the foe.
A man fell or staggered at every shot. Nevertheless, the intruders
were not to be checked by the hottest fire now, believing that
victory was within their grasp.
They poured into the room, jostling each other, crowding upon one
another until the apartment was nearly full and there were not half
a dozen warriors left outside.
The fast-speaking six revolvers, however, prevented the front ranks
from reaching the three doors within. And suddenly, as if by magic,
to the rattle of a bolt wrenched back, the whole floor of the
living-room _dropped like a trapdoor_, plunging all the surging,
tightly packed invaders, feet first, into the water below the
stronghold!
CHAPTER XXI--THE DASH FOR THE ARK
Sergeant Dick was as much astonished as the trapped Indians
themselves--so much so that he held his fire for some few moments
after their fall through the floor.
Not so Amos or Mrs. Arnold, nor even old Alf.
The first two, Amos yelling exultantly like any redskin, pumped
bullets thick and fast, automatic in either hand, into the huddle of
feather-plumed, half-shaven heads bobbing about helplessly in the
water-trap.
And the old squatter, quitting his lever, darted back to the
trapdoor in the central passage, and, hurriedly unfastening it,
lifted it and bent down over it, firing at the swimmers near him.
“Oh, oh!” wailed Muriel in deep distress and magnanimous pity.
“It--it is a horrid butchery now. Oh, let them go--let them get
clear, uncle, aunt, Amos!”
It was indeed nothing short of butchery, as she said. The Ogalcrees
were caught in a terrible death-trap.
Forced to swim for their lives and with their firearms no longer of
the slightest use, they were penned in under the house by the
fenced-in piles. These, as has before been explained, were
interlaced by cross braces all along the outside edge of the
premises, so that the Indians were shut in by so many closed gates,
as it were.
It was, of course, possible to scramble out through this open-work
fencing, for had not Amos and his father got in that way? And the
Ogalcrees on the outside fringe of the mob trapped inside were quick
to start clambering out.
The rest made to follow, that is, the great majority, but some clung
to the piles and cross-bracing under the middle of the house, and
tried to shelter behind the beams from the deadly and merciless
shooting of the defenders.
At such close range nearly every shot of the latter told, for they
could coolly pick their targets and take steady aim. Moreover, the
swimmers were all so tightly packed, a miss was almost impossible.
No wonder Muriel Arnold’s gentle nature revolted from the slaughter.
Redskin after redskin, shot through the brain, would throw up his
arms and slide, an inert mass, under water.
Her kinsfolk paid no heed to her outcry--her prayer for mercy to the
trapped wretches--but continued their deadly shooting, sending
another and yet another copper-colored foeman to the bottom.
Old Alf, at the trapdoor in the middle of the castle, was shooting
almost as many as his son or wife were from the loops in the
living-room inner wall, when--whiz! thud! A tomahawk shot past his
face like a streak of silver light, missing it by little more than a
hair’s breadth, the keen blade striking and sticking quivering in
the door-frame of Aaron’s bedroom alongside him.
He whipped back, startled and just in time to escape being pierced
to the brain by a knife, thrown with equally unerring skill at his
head. The knife stuck, quivering like the tomahawk, in the frame of
his own bedroom on the opposite side of the central passage.
Two of the trapped braves had swum to either side of him under the
bedrooms, where they were sheltered from his son’s and wife’s fire.
There, clinging to piles, and thus partially covered from his fire,
they had shied the hatchet and knife at him with the skill born of
continual practice.
The old man thought it advisable to slam down the trapdoor and shoot
home the sunken bolts upon it.
Sergeant Dick had not fired another shot after the plunging of the
invaders into the water; but he still stood by his loop in Aaron’s
bedroom, ready to shoot if any of the trapped redmen showed any
likelihood of scaling the living-room floor and attempting to
continue the attack on the house. Muriel stood by him, gazing also
through the loop and uttering groans of anguish, and clasping her
hands in horror at the slaughter going on.
Then, all at once, Sergeant Dick woke from the trance that seemed to
possess him, and he shouted:
“Arnold, put back the floor, quick, if you can, and let us attempt a
dash-out to recover the ark before it is too late. There can only be
a few Indians left on the verandah and the ark.”
“You’re right, sergeant. I was nigh forgettin’ about the ark.
That’ll do, Kate--Amos. Get ready to rush out and seize the ark
now.”
And the old man darted to the lever beside the ladder in the
cupboard and dragged it back, straining upon it with all his
strength. The trapdoor of the living-room rose slowly into place
again, but the only way the old man had of securing it in position
for the time being was by hooking a chain on to a ring on the lever,
and so keeping this forced back. The bolts that fastened the floor
in place could only be got at through little traps in the floor
itself. All these bolts were connected by a chain which passed
through an iron pipe in the thickness of the flooring to another
lever in the cupboard.
As the floor of the living-room rose into place again, Amos and his
mother hastily wrenched back the fastenings upon the door in the
central passage.
Sergeant Dick was about to unfasten the door before him when Muriel
exclaimed:
“No, no, don’t open this door. One’s sufficient, in case we have to
retreat. We’ll go out the middle one.”
She and Dick thereupon joined Amos and his mother at the middle
door, and as they got it open and were darting through on to the
trembling floor of the living-room, old Alf stepped out of the
cupboard and followed them.
Across the living-room, its floor shaking and vibrating in its
insecure state under them, the five of them raced to the dismantled
verandah and open front door.
The sergeant held the two women back for a moment while he put out
his head and reconnoitered.
Some seven or eight Indians were at either end of the verandah, the
majority of them dripping with water and more or less exhausted.
More were clambering up all along the verandah front, and some four
or five were clustered on the steps, while as many more were
standing in the bow and stern of the ark, apparently making ready to
cast off.
While the fight had been going on inside the house a nearly full
moon had risen and was now bathing the lake and its distant shores
with the most effulgent rays, lighting it up in an enchantingly
lovely way.
Sergeant Dick was glad of that bright moon--although he had no eyes
at the moment for the beauties of the landscape--for it showed him
the positions of all his enemies. And he beheld outside the “dock,”
or outer ring of palisading, a great number of canoes, filled with
Indian warriors, as well as several great log-rafts. Some of the
occupants of the canoes were engaged in trying to force the gate in
the palisades, so as to admit the flotilla to the aid of their
comrades in front of the castle.
The recapture of the ark, therefore, promised to be anything but an
easy task. It looked as if the defenders had waited too long--lost
too much time in slaughtering the wretches they had trapped by their
drop-floor.
But Sergeant Dick and those with him were not the sort to be easily
daunted, flushed with triumph as they were.
As the young police officer put his face out of the open door, some
of the redmen on the verandah saw it, and, yelling in terror,
immediately plunged off into the water.
Encouraged by this evident sign of demoralization and panic, Dick
echoed their yells with a triumphant shout. And springing out on the
verandah, a revolver in either hand, he banged away right and left
as fast as he could pull trigger, hardly waiting to take aim.
His companions poured after him pell-mell, automatics also in either
hand, and even Muriel seemed carried away by the battle-fever now
and fired right and left as fast and well as any of the others.
The Ogalcrees upon the verandah howled in deadly fear, and one and
all followed the example of the first three or four--tumbled
helter-skelter into the water and swam away for the outer
palisading. Those on the ark broke and fled, in equally abject
dismay, round to the opposite side of the cabin, falling over one
another in their wild scramble.
“Back to the central passage, Muriel, Mrs. Arnold, and you, too,
Squatter, and hold the house still. Drop the trap-floor again. Amos,
you and I will do to take the ark. Come on!”
Sergeant Dick tore across the verandah, closely followed by Amos
Arnold, and jumped on to the bulwark of the scow and down into its
bows.
The door of the cabin stood open. Both men were inside it, had
slammed it to behind them, and were shooting the bolts upon it,
before a shot could be fired at them by the Ogalcrees in the canoes
and on the rafts outside the “dock,” much less before the terrified
cravens who had fled round the cabin could pluck up courage and
oppose them.
Muriel and her uncle and aunt had, in like manner, hastily retired
within the “castle” again, run back to the security of the central
passage, and closed the inner door there.
Then Muriel and her aunt “manned” the loops again, commanding the
living-room as before, while old Alf rushed to the cupboard, to be
ready to drop the trap-floor again if necessary.
A moment later, amid howls of baffled rage, the occupants of the
rafts and canoes poured in their shot at the “castle.” But the
bullets only imbedded themselves harmlessly in the thick logs.
CHAPTER XXII--THE ROUT OF THE BESIEGERS
Sergeant Dick and Amos had no sooner shot the bolts on the inside of
the bow door of the ark than they turned and made for the
after-cabin, glancing about them as they did so in quest of the
three girls.
They saw, instead, Amos’s three brothers--Aaron, Abel and
Abner--lying, bound hand and foot and gagged, upon the seats running
along either side of the cabin. None of the three appeared to be
wounded or injured in any way. Rejoicing at the sight, but unable to
do anything for the trio just then, the two rescuers gained the door
between the two cabins and looked through.
The aft door was open and there was no one outside it. They could
see the silvery moonlight streaming in and flooding the stern-sheets
of the scow without.
By the same ghostly radiance they beheld Jenny and her two
sisters-in-law lying, like the three in the fore-cabin, bound and
gagged, in the berths to either side.
The moon’s rays shot into both cabins, also, through the open loops
in the shuttered windows. The Ogalcrees had left the shutters fast,
but had opened the loopholes in case they had to besiege the
“castle” from the ark.
“Stand there and guard the loops, Amos,” whispered the sergeant.
“Shoot at the first one that darkens, while I secure the aft door.”
Amos, accordingly, remained in the doorway between the two cabins, a
foot in either as well as a hand grasping a smoking pistol, his eyes
ranging quickly along all four windows, ready to fire at any one of
them; and the sergeant of police ran towards the aft door.
But as the young trooper and squatter believed, they had heard
splashes follow upon their leaping aboard the scow. All the
Ogalcrees who had run round the cabin were so scared, they had
jumped immediately, one after the other, into the lake, on hearing
the white men come aboard.
They, too, were now swimming their hardest for the palisades, the
same as were all their exhausted fellow-braves who had escaped from
the water-trap in the “castle”--who had wriggled through the open
work fencing under it.
It was a complete, panic-stricken rout this time. Black Panther, the
new war chief, and fully half of his leading and stoutest sub-chiefs
and braves, were floating--shot dead, or drowned--among the piles
supporting “Water Castle”; and the rest of the band had had quite a
surfeit of fighting for a time at least--had enough of the siege of
that impregnable lake-dwelling, anyhow.
Unhindered in any way, therefore, John Dick, the dashing young
sergeant of Mounted Police, reached the aft door of the ark’s cabin,
or “house,” shut it, and bolted and barred it.
Then he ran to the nearer window, on the side farther from the
“castle,” and peered out through the loophole.
He could see no one on the footboard, or bulwark, of the scow
outside, but all the Ogalcrees swimming away for dear life--for the
safety of the canoes and rafts outside the palisades.
“Hurrah, Amos! We have conquered. The Indians are in full flight
everywhere once more, and I don’t think they will come back again
for many a long day. They’ve had a defeat this last time that they
will not get over in a hurry. Release your brothers, while I attend
to your sisters.”
But Amos thought his brothers could remain tied up a little longer.
He was not going to lose the opportunity of still further punishing
the assailants by the delay it would entail releasing them.
And, as his fellow-rescuer turned from the window in the after
cabin, his rifle cracked out from one in the fore cabin.
He fired again and again at the bobbing heads of the Indians in the
moonlight, and “crack, crack!” in rapid succession came also the
rifles of his mother and father from the front windows of the
“castle,” what time Sergeant Dick cut the cords which bound Jenny
and her sisters-in-law and removed the gags from their mouths.
Leaving the three women, then, to pull themselves together and
restore the circulation of the blood in their cramped limbs, the
trooper hurried through into the fore-cabin and freed Amos’s
brothers.
They all three at once began roundly abusing Amos for not having
released them before, and given them an opportunity of having a
parting and vengeful shot or two at the hated foemen.
“Because I knowed it would only purvent _me_ having a shot,” he
grinned back at them, while slipping a fresh clip of five cartridges
into the breech of his smoking rifle, ere thrusting it again out the
loophole and sighting at the enemy. “And look at ye. Ye can’t use
your legs or arms yet, so what good would it ha’ bin? Ye couldn’t
ha’ done nothink sure.”
“Confound it! My legs mightn’t belong to me, or my arms neither,”
growled Aaron, stamping and tumbling about and rubbing his arms
vigorously, with his face distorted with the pain the stagnant blood
caused him as it began to course again through his veins.
Abel and Abner likewise indulged in anathemas, not loud but deep,
against their late captors for the discomfort and suffering they
were now enduring, and, with Aaron, stumbled towards the other
window and the door to get a shot at the Indians.
But by the time they were able to poke their rifles through the
openings the last redman had swum up to the palisades, passed
through, and been drawn into a canoe or on to one of the rafts. The
Ogalcrees were soon in full retreat, paddling away to the nearer
shore, the eastern one.
Abel and Aaron had armed themselves with the rifles of their wives.
The weapons had been placed in a corner of the cabin by the Indians
after capturing the women.
Abner coolly appropriated Sergeant Dick’s rifle, for the police
officer had slipped the piece from his shoulder to free him and his
brothers.
Sending a couple of shots apiece whizzing after the canoes and
rafts--without any success on account of the deceptive moonlight,
the distance the craft were away, and the pain and awkwardness still
of their limbs--the three baffled marksmen cursed their ill-luck and
their brother Amos again for denying them the better chance. Then
their father was heard hailing the ark.
“Amos! Sergeant! Are the girls safe? And are the other lads there?”
“Ay, ay, Squatter! They are all here, quite safe--none the worse,
any of them,” called back Dick, merrily, adding with a light laugh,
“Can’t you hear your sons cussing because they’ve been cheated by
Amos of having a last smack at the redskins?”
“Ay, ay, we’re here, and all on us all right, dad,” shouted Abel,
the eldest of the sons, turning from the window to clasp his wife
Bella in his arms and exchange mutual gratulations with her.
Aaron--the second and other married brother--greeted _his_ wife
Deborah in like manner; while Abner, the youngest of the four sons,
restored Sergeant Dick his rifle in a sulky way, without so much as
a “Thank you.”
For that matter neither had he or either of the other two young
squatters in any way acknowledged the police-sergeant’s kindness in
setting them free. But their apparent ingratitude, or want of common
politeness, might be excused by their over-eagerness to have a slap
at their late captors.
With the dread enemy in full retreat to the shore, there was no need
for them to linger inside the ark; and they all now made a move
towards the bow-door, Abner and Amos bringing up the rear after
closing and fastening the loops on all the windows, and then locking
the fore door.
Muriel and her uncle and aunt came out of the “castle” on to the
verandah to greet them, and old man Arnold sent a parting shot with
his rifle in the direction of the Indians, who could be seen just
landing on the eastern shore, shadowy silhouettes against the less
dusky background.
As they all reëntered “Water Castle,” chattering and laughing like
so many magpies, Muriel and the sergeant fell to the rear, and
clasped hands silently but eloquently.
Muriel’s eyes shone brightly in the moonlight, and John Dick thought
he had never seen her look quite so lovely as in that silvery
radiance upon the white-bathed verandah with its clean-cut shadows.
Neither noticed how Abner, the youngest son, watched them with
scowling, jealous-distorted face and fiercely gleaming eyes.
“The painted rips’ll not come back ag’in,” declared old Alf,
decidedly. “We gev ’em their bellyful this last time, anyways. Ho,
ho! They don’t want another such gruelling, I’ll swar. Bust ’em!
They’ve sp’iled our front door, lads and lassies; but we’ll patch it
up just for to-night and make it all right, as good as ever,
to-morrow. Just see what you can do with it, Abel, Aaron, and Abner.
Amos and you girls, Muriel and Jenny, lend me a hand and help fix up
the drop-floor as it should be. Bella and Deb, mebbe you will aid
mother to get us all somethink to eat and drink, ’specially drink,
arter the hot and thirsty work we’ve had.”
“Can’t I be of any assistance?” asked Sergeant Dick.
“Ye’ve done more’n enough, I should say, sergeant, but ye can help
the gals and me and Amos to fix up the floor as ye’re such a glutton
for work.”
The old trapper or squatter and his daughter and niece and Amos got
down on their hands and knees upon the strip of flooring which had
remained in position when the rest of the floor dropped.
This strip, of course, was a mere ledge, only a couple of feet wide,
just inside the front door and bordering the front wall.
Pressing upon a board, each, the quartet caused it to slide partly
out of sight under the front wall, and disclosed a solid steel bar,
some four feet long and more than two inches in diameter, lying in
the cavity. Attached to the back of the steel bolts was a chain
which ran out of sight into an iron pipe under the board.
Opposite the other end of the bolt, in the thickness of the edge of
the portion of flooring which had dropped, was a socket, and Muriel
tried to push her bolt home in this.
The sergeant promptly insisted on saving her the trouble. He forced
the bolt inside the socket as far as it would go, then helped Jenny
to push hers home, what time old man Arnold and Amos had shot theirs
and gone on to a fifth and sixth, and the other three brothers were
fixing the dismantled outer door in place again by piling all manner
of things against it, including the armored tiller-screen from the
ark.
The drop-floor was still anything but quite firm under their feet,
even with the six great bolts shot, and the old man asked Sergeant
Dick to follow him through to the central passage and see him finish
fixing it.
Full of curiosity, the young police officer accompanied him to the
cupboard where the levers were, and the old man explained that, by
wrenching back one, all six bolts they had just shot were drawn out
simultaneously, but that the floor in the ordinary way would not
give until six more pivoted iron buttons, also hidden in the
flooring, were drawn aside.
A second lever contrived this, and a third would draw them back
again. This third lever was now pulled, while all in the living-room
were told to stand off the drop part of the floor. And then Arnold
went on to tell John Dick that he had contrived to raise the
trap-floor by means of yet a fourth lever, which dragged on a chain,
that always hung slacked under the house, attached to the edge of
the trap-floor and passing through a ring or socket in the
stationary part of the flooring opposite and round back to the
lever.
“By pulling on this ’ere fourth lever, then, you see, sergeant, the
trap-floor is raised and kin be held in place until we can fix up
all the reg’lar fastenings. Come now, let’s join the others ag’in,
and have somethink to eat and drink.”
“And I’ve got something to tell you all that will astonish you very
much, Squatter--something I discovered among the cliffs on the west
shore.”
CHAPTER XXIII--THE PLAN TO ROUND UP THE WHITE HOODS
Sergeant Dick did not notice the startled, anxious glance that old
Arnold gave him as they went back to the living-room. There they
found a substantial meal spread for them.
Ere they all sat down to it, some of their number took a look out
through the loops on all four sides of the house. The lake was still
bathed in moonlight, and not an Indian canoe or raft was to be seen
anywhere.
“Well, now, sergeant, what’s this astonishing news that you’ve got
to tell us?” asked the old squatter, with his mouth full. “What’s
this something that you said you had discovered among the cliffs on
the west shore, and which I presumes brought ye back so timely here
ag’in?”
His sons and their mother all started and exchanged covert, alarmed
glances, then eyed the young police officer keenly and by no means
favorably.
As it happened, he had his eyes bent upon his plate at the time, and
did not observe the strange, gloomy looks, which, after all, as
before, were most veiled.
“I’ve discovered the ‘duffing-den’ of the White Hoods, I believe,”
he quietly replied.
“What!”
And Amos Arnold sprang up, nearly upsetting his chair.
“Yes, I believe so,” said Sergeant Dick. And he went on to relate in
full his experiences of the previous night after his escape from the
Indian ambush; how he climbed the water-slide and found the
cup-shaped valley and saw several hundred head of cattle, sheep, and
horses grazing within it.
His companions listened in silence, Muriel and Jenny in breathless
interest. None interrupted him, the young men only contriving to
steal questioning glances at one another behind their mugs, and
particularly at their father.
Muriel and Jenny hung excitedly upon Dick’s every word; and when he
had told them all, the first-mentioned cried out:
“Oh, uncle--boys, what a grand discovery! It must be the outlaws’
secret duffing-den right enough. You and Sergeant Dick now can
capture the gang and claim the reward offered. What is it--five
hundred pounds, isn’t it?”
“I had instructions to increase the reward to a thousand pounds,”
said Dick.
“A thousand pounds; and not only that, but you will rid these parts
of these murderous robbers who have so long terrorized us. In fact,
I believe their plundering has helped to incite the Ogalcrees to
rebel and go on the warpath, for they, besides suffering heavily at
the gang’s hands, have been blamed for some of its misdeeds, as we
know.”
“Yes, yes,” chimed in Jenny. “It will be a grand thing for all round
here when those awful White Hoods are put down; the poor farmers and
ranchmen will sleep more easily in their beds. You will be doing
humanity a service, father--brothers--if you help the sergeant to
lay the gang by the heels.”
“We shall be doing ourselves a big sarvice, too, if we make a
thousand pounds over the job,” guffawed her father. “By thunder,
lads--mother, we’ll have a shot at it; we’ll help the sergeant to
capture these fellows. But only on one condition, sergeant, and that
is, that you let no one else into the secret; that we keep it to
ourselves. I don’t want no others to share the thousand quid, you
understand?”
“That’s so--that’s so,” cried his wife. “A thousand pounds divided
equally between six on you--the four lads, you Alf, and the sergeant
here, ain’t two hundred apiece. Lemme see, how much would it be? Six
into a thousand goes what, Muriel--Bella?”
“Oh, never mind, aunt. The reward is not ours yet to divide,” said
Muriel hastily, and blushing a deep crimson. “And don’t you think
that Sergeant Dick should have more than any one else, as he
discovered the gang’s lair?”
“Come, come, we won’t discuss that,” laughed Dick. “In any case it
will be for Government to apportion the reward. All right, Arnold,
we’ll keep it to ourselves, and you and the lads will help me to lay
these white-robed rustlers by the heels, as Jenny put it. Let me
see, they are supposed to number either nine or ten at full
strength.”
“That’s so. And we are six,” said Abel, the eldest son, “but then we
ought to catch ’em napping, and not in full strength.”
“When shall we make the attempt?” asked Aaron, the second son.
“We’ve evidently routed the redskins for good and all this time.
They’re not likely to give us any further trouble. And the sooner we
go the better, say I.”
And he exchanged a meaning glance with his father and mother.
“Oh, there’s no immediate hurry,” said Dick. “With the Ogalcrees out
on the warpath, the gang will be bound to lie snug and not try to
remove their stolen cattle and sheep for fear of being attacked on
the march by the Indians. Besides, it will be as well, first, to
make sure that the redmen have abandoned the siege here for good and
all. We don’t want them to attack the house in our absence while
only the ladies are here, nor attack us, for that matter, while
landing, as they did before--nor yet in the woods. A day more or
less can’t make any difference one way or the other as regards the
White Hoods, while it may mean a great deal as regards your home
here.”
“The sergeant is right,” observed Bella, Abel’s wife; and Deborah
and Muriel murmured approval. “And you all need a good night’s rest
before setting out on so risky an expedition.”
“Wait till to-morrow night,” said Muriel, “then we’ll know for
certain whether the Indians have abandoned the warpath, and we may
be able to send word to the soldiers at the nearest fort, if word
has not already gone there, of the rising.”
This was sensible advice, and it was unanimously agreed on; and,
shortly after, all declared for bed. The supper things were cleared
away; the living-room was divided off into three compartments by the
shabby curtains on the rods being drawn across, and a hammock slung
in each compartment for Amos, the sergeant, and Abner respectively.
All the others then retired to their bedrooms, and silence and
darkness speedily enwrapped the stronghold in the lake.
Sergeant Dick slept soundly in his hammock; but he was accustomed to
sleeping on a hair-trigger, as one might say, and from time to time
he awoke, rose, and went to the front door or the window on either
side of it and looked forth.
All was still and peaceful. The lake and the woods south and east
and west seemed slumbering under the silvery moon.
Thoroughly refreshed, he was up before the dawn, and went to the
bathroom at the back of the house to wash himself. When he returned
to the living-room he found that Amos and Abner had arisen, the
curtains had been drawn back, and Mrs. Arnold, Muriel and Jenny were
already preparing breakfast, with front door and windows open to
admit the sweet warm morning air.
They all--even the surly Abner--greeted him cordially; and he
thought Muriel prettier than ever in the rosy light of the dawn.
Bella and Deborah, the two married daughters-in-law, made their
appearance shortly, and then old Alf and their husbands.
All the men went out on the verandah to smoke a morning pipe before
breakfast; and, seated upon it, looking out across the water and
scanning the shore in all directions for any sign of their late
besiegers, they discussed at length their plans for the
“rounding-up” of the White Hoods.
They were at breakfast when they heard the plash of paddles and men
hailing the “castle.”
As the morning was so warm and fine they had the door wide open and
all the windows, too, but no foes could have stolen on them unawares
very well.
Rushing forth, they saw approaching the “castle” from the direction
of the landing-spit on the east shore four canoes carrying three
white men apiece.
Through the field-glasses they recognized the new comers as Foulkes,
the Indian agent, a couple of the local police troopers, two of the
officers from the nearest fort, and some ranchmen and cowboys of the
neighborhood.
All twelve visitors were warmly welcomed by the inmates of “Water
Castle,” who plied them eagerly with questions as to how matters had
gone in the district--the doings elsewhere, of course.
The Ogalcrees, it appeared, had committed a few isolated outrages,
burning and plundering some half-dozen or more farms. But for the
most part they had spared the inmates, or these had escaped and they
had contented themselves with the drink and valuables they got.
Word had been conveyed to the troops, however, and these had now
arrived at the Reservation on Paquita Island and were holding all
the chiefs who had not followed Howling Wolf on the warpath as
hostages for the good behavior of the rebels.
These last had fled _en masse_ across the frontier into the United
States, and were expected to be shortly rounded up and forced to
submit by Uncle Sam’s troops.
Sergeant Dick was wanted at the Reservation to help to satisfy the
Indians there that Government had acted in good faith by them, and
already sent the money due upon their claims, but that it had been
intercepted and stolen by the White Hood rustlers, or road-agents,
and that it would be made good later.
Accordingly, he went off with the visitors in one of their canoes an
hour or so later, promising old Alf and his two elder sons quietly
aside, however, before he did so, that he would return at nightfall
and go with them to the gang’s secret lair, and in the meantime not
tell another soul about it.
Sure enough, just as dusk was falling over the lake and the wooded
hills embosoming it, a canoe containing a single occupant was seen
by the inmates of “Water Castle” to be approaching from the southern
end of the sheet of water; that is from the direction of the Indian
Reservation.
Old Alf and his sons had been out the best part of the day visiting
the traps that they had set the evening of the Ogalcree rising, and
had just got back. Most of their traps they had found interfered
with by the redskin raiders, but those which had not been so
molested had contained furred victims sufficient to repay them well
for the trouble and time taken in setting them.
They had reset the traps for the night, and then returned home.
Bella and Deborah did not always accompany the men on their trapping
expeditions, though they frequently did so, as sometimes also did
Muriel and Jenny, and even Aunt Kate.
The canoe coming from the south end of the lake was speedily near
enough for the squatters to see that Sergeant Dick was in it, and
soon after he was partaking of some light refreshments in the
“castle” living-room, preparatory to leading the expedition.
CHAPTER XXIV--IN THE HANDS OF MERCILESS FOES
The sky was overcast and there was no moon, as they set forth in two
canoes, the one Sergeant Dick had come back in and one of the craft
kept beneath the house.
Old Alf, Abel, and the sergeant went in the first canoe, and Aaron,
Amos and Abner in the second.
Paddling softly to the western shore, they landed with equal
stealth, for there was no saying what watch the rustlers were in the
habit of keeping on the woods thereabouts.
They hauled their two craft ashore, and concealed them amongst the
bushes.
“I suggest,” said Abel, then, “that we march in single file, you
leading the way, sergeant.”
“Very good,” answered the police officer.
They threaded their way warily through the dense woods; and, in
spite of the darkness, Dick led them unerringly to the foot of the
waterslide.
For that matter, they all of course knew where it was, had
frequently seen and passed it, but, according to their own story,
had never had the curiosity to climb it as he had done, or explore
the perpendicular, terraced rocks behind it.
“We had better climb up in the same way as I did--by means of the
trees over-arching the water,” John Dick whispered. “Sling your
rifles securely now, and make sure your pistol-holsters are--”
“Hands up, all, or you’re dead men!”
The unexpected mandate made even Sergeant Dick jump.
He whipped round and saw five awful, ghostly, white-hooded,
white-clad forms confronting him and his companions, with two
pointed automatics each.
It would have been madness--certain death to have attempted
resistance or defiance in the teeth of those ten leveled little
tubes. Nevertheless, Sergeant Dick was the last of the punitive
force to put up his hands.
The five squatters hoisted theirs promptly.
None of the prisoners had his rifle unslung or a pistol drawn.
“Tie them up, Bud,” ordered the leader of the White Hoods.
And one of the five ghostly forms thrust his pistols into his belt
and advanced. The gang had clearly been posted behind a large rock
close by the water-slide.
In their ghostly disguise the fellows did not look human. Their
high-peaked hoods, drawn down to their chins so as to conceal the
face, had only two holes cut for the eyes, and their long, white,
shapeless smocks descending to the tops of their knee-boots
completely concealed their figures, and added to their spectral
appearance.
“Let’s see who they be,” said the leader in a voice which sounded
_feminine_ and also familiar to the sergeant’s ears.
He flashed an electric torch, and shone it first upon Dick’s face
and form.
“Curses! A trooper, and a sergeant at that! So the cops have tumbled
to whar we hang out, lads. That’s bad. Hullo! You are the squatter
of the lake, Old Alf Arnold, the father of ‘Water Castle.’ And
you’re his son, and you, and you,” as he flashed his torchlight in
turn upon the faces of the young men.
“You dodrotted fools! What are you doing roving round here at this
hour of the night? Don’t tell me a lie, you were out arter us?”
“Nothing of the kind,” lied old Alf. “’Ow should we know as ’ow we’d
run up agin you ’ereabouts? We are out a-settin’ of our traps, and
the sergeant’s come with us just acause he’s bin a-stayin’ wi’ us at
‘Water Castle’ durin’ this ’ere Injun risin’. Didn’t you ’ear ’ow he
helped us to beat ’em off? They besieged us hot and ’eavy in the
‘Castle’ several nights runnin’.”
“Yus, I heerd all about that, but your comin’ here looks darned
suspicious-like, all the same, and so I’m not agoin’ to let ye go
yet awhile. Tie ’em up, Bud, and blindfold ’em, too. We can’t take
no risks.”
“Bud” proceeded to bind the sergeant’s hands behind his back, and
then to blindfold him, after which he was relieved of all his
weapons and valuables.
He was then kept waiting while his fellow-prisoners were,
apparently, likewise being attended to.
“’Urry up, ’urry up, Bud!” the chief at last said, impatiently; and
a minute or two later a heavy hand fell on Dick’s shoulder and he
was told to step out.
Almost immediately he felt the ground rising steeply as he was
conducted along, and he was climbing up a slope which obliged his
captors to give him a helping hand. The gang were now evidently
joined by as many more men, for he heard them moving in front and
around him as well as whispering to one another.
Up and up the steepest of paths or rocky defiles they climbed, until
presently a halt was called, and the voice of the leader added:
“Now put the rope round his neck, and throw it over the branch, and
I’ll jist scribble the message to pin on his breast. You kin remove
the bandage from his eyes, one of ye. I mout as well tell you,
sergeant, we’re a-going to hang you, as a hexample to your
fellow-cops, to show ’em what they’ve to expect from us if they try
to hunt us down. Your fellow-prisoners we’ve let go, without their
arms, watches, money, and other trifles. We’ve no great grudge agin
them, and we allus likes to keep in wi’ men like Squatter Arnold, as
ain’t got much to lose or tempt us, and who can be of great sarvice
to us by giving us information when the cops are arter us.”
The cloth was removed from the young police officer’s eyes, at the
same time as a noosed rope was slipped round his neck.
He saw that he was standing under a tree at the edge of a ravine,
some forty feet deep, through which ran a fairly wide and level
road. On either side of him were his captors, the dreaded White
Hoods--nine now in number. A tenth ghostly form was climbing into
the tree, to pass the rope over a stout branch.
Not one of the Arnolds was to be seen.
The chief put a paper flat against the tree-trunk, and, while a
companion flashed an electric torch, proceeded to write something
upon it.
Sergeant John Dick gave himself up for lost. It was plain that the
murderous ruffians meant to hang him there above the mountain road,
where his dead body would be found on the morrow by the first
ranchman or homesteader who chanced to ride that way.
Nevertheless, he scorned to ask for mercy from the villainous
gang--to beg for his life.
“Ho! ho! me bowld trooper, your goose is cooked now, anyways,”
gloatingly jeered the White Hood above him--in the tree.
Sergeant Dick could barely suppress a start, _for he knew that voice
also_.
“You may hang me, you atrocious scoundrels,” he said, boldly and
fearlessly, “but, as sure as there is a heaven above me, you will
reap a terrible reward for such a crime. Heaven will not let you go
unpunished. You--”
For the second time that night he was not allowed to finish a
sentence. There were startled cries in the ravine below--two
exclamations of horror and anger. And, as all eyes were turned in
the direction of the unexpected sounds, Sergeant Dick beheld, to his
infinite relief and joy, two police troopers, in the familiar
Stetson hats and red coats, sitting astride horses at the turn in
the road.
Their sudden appearance there, without a sound having broken the
stillness, except their startled ejaculations at the sight of the
terrible drama about to be enacted above them, was quite spectral.
And so several moments the White Hoods stood staring aghast at them.
The troopers, indeed, were the first to act. They had their rifles
at the ready in front of them. Promptly jerking the butts to their
shoulders, they fired upwards at the gang on the cliff.
In spite of the haste of the marksmen, the bullets were well aimed.
Two of the White Hoods staggered and nearly fell, and Sergeant Dick
heard, he believed, _two distinct clangs_ as if the bullets had
struck against iron or steel!
Flinging themselves from the saddles immediately on firing, the two
troopers sheltered behind their horses and let drive again up at the
gang. And the fellow in the tree over Dick’s head came clambering
down so hurriedly that his long white smock caught on one of the
branches and was lifted up, exposing a coat of dull, gleaming iron.
He was unable to free the entangled garment for a moment or two, and
the amazed young police-sergeant saw plainly that he was wearing
under it a rudely made breastplate and backpiece of armor, fastened
together with straps at the side--a perfect iron corselet such as
knights or rather men-at-arms wore in medieval days!
Furthermore, hanging from the lower edges of this coat of iron were
rounded pieces to cover the thighs, both back and front, almost to
the knees.
Surprised beyond measure at the revelation that the gang wore armor,
Sergeant Dick remembered, however, at the same time that the
notorious Ned Kelly gang of bushrangers in Australia in 1880 wore
similar protection, and so were able for a long period to laugh at
the bullets of the Mounted Police.
Without a doubt these White Hood rustlers had got the idea of
armoring themselves from the well-known story of the Kelly gang.
Two more of the ruffians had staggered under the well-directed shots
of the two troopers in the ravine. But now the gang had got over its
surprise. It fired back in a volley, and one of the policemen’s
horses reared, plunged wildly, and, breaking away, tore off down the
road.
Its master dodged quickly behind his companion’s horse. Some dozen
or more troopers, now, however, came galloping noiselessly, like so
many specters, round the bend in the ravine. They ranged themselves
alongside the first two and poured in a deadly fire at the bandits.
It was plain that the hoofs of all the police-horses were muffled.
“Furies! Fly, lads! Run! We can’t fight so many,” shouted one of the
White Hoods.
The fellow hanging by his white smock from the tree wrenched himself
free with a desperate effort and a savage oath, leaving a strip of
the garment clinging to the branch. He made as if to spring upon
Sergeant Dick, but two of the others dragged him off.
“Dead min tell no tales,” howled another bandit, however, rushing at
the prisoner with upraised knife in one hand and smoking rifle in
the other.
The knife would have been sheathed in the young police-sergeant’s
breast; but, swift as thought, he raised his right foot and dashed
it with all his force into the chest of his would-be murderer, even
as the idea struck him that _the voice sounded strangely like a
woman’s_. Woman or man, the White Hood was sent reeling heavily
backwards, Sergeant Dick’s boot eliciting a ringing clang from the
concealed coat of iron under the white smock. The knife went flying
over the edge of the cliff into the ravine.
Its owner went down flat on the back, but was promptly dragged
upright by another of the gang who snarled:
“Cuss it! ain’t ye got no sinse, Martha? Afore their very eyes! We
must git, _woman_!”
And then all ten fled, crouching, into the bushes, and were quickly
swallowed up by these and the darkness.
CHAPTER XXV--ON THE TRACK
“Up the rocks, men, quick!” cried the inspector in command of the
little _posse_ of police.
Promptly the troopers swarmed forward from behind their horses,
rushed to the side of the ravine, and began clambering up it. The
majority of them chose a place where the cliff sloped gently back
and was broken up into shelves and ledges like a natural stairway.
A couple remained entrenched behind the horses, with their rifles
leveled across their own animals’ backs, covering their comrades.
The inspector led the rush up the rocks. No shots were fired at
them, and it was plain that the White Hoods had fled the scene.
The inspector topped the cliff first, a revolver in either hand.
With eyes fiercely peering into the bushes and the darkness before
him, he sidled up hurriedly to Sergeant Dick.
“Thank heaven, we came this way, sergeant. We were just in the nick
o’ time.”
In another half-minute John Dick was free in body and limb again,
and the inspector was shaking him by the hand, while the troopers
could be heard beating the bushes all about and searching these with
bulls’-eyes and electric torches to find the trail of the rustlers.
A pleased shout denoted a discovery, and the inspector and Sergeant
Dick at once made for the spot.
“Inspector,” said Dick, quietly, as they went, “we needn’t trouble
about following their trail. I know who two of the band are, or, at
any rate, I believe I know who they are. And, what is more, I have
discovered the band’s secret duffing-den, and can lead you to it.”
“You know two of them, and where their duffing-yard is? Excellent!
Who are the pair?”
“Bill Seymour, the shepherd hereabouts on Lonewater Ranch, _and his
wife_. At least, as I said, I have reason to believe that they are
two of the gang.”
“_And his wife!_”
“Yes. And she’s not the only woman in the gang. There are several.
They disguise themselves as men, of course, and are the wives
and--and daughters, I believe, of the others.”
“You suspect others than the Seymours, then?”
“I do; but I will not name any others yet for fear I am making a
dreadful mistake. If you will allow me _carte blanche_ in the
matter, however, inspector, and not ask me to name these other
suspects right away, I will take means to verify my suspicions
within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Do as you please, sergeant. I will not interfere with you,” replied
the inspector, whose name was Medhurst. “Now what we must do is at
once divide our forces, I suppose, and let one party make for the
Seymours’ hut, to lay them by the heels, and the other accompany you
to this duffing-yard you say you’ve discovered.”
“I think we can kill the two birds with the one stone, inspector,”
replied Sergeant Dick, who had been studying the positions of the
stars while he was talking. “We are on the northwest side of the
cliffs of the Wonderful Echo, are we not? And not far from the
Seymours’ shanty?”
“That is so. The Indians and trappers round here call these curious
terraced heights just along to our right the Cliffs of the Wonderful
Echo. Their name on the map, and of the whole range, is the Waikuta
Hills.”
“Well, I believe the entrance to the secret duffing-yard of the gang
is close beside the Seymour shanty. Let us make a move thither at
once. If we lose no time we may find the entire gang at the shanty,
for they can have no idea, I think, that I suspect even the two
Seymours.”
“You wouldn’t advise dividing our force--sending a few of the men
along the trail the fellows have left?”
“No, for two reasons, inspector. First, because I must tell you the
band wear armor under their white smocks and hoods.”
“What!”
“It is true. They wear coats of mail, capable of stopping a bullet,
just like the Kelly Gang of bushrangers did in Australia. You’ve
read of Ned Kelly, the iron bushranger?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Well, this gang all wear a similar kind of armor. Evidently they
got their idea from the Kelly Gang. And with them thus protected,
we’ll need all the men we’ve got, inspector, if not more, to capture
or wipe them out.”
“By Jove, yes, in that case.”
“My other reason against your sending any of the troopers to follow
the trail is that the fellows are bound to blind it effectually, as
they have done before.”
“Just so, or it might mean sending the men to their death; the White
Hoods might form an ambush, and, iron-clad as they are--” He broke
off, and added, “I will send a man on to Paquita for reënforcements,
and we’ll make for the Seymours’ place.”
Without further delay, one of the two troopers with the horses in
the ravine was sent galloping on down the road, south towards the
Indian Reservation. Inspector Medhurst, Sergeant Dick, and the
troopers around them returned to the man’s companion; and, all
mounted, Dick being taken up behind the inspector, who rode a big,
powerful bay, strong enough to carry them both a good few miles
without turning a hair.
Northward, then, they struck, back along the road leading towards
Lonewater, the way they had come.
Only a short distance did the road skirt the line of hills, then
these turned sharply eastward, while the road continued on
northward.
The hoofs of the horses, being muffled, had made no sound on the
road. And the party now quitted this and followed the cliff-line,
striking across an undulating meadow-like country, or prairie,
broken up here and there by wooded hills or “buttes.”
As they rode at the gallop, it was not easy to carry on a
conversation. Nevertheless, Sergeant Dick and Inspector Medhurst
were able to exchange occasional remarks on account of the way they
were riding; and the former explained that he had heard the
ringleader of the White Hoods call one of the others “Bud.”
“Bud!” exclaimed the inspector. “That’s Bill Seymour right enough.
He goes by the nickname of ‘Bud’ among his friends. He’s better
known as ‘Bud’ Seymour than Bill, as a matter of fact.”
“That so? I didn’t know that, but when the Arnolds were directing me
as to my best way of getting to Lonewater, they mentioned Bill
Seymour--I was to make a half-way call at his place--and one of the
sons chanced to refer to him once as ‘Bud’ Seymour. His wife, too, I
understand, is named Martha, and one of the White Hoods, who was
certainly a woman, the fellow ‘Bud’ called ‘Martha,’ as he helped
her to her feet just before they vamoosed.”
“That’s good enough,” gleefully crowed Inspector Medhurst. “Seymour
and his wife are members of the gang, sure enough.”
Medhurst went on to explain that the foreman of the Lonewater Ranch
had been visiting the Seymours earlier in the evening, and, on his
way eastward to pay his respects to the Arnolds, had seen three of
the White Hoods riding towards him.
“They did not see him,” said the inspector. “He had just pulled up
among some trees to light his pipe, and he hid himself and his
horse, and waited until they had passed by. Then he postponed his
call at ‘Water Castle,’ and made back to Lonewater at top-speed to
rouse us out after the fellows. From the direction the three were
taking, he concluded they were making round the hills for the
Paquita Road, and so we came this way. I thought they might be after
the Paquita and Lonewater stage, and so ordered the horses to be
muffled, and lucky for you, sergeant, that I did, eh?”
“Yes, indeed, sir. The foreman of Lonewater saw only _three_ of the
gang. H’m!”
Neither of the pair said anything further until, presently, the
inspector whispered that they were close to the Seymours’ shanty,
and silently signaled to the troopers behind to halt and dismount.
“We’ll creep up to the place on foot and try to carry it at a rush,
in case they are all inside,” he added.
As before, two troopers were left with the horses, and the pair were
instructed to prevent the animals from neighing. Ten in number, the
rest of the police were spread out in a long line, with the
inspector at one end of it and Sergeant Dick at the other, and they
crept forward through the darkness and the billowy grass.
The pace was purposely slow, and each man put his heel on the ground
before the toe at every step, thus making no noise.
The high, beetling cliffs on the right hand overshadowed them all,
but, before they had advanced fifty yards, Sergeant Dick saw the
blacker outline of the log-hut cutting the skyline.
All was in darkness as if the inmates were asleep or absent.
Stealthily the police deployed still more, so as to enclose the
hut--throw their line from one side of it to the other, and hem it
in against the cliff-wall at its back. Then the whispered word was
passed along from man to man to close in upon it, as they advanced
again.
Not a sound broke the stillness of the night. The grass now was
short, and the ground hard and rocky in places, so the troopers put
their toes first to earth and raised their feet high with each step,
in accordance with the rules taught them for moving silently under
such conditions.
They got up close to the hut--within half a dozen strides of it--and
then with a swift rush reached the door and windows--were around it.
Unceremoniously, the troopers in front of the door immediately
battered at it with their rifle-butts, waking a hundred echoes from
the cliffs and hills while those at the windows thrust their
rifle-barrels in under the shutters to pry these open.
In less time almost than it takes to relate it, a window-shutter at
either side of the premises had been forced open, and the assailants
were ready to pour as many volleys into the house.
Everything remained silent within, however, and Sergeant Dick called
out, softly:
“They are not back yet, inspector. The place is deserted, I should
say.”
It was as he said, and, abandoning the assault on the stout,
strongly barred door, all the police flocked to the unshuttered
windows. These were forced in their turn, but with as little noise
as possible now, and the troopers climbed in and ranged through the
rooms.
“There’s an underground passage leading from the hut to a secret
cave within the cliffs, inspector. Do you know?” Sergeant Dick said,
as he and the inspector met inside the kitchen, entering through
opposite windows.
“Look for it, men. It will be in one of the inner rooms. There’s no
sign of it here.”
“Here it is, sir!” immediately sang out one of the troopers from the
bedroom.
Sergeant Dick and his superior officer ran in and saw the troopers
raising a trapdoor in the floor. It had been covered by a strip of
druggeting, and, moreover, by the bed.
These had been dragged aside before the troopers entered, evidently
by the Seymours, who had gone out that way.
A square, box-like hole, timbered all round, about four feet deep,
was uncovered.
CHAPTER XXVI--THE THREATENING LETTER
“It was Alf Arnold, the squatter of the lake, who told me of this
underground passage,” said Sergeant Dick. “I see it has a concrete
flooring. As sure as a button, inspector, Seymour and his wife will
return this way, unless they have caught the alarm--heard us
breaking in, or, for some other reason, don’t intend coming back.
Will you remain here with half the men, and I will take the rest
through the passage to the cave and wait there for awhile in hopes
of their coming? Do you know, I’ve an idea, too, that that cave will
tell us something.”
“You don’t think they were in the house and fled through the
passage?”
“No, sir; they couldn’t have got here before us, I’m certain.”
“Very good, sergeant! Select your men. I hope the pretty pair
haven’t given us the slip--_will_ return to their nest. Of course,
many of these log huts in the wilds, as you know, both here in
Canada and across the border in the United States, have underground
passages like this to provide a means of escape for the occupants in
case of attack by any desperadoes, so its existence proves nothing.”
Sergeant Dick chose his five men, and they dropped down one after
the other through the trapdoor in the floor, and followed him on
hands and knees along the little tunnel under the ground.
These subterranean galleries in the wild and woolly West are very
simply and easily contrived. A trench, some four feet deep and as
many wide, is dug in the soil from the house, the floor made hard
with concrete or something similar, and the sides boarded up and
over. Then the earth and sods of grass are replaced.
As a rule, the exit is in the middle of a thick clump of bushes some
forty or fifty feet from the hut, and may be used as a rifle-pit, of
course, in case of an attack on the house, the inmates contriving
thus to take the assailants in the rear.
Crawling along on all fours in the inky blackness of the tunnel,
Sergeant Dick came to a similar trapdoor to that he had descended.
Faint rays of light penetrated through cracks in it.
He pushed upward upon it, and it rose on hinges. Standing upright
within the aperture, he flashed an electric torch he had been given
by Inspector Medhurst, and saw that he was within a small cave, the
mouth of which was covered over outside by a thick mass of creeper,
through which, however, silvery light faintly struggled.
The moon had peeped out through a break in the clouds and was
flooding the plain outside with its ghostly radiance.
Dick scrambled out of the hole, and, turning to the back of the
cave, proceeded to flash his torch over it.
All at once he switched off the light, and, stooping over the trap
and the trooper getting upon his feet in it, whispered:
“S’sh, I heard something. They are coming, I believe--our quarry!
Bid the others come out softly.”
A noise as of heavily booted feet on hard rock had reached his
quick, trained ear. It came not from outside the cave, _but from the
roof at the back_.
Or was it only his fancy that it did?
Silently the troopers drew themselves up out of the hole in the cave
floor, and lowered the trap in place again behind them. The
moon-light, which entered through the interstices of the creeper
marking the entrance to the cave, was just sufficient to show each
man his neighbor’s dim silhouette or outline.
The noise without or beyond the cave continued, and grew louder, now
changing to the sounds that a man makes in climbing a ladder--the
sound of heavy boots clumping up wooden rungs.
And then to the amazement and momentary superstitious horror of the
troopers a bright light shot into the cave above a ledge close to
the roof at the back!
The light grew stronger, and danced about, accompanied by a rubbing,
rustling noise, then resolved itself into a glowing orb, which moved
about on top of the shelf and almost immediately turned its back, so
to speak, on the cave.
“I’m all right now, Martha,” said a gruff voice. “Here’s the torch
if you wants it, and shove the ladder along.”
Sergeant Dick and his fellow-troopers were all standing around the
cave, with rifles at the ready and eyes riveted upon that lighted
shelf over their heads. They were invisible in the darkness to the
fellow on the ledge. He had his own light in his eyes for one thing,
and, as related, he did not flash his torch around the cave but
handed it back to his companion in the inner depths.
His dark, shapeless figure could just be discerned in the halo of
the torch, squirming and pulling at something within another little
tunnel measuring about three feet in diameter.
The end of a ladder protruded from this second tunnel.
He and his companion were pulling it through, and he now proceeded
to lower it to the floor of the cave.
As he placed it in position, Sergeant Dick sprang forward, revolver
in hand, and bounded swiftly up it.
The young police officer’s swiftness, however, was almost a case of
more haste less speed. For the ladder, insecurely set half turned
under him. But he saved himself by clutching the shelf of rock with
his left hand, and luckily the ladder did not slip aside, so that he
was not thrown off it.
He promptly grabbed then with his left hand at the man, even as the
latter uttered a yell of fright and made to wriggle back inside the
tunnel.
Sergeant Dick caught the man by the collar, and, holding him
tightly, sprang up the remaining rungs of the ladder and thrust his
head, shoulders, and revolver into the tunnel at the second human
form he could dimly perceive within it by the light of the electric
torch.
“Keep still, you in there, or I shoot,” he roared. “Keep as you are.
Put your hands in front of you. I’ve got the drop on you, as you can
see. Come up, men some of you, quick, and relieve me of the husband
here.”
Three of the troopers sprang up the ladder behind him, while the
other two held it firm. Bill, or “Bud” Seymour, too amazed,
apparently, to be able to offer any resistance, was hauled down from
the shelf, neck and crop, and head first, by the three troopers,
allowing the sergeant to crawl into the narrow tunnel and lay hold
of Martha Seymour.
Fierce and bold as the woman was in the ordinary way, she had not
dared to disobey John Dick’s mandate to lie still and keep where she
was. As a matter of fact, she, like her husband, seemed to have her
energies paralyzed--to be bereft of the power of volition or action
by the unexpected attack.
Sergeant Dick, too, had promptly snatched the electric torch from
the outstretched hand and was shining the light blindingly in her
bewildered, horror-stricken eyes.
The tunnel was so narrow the pair had had to wriggle along it on
their stomachs and her prone position was therefore also against
her.
Leaning still farther in, Sergeant Dick grasped her by the wrist
now, and, backing and exerting all his strength, began to pull her
bodily out of the tunnel.
He had got her half out of it when two of the troopers came to his
aid, and, between them, they dragged her helplessly forth on to the
shelf, then bore her down the ladder to the cave floor.
She was dressed as a man, and in the dark it really would have been
hard to tell that she was not one. Like her husband, she was big and
burly, and her face was red and coarse, and bloated even worse than
his, while her eyes and mouth were hard and cruel-looking, whereas
his were weakly vicious.
They both wore overcoats, “wide-awake” hats, and topboots.
“So you’ve got us, have ye? Well, what are ye goin’ to do with us
now you’ve caught us?” asked the woman with an attempt at mockery,
as if she entertained some faint hope that their captors did not
associate them with the dreaded White Hood gang, or might very
easily be imposed upon. “Who do you think ye’ve got hold of, anyway?
What fules you all are! Don’t you know us? Yon’s Bill Seymour, and
I’m his wife.”
“We are quite aware of that, Mrs. Seymour, and we also know you to
be two of the White Hood gang. You two are alone, I take it. There
are no more of you coming through that interesting little tunnel?”
“Curse you! I recognizes you. You are the police sergeant we was--”
The woman stopped and bit her tongue, in evident concern at having
so unequivocally betrayed herself.
“Why don’t you finish, Mrs. Seymour? Whom you and your ruffianly
fellow-rustlers were going to hang, when my comrades here came up so
unexpectedly and timely.”
“Curse you! Oh, curse you!” was all the infuriated and mortified
woman could find to say.
Her husband broke out into bitter reproaches against her, for having
let her tongue run away with her and betray them both as it had
done.
Sergeant Dick sent one of the troopers across the open space outside
the cave to the hut to fetch Inspector Medhurst, and that officer
came quickly. Needless to say, he was delighted over the capture.
“Search their pockets, men,” he ordered. “We may find evidence upon
them of their own guilt and the identities of their late
companions.”
A brace of automatic pistols was found upon either prisoner. The
pair had already been relieved of their rifles of course.
And then one of the troopers, searching Bill Seymour, found in an
inner pocket a folded scrap of paper, which he handed to Medhurst.
The inspector unfolded it eagerly, and flashed an electric torch
upon it.
In a reddish fluid, presumably blood, was scrawled upon it:
“To old Alf Arnold and his little lot at ‘Water Carstle,’--We was
fules to let you and your sons orf so light, and, now that cussed
policeman who was a-stayin’ wid you ’as escaped us, we believes some
of you set the traps on to us. So, look out! The White Hoods hev
sworn revenge upon all on you, and we ull burn the b’ilin’ lot on
you one night afore long in your bloomin’ ‘Water Carstle.’ Ef you
did beat orf the redskins, you won’t us, so, again we says, look
out!”
Inspector Medhurst read this precious effusion out aloud.
“H’m! Ha!” he observed. “We must take means at once, sergeant, to
protect the Arnolds and entrap the rest of these ruffians around
‘Water Castle.’ They may strike there at once when they learn of the
arrest of these two. Take your five men again, now, and explore this
second tunnel--see where it leads to. If you come upon the trail of
others of the band, let me know at once, and we’ll try to run the
wretches down. Let me know immediately in any case what’s on the
other side of this tunnel.”
John Dick saluted without a word, and, bidding the five troopers
follow him again, mounted the ladder and wriggled head first, inside
the hole behind the rocky shelf.
CHAPTER XXVII--THE CLEW OF THE LAMP
The tunnel in the rock proved to be some ten feet long. It was
blocked at the end by small-sized bowlders piled upon each other.
Clearing them aside, Sergeant Dick put out his head. He saw a deep
gully, or dried-up water-course, ascending at right angles to him,
at a gentle gradient, between overhanging cliffs which only
permitted of a faint glimpse of the night sky.
Sergeant Dick told the man behind him what he could see, and to pass
the word back along their line to Inspector Medhurst. Then he
proceeded to climb out of the tunnel.
His men followed him; and they started searching the ground at their
feet for tracks.
Where the ground was soft were innumerable cattle and sheep tracks,
and a few horse tracks. Nearly all of these led upwards. One or two
tracks, nearly obliterated by the others and by rain and wind and
dust, led downwards.
“These downward tracks are weeks old, that’s plain,” said Sergeant
Dick. “The others are more recent, but still all the cattle tracks
are several days old. It’s plain to me--”
“Dick!” It was the inspector’s voice. And, raising his head with a
respectful “Yes, sir,” Dick saw Medhurst wriggling out of the tunnel
mouth above them.
“You’ve found tracks?”
“Yes, sir. Mostly cattle tracks. It’s pretty evident, inspector,
that this gully is the secret way to and from the gang’s
duffing-yard, which is above us. Judging from the tracks they can’t
have taken any of the stolen cattle out for some time--several
weeks--so we ought to make a grand haul.”
“I’m coming through with the rest of the men, except Morton and
Geddes, who are guarding our prisoners.”
The inspector and the other five police troopers climbed down beside
their comrades; and Medhurst said they would first ascend the gully
to the rustlers’ duffing-yard.
Falling into line, the troopers followed their two officers up the
winding water-course. It took them a good twenty minutes to come to
its upper end. Then they suddenly debouched upon a fairly level
expanse of ground, and, beyond a slight intervening ridge, they
looked into the same cup-shaped valley which Sergeant John Dick had
discovered from the other or southern side of the range.
And his skill as a tracker was also verified; for there, sure
enough, were the horses, steers, and sheep he had seen before dotted
about the valley, darker blurs against the dark background in the
faint light of the stars and overclouded moon.
“Excellent!” exclaimed the inspector. “This is a coup. The gang
evidently recognized the hopelessness of getting the beasts away
before our coming, and decided to consult only their own safety by
getting back to their homes as quickly as possible.”
“We may find something that may tell us who the rest of them are in
the log-hut on the other side of the valley, inspector,” said
Sergeant Dick.
“Quite so,” agreed Medhurst. “Yes, we’ll see what the hut contains.
Be in readiness for an ambush, men! There’s no saying that some of
the gang haven’t entrenched themselves in the valley, although I
don’t think it is likely. Spread out more, and walk stooping,
carrying your rifles at the ready!”
But they crossed the valley to the other side without any
molestation, except that they disturbed some of the sleeping horses
and cattle.
The moon shone out bright and full again from a fairly clear sky as
they drew near the “lean-to,” which, as its name explains, was built
up against the cliff.
The door stood half open! But still, fearful that this might only be
a ruse to lure him and his _posse_ into some diabolically arranged
death-trap, Inspector Medhurst called a halt and asked for a
volunteer to go forward and make sure that the hut was empty.
“I’ll go, inspector,” Sergeant Dick answered, promptly.
Medhurst would have been exceedingly sorry to have lost his capable
young subordinate, but he did not like to pass him over for one of
the troopers.
“Very good! I don’t need to tell you to be careful, I think.”
John Dick advanced, bending nearly double, and ready to drop flat to
the earth at the first gleam of a rifle at either of the two windows
in sight, or any suspicious sign within the half-open door.
He was within twenty feet of the hut when his keen sense of smell
detected the strong, unpleasant odor of an oil-lamp burning badly.
For a moment he hesitated, half scenting in this a trap for their
destruction. Then he determined to risk it, and flew swiftly forward
to the door of the hut.
But instead of at once thrusting it wide open, as five men out of
six would naturally have done in the circumstances, he did not touch
the door at all. He simply stepped half round it, and flashed his
electric torch about the room.
And then he saw what a terrible trap had been laid for them--_how a
touch upon the door would have blown him to atoms_!
Behind the half-open door was a barrel on end, three-parts full of
gunpowder, as he could see through a hole knocked in its top. And
balanced on a strip of wood across the hole was a vilely smoking
lamp screened about with a square of cardboard so that its light
only showed upon the roof.
Just touching the cardboard screen was a short plank of wood resting
on heaped-up boxes, its other end set against the door.
If the door had been pushed back, the plank must have been, and the
lamp overturned into the gunpowder, and any one entering would never
have known what had hurt him--not in this world at least.
Sergeant Dick felt himself go cold all over, as he comprehended the
awful doom which might so easily have been his.
He stepped forward promptly, however, gingerly lifted the lamp from
its dangerous position, and set it upon the table, turning it higher
to put an end to its vile aroma.
It smoked badly, and the chimney was all black. He therefore took it
outside and blew it out, and called to his comrades to come up.
When they did so, and he pointed out to Inspector Medhurst the
diabolical trap that had been laid for them, one and all the
troopers indulged in furious anathemas against the dastardly White
Hoods.
“Look round the hut, lads, and see what you can find,” ordered their
leader.
“The lamp, I think, will prove a clew, inspector,” quietly said
Sergeant Dick. “As a matter of fact, I have seen it before, and that
quite recently.”
“You have--where?”
“_At ‘Water Castle.’_ Inspector, I believe the Arnold family make up
the rest of the gang of White Hoods. I have believed so ever since
you rescued me from the gang’s hands this evening, but I had no real
proof beyond my own vague suspicions until now. The leader’s voice
it was that first made me suspect the family. I could take my oath
it was _Aunt Kate’s--Mrs. Arnold’s_! And I know that the fellow who
climbed the tree was Abner Arnold; while this lamp I can swear to
having seen in Aaron Arnold’s bedroom during the siege of the
‘castle’ by the Ogalcrees.”
“Thunder! You don’t say! But--but what about the letter written in
blood we found on Seymour, threatening the gang’s vengeance against
all at ‘Water Castle’? And, again, weren’t all the male members of
the family with you when you were captured by the gang? Ah, I see, I
see! You think that the letter was only an artful ruse to avert
suspicion, and Old Alf and his sons promptly disguised
themselves--donned white hoods and smocks--when you were
blindfolded.”
“Exactly, sir! And put on their primitive armor, too. It was
probably hidden, close by the scene of our hold-up by their
womenfolk.”
“But--but, good heavens, you don’t mean to infer that all the women
of the family are also mixed up in this? That, that lovely girl--Old
Alf’s niece--and his daughter, that weak-minded, poor girl--Jenny I
think they call her--have helped in the atrocities the gang have
committed, and could lend themselves to--to such a diabolical scheme
of vengeance as you have just frustrated?”
“Don’t ask me, sir--don’t ask me,” John Dick replied in such a
heartwrung voice as made Medhurst look surprisedly at him.
Then a look of sympathetic intelligence swiftly crossed the
inspector’s face.
“Some of the women of the family are in the gang, undoubtedly, as I
told you before, sir, but--but it is just possible that the--the two
you mention, the niece and the daughter, are innocent of all
complicity. God only grant it be so,” he added in tones not meant
for his superior’s ears.
“Yes,” John Dick went on, “it’s pretty plain to me, now, how they
worked the oracle--how the gang worked matters to-night. As soon as
the male members of the family and I had gone off this evening, Aunt
Kate and the two daughters-in-law, I should say, took a canoe and
made for the north side of the hills or cliffs. The foreman of
Lonewater ranch told you that he saw _three_ White Hoods riding
round the north side of the range towards the Seymours’ place. They
were Aunt Kate and the two daughters-in-law, without a doubt. The
three had a hiding-place on the lakeside where they assumed their
ghost-like disguise, and, of course, the two Seymours made up the
five who held us up, round the other side of the range.”
“And by riding this way, up the gully and across the valley here,
they might very easily get to the waterside before you. You
naturally moved slowly and warily, to guard against falling into an
ambush or warning any of the gang on watch.”
“That is so, sir. And the squatter and his four sons would just
bring up the number of the bandits to what it was when they were
going to hang me.”
CHAPTER XXVIII--THE RETURN TO “WATER CASTLE”
The “lean-to” consisted of two compartments, and the walls of both
were furnished with hooks, for slinging hammocks apparently, though
there were no hammocks now in the place.
In fact, save for an old stove, which was evidently a home-made
contrivance, there was nothing to be found in either compartment,
until Sergeant Dick said he would take a final look-round.
He peeped upon some shelves in the inner room and spied a fragment
of writing-paper, plainly overlooked.
Opening it out and shining a light upon it, the inspector and
Sergeant Dick saw that it was apparently a scrap of a letter.
This is what they read:
“... be foolish to touch their stock, Bud, old chap.
Anyway, we will turn out in full force to-nite, the
eight on us, and you and your wife. Muriel and Jenny
be going to Paquita Springs this afternoon, so the
coast will be quite clear. We will not need to trick
them as usual.
“’Till I see you, to-nite, at the hut.
“Your true pal,
“Alf Arnold.”
“That clinches it, sergeant,” said the inspector with grim
satisfaction, carefully folding the scrap of paper and putting it
away in his notebook. “This bit of paper would hang the Squatter of
the Lake, I should say, or at any rate get him a good stretch in
jail, even if you were unable to swear to the lamp, or we couldn’t
trace those who sold it.”
“And--and it would seem to show that Muriel and Jenny--the niece and
daughter, I mean--are not concerned in the outrages of the gang, are
wholly innocent of all complicity in the lawlessness. ‘We will not
need to trick them as usual,’ the letter says, ‘and as they are
going to Paquita Springs the coast will be quite clear.’”
“Yes, yes, it is evident those two girls are innocent and know
nothing whatever of the villainy of their relations and the
Seymours. Come now, we will hurry back the way we came, proceed at
once to ‘Water Castle’ and try to effect the arrest of Old Alf and
his lot.”
“One moment, inspector! I have an idea by which we may capture them
without bloodshed--a thing that I have grave doubt we will achieve
unless we resort to some ruse. You know the strength of ‘Water
Castle,’ and the character of the squatter and his sons, to say
nothing of his wife?”
“What is your plan?”
“First that we do not disappoint them, in the hope of presently
hearing a big ‘boom’ from this quarter. Let us leave a time-fuse to
blow the hut up when we are back across the valley.”
“A good idea. We will do it. If the Arnolds believe they have blown
us all to pieces, we ought to be able to capture them easily. They
will take no precautions against our coming.”
“Exactly! I will tell you the rest of my plan for taking them, as we
go.”
While Sergeant Dick and the inspector laid the fuse, the troopers
were all told to drive the cattle, horses, and sheep to the farther
side of the valley, well away from the force of the explosion.
Sergeant Dick and Medhurst then quitted the hut, laying their powder
trail right across the valley. At the top of the gully the troopers
rejoined them. Then Sergeant Dick applied a lighted match to the
long, thin trail of powder.
With a hissing splutter the tiny red flash ran down the slope of the
hillside and went zigzag-ging away across the valley until it looked
no more than a fast-traveling, tiny red star in the darkness.
It neared the farther side, and all prepared for the detonation.
Sure enough it came.
A great, lurid sheet of flame lit the night under the opposite
cliffs, there was a thunderous roar, echoed and reechoed by the
hills around, and the solid rock under them shook and trembled.
Then the police turned their backs on the cup-shaped valley, from
which it was not possible without human aid that any of the stolen
animals could escape; for the top of the gully, we have forgotten to
mention, was closed by a high gate, secured by a padlock.
Descending past where they had first entered the gully, the party
came almost immediately--on just turning an angle in the cliff--to a
solid wall of rock through which the gully was continued in the
shape of a wide natural tunnel or cave.
They passed inside this, and saw an opening before them not more
than four or five feet wide and six feet high. It was covered over
outside with a mass of an evergreen creeper, which effectually
masked it in like manner to the cave in which the Seymours had been
captured.
Thrusting the creeper aside, Sergeant Dick and Inspector Medhurst
emerged on the prairie within not more than two or three hundred
yards of the Seymours’ hut.
“Oh! ow! ow! Ye are ghosts come back from the grave to haunt us!”
was the yelled greeting they got, as they pushed open the door of
the hut, from the two Seymours, who squirmed and writhed in the
chairs they were tied to.
“You see, inspector? They naturally concluded we had fallen victims
to their horrible trap and been blown to atoms, all of us,” said
Sergeant Dick, grimly.
“Ah, they had laid a trap for you, then, sir. I suspected as much
from the way they were chortling to themselves after we heard that
explosion,” said one of the two troopers who had been left guarding
the prisoners.
“They’ll chortle in a different way after their trial,” grimly
responded Medhurst. “Of course, had your murder-trap succeeded, you
vile wretches, there would have been nothing to prove that it wasn’t
an accident, precipitated by ourselves in searching the hut. As it
is, that little scheme will prove a very damning factor against you
all.”
A start was soon made now for the lake, all quitting the hut and
mounting. The two prisoners were set upon their own horses, which
had been left in the stable all night.
With their reins tied together and linked up on either side to a
trooper’s saddle-bow, the pair were placed in the middle of the
troopers. Then, at an easy trot, with the horses’ hoofs muffled, the
party rode round the hilly spurs on the northern side of the range,
and threaded their way through the woods down to the lake edge.
Sergeant Dick explained his plan for the capture of the Arnolds, as
he and Inspector Medhurst rode at the head of the cavalcade. In
accordance with it, they were no sooner at the waterside and in view
of the lights of the “castle” and the ruddy reflection in the placid
surface of the lake, than he fired three shots into the air.
As the reader may need reminding, three shots meant “Want to come
off shore,” and was the signal used by the Arnolds and all their
visitors.
They had a full code of such signals, which all their friends knew
and employed as occasion demanded. Four shots--two rapidly, and
then, after a moment, two more in quick succession--for instance,
indicated that danger was to be apprehended from some direction.
On his giving the signal, Sergeant Dick and his comrades of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police dismounted, and hid themselves behind
trees and bushes. They had come to the identically same
landing-place where the Ogalcrees had ambushed him, on landing for
the first time on that shore from the ark.
The two Seymours had been gagged to prevent them giving any alarm,
and moreover, tied to trees.
Hardly had these measures been taken when, through his binoculars,
Inspector Medhurst saw the dark shadow of the ark slowly moving away
from the verandah of the “castle” and making its way out of the
palisaded “dock.”
“There are sure to be some of the menfolk, if not all five, on the
craft, men,” whispered Medhurst, explaining his subordinate’s plan
now to the troopers. “The sergeant is a fine mimic, as I can bear
witness, and he is going to imitate ‘Bud’ Seymour’s melodious voice,
and thus lure whoever’s aboard right up to the landing-place. As
soon as the scow bumps, every man of you must rush forward, without
firing a shot, and get aboard. We don’t want the rest of the family
alarmed by a shot. You know the strength of the ‘castle,’ or, rather
you don’t know it as Sergeant Dick does, and he says it would be
almost impossible to storm it in the face of anything like a fierce
fire from within. The Indians found that out to their cost. The
sergeant says the floor of the front room drops like a trap on the
pulling of a lever, and any one bursting in recklessly may therefore
expect to be given a distinct cooler.”
As already mentioned more than once, the scow, for all its awkward
build, sailed swiftly. It was soon within hailing distance of the
shore, and a man’s voice, the voice of Amos, bawled across the
water:
“Who is it?”
“Bud--Bud Seymour,” Sergeant Dick at once answered, mimicking that
old scoundrel’s mode of speech exactly.
On that, the ark came on, and the peering eyes in the bushes made
out four human forms in the forepart of the craft--two men and two
women.
Sergeant Dick’s heart beat faster.
What if one of the women were she whom he loved--whom he loved still
in spite of his late ghastly fear that she might be implicated in
the awful outrages of the gang and even in their attempt to put him
out of the way by hanging!
When close inshore, the quartet on the ark dropped an anchor astern,
and then, paying out the rope, proceeded to propel the craft, with
the two long sweeps, towards the shore.
By this maneuver, as previously explained, in case of treachery they
could haul off-shore again quickly, by dragging on the anchor rope.
Nearer and yet nearer glided the unwieldy craft, and Sergeant Dick’s
sharp eyes, trained by long practice to seeing well in the dark,
made out Muriel and her cousin Jenny standing just within the cabin
door. They were holding the anchor-rope, brought through the other
doors, ready to haul on it. The family’s isolation taught them to
expect treachery and alarms from the most unexpected quarters.
Amos and his brother Abner were at the sweeps, of course.
Sergeant Dick had assumed Bill Seymour’s hat and coat, and kept
behind a small bush so as to hide his lower man. He concealed his
face by turning the coat-collar up about his chin and drawing the
hat well down over his brows.
Nearer, nearer! Not a yard separated the boat from the landing-place
now.
Bump!
Immediately, Sergeant Dick rushed forward, pointing a pair of
pistols at Amos and Abner.
“Hands up, both of you!” he bawled. “You are our prisoners!”
The pair stood as if petrified, and the two girls likewise; for all
four recognized him in spite of his disguise.
He leaped into the scow, and, with a rush, his fellow
police-troopers swarmed after him, all with pointed revolvers.
CHAPTER XXIX--THE FAILURE TO SURPRISE “WATER CASTLE”
Amos and Abner were each in the hands of half a dozen troopers in
less time than it takes to relate. Then, as terrified screams burst
from Muriel and Jenny, Abner gave vent to a howl that seemed hardly
human and gasped affrightedly:
“They are ghosts, ghosts, ghosts! We are lost, Amos!”
“We are indeed, you fool!” spluttered his brother, struggling
frenziedly now to free himself from the dozen muscular hands
clutching him, “for you ’ave betrayed us.”
Then a gag was forced into the mouth of each of the two young
desperadoes, and their hands were dragged behind their backs and
handcuffed so.
“Stop your screaming, girls! Hold your tongues or we shall be forced
to gag you also,” cried Inspector Medhurst.
At this threat Jenny was silent, save for a loud, terrified panting.
Muriel had only uttered one involuntary scream upon the rush of the
police.
“What is the meaning of this, policemen?” she now demanded,
hoarsely. “Sergeant Dick, have you all gone crazy that--that you
attack us--make prisoners of my cousins in this way and that
you--you have disguised yourself in that way--are personating old
Mr. Seymour?”
“Miss Arnold, an explanation is certainly due to you and your cousin
Jenny,” replied Dick, sorrowfully, as he put his pistols back in his
belt. “You have both been cruelly deceived by your relatives. It
grieves me very much to have to tell you, Miss Muriel, that your two
cousins there, as well as their brothers and father, are members of
the dreaded White Hood Gang.”
“Impossible!” gasped Muriel, while Jenny stood as if transfixed.
“Oh, that is too absurd!”
“It is true, Miss Arnold,” put in Inspector Medhurst. “Your cousin
yonder took us for ghosts, and his brother cried out that he had
betrayed them. So he had, for it was fairly good proof--his taking
us for ghosts--that he believed we had all been killed by a horrible
trap set for us by him and his brothers and the two Seymours up
among the hills.”
“Oh, it is impossible--impossible! I cannot believe it of them,”
panted Muriel, sinking helplessly upon the seat under the bulwark of
the scow.
“You will oblige us, ladies, by going inside the cabin and keeping
silent,” continued Inspector Medhurst. “If your uncle and cousins
_are_ innocent, Muriel Arnold, they will be afforded every chance of
clearing themselves by the law of the land, provided they submit
quietly. Haverty and Leclere, bring the Seymours aboard. Then we
will draw out and make for the ‘castle.’ Sergeant, will you take the
tiller, and steer?”
Gasping hard and staring wildly at each other, the two girls passed
inside the after-cabin, then stood embracing for mutual support,
while the police-troopers brought the Seymours aboard and hauled on
the anchor-rope, pulling the ark off-shore.
Amos and Abner had been thrown helplessly handcuffed and gagged into
two of the bunks in the fore-cabin. Bud Seymour was put in another
bunk and his wife was bound to the mast inside the cabin.
As the ark drew near “Water Castle,” Sergeant Dick and his
fellow-policemen saw that the gate in the “dockyard” palisading
stood wide, just as they expected it would be. The way in up to the
verandah or landing-stage was clear.
But standing half within, half without the door of the “castle,”
peering out anxiously, was old Alf, rifle in hand, while faces were
visible at two of the windows facing them. There were no lights
showing in the place; all had been extinguished, and most of the
windows in sight appeared to be shuttered.
“They heard the girls’ screams, and are on their guard, sergeant,”
Inspector Medhurst called in a low voice from the after-door of the
ark.
“I’m afraid so, sir. Sound travels far over water, and this lake is
famous for its remarkable echoes,” Sergeant Dick answered as
cautiously, turning the ark’s nose a degree so as to skirt the
palisading to the open gate.
“Ark, ahoy! Anything wrong? That you, Amos--Abner?” Old Man Alf
bawled to them.
Sergeant Dick was still wearing “Bud” Seymour’s hat and coat, and
again mimicking that old reprobate’s voice, shouted back:
“Of course, it’s Amos and Abner, and ‘Bud’ Seymour, too, a-comin’ to
see you, ole hoss! What do you think’s wrong?”
Old Alf evidently consulted with others of the garrison, but he
still seemed suspicious as he called out again:
“Amos, Abner, are you there? What did them there screams mean? We
heerd them right enough. Muriel--Jenny, is it all right wi’ you?”
“No, father, it isn’t,” shrilled Jenny on the instant, rushing to
the edge of the squared bow. “The police are here, and they are
after you and the boys. They’ve got Amos and Abner, and the two
Seymours, prisoners in the cabin. Those you see are police wearing
their hats.”
She shouted the words rapidly--all in one breath.
Muriel gasped in dismay and ran and clapped a hand over her mouth,
too late. She fought to free her mouth and shout something more, as
Inspector Medhurst and three of the troopers rushed forth from the
cabin and seized and dragged her and Muriel within it again.
“Oh, Jenny! Why were you so foolish? They will fight to the bitter
end now. I know they will--your father and brothers. You have sealed
their doom.”
“She has that, for, as I said, if they resist, we will show no
mercy--we cannot show any,” exclaimed Inspector Medhurst. Then he
stepped to the door again, and called out:
“Surrender, Arnold! Submit quietly, and you will all have the
benefit of a fair trial. Refuse, and resist us at your peril! You
know the penalty of defying us--the police.”
Old Alf had vanished within the door, which was now closed, and the
other faces were no longer visible at the windows. All the windows
in sight presented only their armored, loopholed screens.
Suddenly one of the screens was thrown open, and Aunt Kate’s voice
boomed forth, even as the bow of the ark scraped one of the gate
posts in the palisading, and the clumsy vessel swung slowly round to
enter the gate.
“Let my two sons and daughter whom you have prisoners come on to the
verandah and talk to us, and we’ll think about surrenderin’.”
Inspector Medhurst did not reply, but stepped back inside the
fore-cabin. He called through the after one for the two troopers
with Sergeant Dick to keep close behind the tiller-shield, with him.
“Stand on up to the house and lay us alongside the verandah,
sergeant,” he added.
“Do you hear me, you policemen?” roared the lion-like old woman
again. “Give my sons and daughter their liberty, let ’em join us,
and we’ll then talk about surrenderin’.”
“Your two sons aboard with us are prisoners, and as such they will
remain,” Medhurst answered, after another moment or two’s pause
during which Sergeant Dick ran the scow swiftly and deftly alongside
the verandah. “I will hold no further parley with you than to ask
you once more, ‘Do you surrender or do you not?’”
“Curse you, we will fight to the death!” roared out the voice of
Aaron.
An automatic pistol cracked rapidly from the open window, and bullet
after bullet from the weapon clanged against and ricocheted off the
steel tiller-shield, behind which Sergeant Dick and Troopers Bell
and Watts were standing huddled, showing not as much as an elbow,
fortunately for them.
“Hold your fire, troopers! Hold your fire!” bawled Inspector
Medhurst. “Within the ‘castle,’ there! Alf Arnold, listen to me. I
have no wish to fire on the house, as you have women with you. Let
them come out--your wife and two daughters-in-law--then, if you men
will not surrender, so much the worse for you. Send the women out,
anyhow, first of all.”
Abel, the other son in the house, had been quick to join in the
firing at the ark. But both desperadoes now ceased shooting, and a
silence intervened, broken at length by Aunt Kate’s voice, calling
out:
“No, no! Let Deb and Bella go, but my place is here. I will not
leave you, Alf, nor my brave lads.”
“They only want you to open the door so’s they can make a rush in.
Don’t be gulled, men,” shrilled the voice of Bella, Abel’s wife.
“We will take no such advantage of you,” the inspector bawled back,
“but, if you doubt my word, lower the women through your trapdoor
into a canoe.”
Another longish pause, broken only by murmuring voices within the
“castle”; and then old Alf Arnold called out:
“Very well, we will send the women out through the trapdoor.”
Aunt Kate and her daughters-in-law could be heard still fiercely
protesting against quitting their husband’s sides. But the men’s
arguments evidently prevailed, for presently the occupants of the
ark could hear noises under the “castle,” which told them the women
were being put into one of the canoes.
Sergeant Dick and Troopers Bell and Watts, by stooping and peeping
round the side of the tiller-screen, could see, through the piles
and cross-timbering under the verandah, the three women being
lowered in turn through the trap in the central passage of the
“castle” into a canoe drawn up under it. There were two other canoes
moored close by.
CHAPTER XXX--THE END OF THE WHITE HOODS, AND OF THE STORY
“Thank heaven for that mercy, Jenny. Your mother and sisters-in-law
will be out of the fighting,” panted Muriel.
As the words left her lips there came a loud “view-hallo!” from the
direction of the southern end of the lake, and, glancing
thitherwards, Sergeant Dick and Inspector Medhurst saw a dozen or
more canoes and rafts making for them.
For a moment the inmates of the ark believed that they were taken in
the rear by Indians, broken out on the warpath again. But the next
moment torches burst into flame in the leading canoes and revealed
that the new comers were cowboys and settlers from the surrounding
district. The red coat and Stetson hat of a police-trooper showed up
conspicuously in the foremost canoe under the bright torchlight.
Medhurst and Sergeant Dick recognized the man as the trooper who had
been dispatched for reënforcements immediately after Dick’s rescue
from the White Hoods.
Hails were exchanged between the troopers in the ark and the
would-be avengers in the canoes; explanations were called for, and
given freely.
“It means that we’ve rounded up and cornered the last of the White
Hoods, men,” Inspector Medhurst shouted to those in the canoes. “Old
Man Arnold and his sons, his wife and two daughters-in-law with the
two Seymours, ‘Bud’ and his wife, formed the entire gang, as we
discovered. They tried to blow us up in the hills, where they’ve got
a secret duffing-yard stocked full of cattle, sheep, and horses, all
awaiting identification now. But we escaped the diabolical plot,
thanks be, and here we are with Amos and Abner Arnold and the two
Seymours prisoners, and just waiting for Mrs. Arnold and the other
women to come out before falling on and capturing or wiping out the
last three male members of the band--Old Alf and his two eldest
sons.”
A yell of vengeful rage and fierce execration went up from the
canoes on the words; and the cowboys and settlers in the canoes were
all for attacking the “castle” from the other three sides in
conjunction with the police in the ark.
But Inspector Medhurst again called out:
“No, no, men, you must keep at a distance. This is our affair--for
us police to settle. And you wouldn’t rob us of any of the glory of
the capture of the place? We are strongly entrenched inside this
vessel, while you’d have no more chance in your canoes and on those
rafts than the redskins had in their late siege of the place. I
cannot allow you to throw away your lives in any such foolish
attack. You would all be wiped out and not be able to accomplish
anything.”
The canoe containing Aunt Kate and her two daughters-in-law, Bella
and Deborah, now came up to the little gate in the timbering under
the “castle.” Unlocking the padlock upon it, the women opened it and
paddled out.
“You had better come aboard the ark, Mrs. Arnold,” called the
Inspector.
The women were nothing loath to do so, dreading with reason the
reception they would get from their infuriated neighbors in the
canoes and on the rafts. Every man’s hand was against the White
Hoods, and all belonging to them; their atrocities had enraged every
one, English, French, and Indian.
As the three women stepped aboard and passed by Sergeant Dick behind
the tiller-screen, they each gave him a look of awful hate and
vengeful longing.
Barely had the cabin door closed upon them than from three of the
front windows of the “castle” three rifles rang out and as many
bullets clanged again against the tiller-screen covering Sergeant
Dick and Troopers Bell and Watts.
The police still held their fire, but Sergeant Dick saw the
after-door of the ark open cautiously a few inches again, and
Inspector Medhurst peep round it and beckon to him--indicate by
jerking a finger that he and the two troopers were to move the
tiller-screen close up against the door.
This the trio promptly proceeded to do. They contrived to do so
without exposing themselves in any way, but caused two of the
outlaws in the “castle” again to blaze away furiously at their
shield.
When it was alongside the after-door, Medhurst put into Dick’s hands
a small barrel or keg, with a candle thrust into the open bunghole.
“Sergeant,” he whispered, “here is a keg of gunpowder. Slip under
the verandah in the canoe and put it just beneath the door, then
light the candle and get back as smartly as you can. We shall have
to push off promptly to escape the force of the explosion. Will you
do it?”
“Certainly, inspector. Where did you find the keg?”
“Inside one of the store-cupboards. The sight of it suggested the
idea.”
“One moment, sir! Would it not be better to blow in the western or
eastern wall? You remember what I told you about the drop-floor in
the front room? The gap would want some getting over, if they let it
down, even if we got in the front as the Ogalcrees did, in the face
of their fire from the inner rooms.”
“Just as you like, sergeant. Very well, let it be the western wall.”
Sergeant Dick, hugging the keg of gunpowder under his left arm,
dropped on his knees and crawled round the farther end of the
tiller-screen. His head was below the level of the verandah, and so
he was hidden from the fierce, watching eyes at the “castle”
loopholes.
Wriggling noiselessly and cautiously over the scow’s bulwark, he
stepped on to the cross-timbering between the piles supporting the
verandah, and the next moment he had dodged through the open gate,
by which the three Mrs. Arnolds had come out in the canoe, and was
under the verandah.
The canoe was alongside the gate, but tied to the stern of the scow.
He stepped into it and cast off the painter; then, leaving the
paddles lying where they were in the canoe at his feet, he
soundlessly began to work the canoe along the inside of the piles by
shifting his hands along the timbering.
In this way he worked himself under the house itself and over to the
west side. He set the little keg against one of the piles supporting
the western wall, immediately between the two bedrooms on that
side--Aaron’s and Abel’s, as it happened. The keg fitted neatly in
the crook formed by the pile and a cross-brace.
Then he struck a match softly and lighted the candle in the
bunghole, immediately hurrying back diagonally in the canoe the way
he had come, for the gate.
He gained the opening and wriggled noiselessly back over the bulwark
of the scow. That the candle-fuse was still burning all right he
could see through the piles.
The next moment he was behind the tiller-screen and safe inside the
after-cabin, where, on hearing his report that the mine was set,
Inspector Medhurst at once gave orders for the ark to be thrust off
from the verandah. She had been hooked on to the piles with
boathooks, that was all, and the current, flowing southward, at once
began to drift her away from “Water Castle” back towards the gate of
the outer palisading or “dockyard.”
Sergeant Dick saw that none of the prisoners were in the
after-cabin, and concluded that they had all been kept from the
windows and in ignorance of what had been done.
Then it came--a great blinding, lurid flash, round and under the
house, a deafening bang! Bits of the roof and fragments of the
shattered wall and floor of the “castle” hurtled into the air and
fell splashing into the water around.
“Round to the side blown in, quick, men!” yelled Inspector Medhurst,
while all the women in the fore-cabin screamed in terror, to know
what had happened.
The troopers at the windows told them, and the three Mrs. Arnolds
indulged in the vilest abuse of Inspector Medhurst, Sergeant Dick,
and all the Royal Mounted Police in Canada.
Paying no heed to the vituperation, the police-troopers under their
two officers sailed the ark hurriedly past the verandah to the west
side, where they beheld a great gaping hole blown in the wall of the
“castle.” The hole showed the partition between the two bedrooms and
their communicating door, and was high enough and wide enough on
either side of it to allow of two horsemen riding through abreast.
A dense cloud of smoke was still pouring from the two rooms exposed,
and part of the flooring was gone, along with the piles and
cross-bracing that had supported it; so that, though the holes into
the bedrooms were so large, the aforesaid two horsemen would have
found it difficult to find any footing, to get inside.
But the police-troopers made nothing of such a difficulty. As
Sergeant Dick ran the ark close up against the shattered wall, they
all swarmed out of the after-cabin door beside him, revolvers in
hand. Then, led by him and Inspector Medhurst, they crowded to the
bulwark immediately opposite the gap, like bluejackets boarding an
enemy ship. Sergeant Dick headed the intrusion into Aaron’s bedroom,
the inspector that into Abel’s.
All the women, of course, had been shut up, without arms, in the
fore-cabin of the ark--locked inside it so that they could not get
out and interfere in any way.
As Sergeant Dick sprang through the hole in the wall the door in
front of him, leading into the central passage, was thrown open, and
the three Arnolds appeared, reeling like drunken men under the
unexpected shock of the shattering of their stronghold, and mad with
fury and despair.
Each of them gripped an automatic in either hand and looked more
like a demon than a human being, in the semi-gloom and dusty fog of
the place.
Sergeant Dick promptly flung himself on his knees. Simultaneously
all six weapons in front of him spoke rapidly, and the bullets went
whizzing over his head.
As by a miracle, none of the troopers behind him was struck down.
None, as it happened, was just in the line of fire, and, hurriedly
ducking and dodging to one side, they pelted back a quick return
fire, while Dick slipped swiftly to one side, dived out of the way
like a cat or some wild thing.
There were two ringing screams, and Aaron and Abel fell heavily
against their father, throwing the old man down. Then with a rush,
the police under Dick disarmed and seized the trio. Sergeant Dick
had not fired a shot--had had no need to--and he was glad in his
heart that he had not been obliged to do so, on Muriel’s account.
He did not wish to have the blood of any of her relatives on his
hands, even though shed in fair fight and in defense of law and
order.
Inspector Medhurst and those following came flocking through the
intervening door. But their aid was unnecessary. Aaron and Abel had
both been shot dead, and Old Man Arnold was dying.
“Inspector Medhurst, I would tell you something before I go,” Old
Alf exclaimed, with difficulty. “The girl Muriel is--is not my niece
at all, but--but your daughter. She is no relation of mine. You
believed your wife and child were killed by redskins. They were not.
It was I who stopped them, I and--and--Bud--I mean several others.
Your wife resisted us, and--and I shot her; and then we threw her
body over the cataract, and some of the others wanted to throw the
child after the mother. But my wife wouldn’t hear of that. Yes, she
was there--I’ve let it out now--but her saving the life of your
child should speak for her. She said she would adopt the
child--pretend it was my sister’s child, and we threw the little
thing’s hat and shawl after its mother, to make you believe it was
in the river too.”
“Great heavens! Is this true? Your supposed niece, my daughter--my
little Agnes?” cried Medhurst, staggered by the revelation, as well
he might be.
“It’s the gospel’s own truth, as I am a dying man, Medhurst,”
groaned the old bandit chief.
The next moment he had breathed his last.
His wife readily admitted that Muriel was Medhurst’s daughter, on
learning of her husband’s disclosure, and that he was dead and her
two eldest sons the same. The meeting between father and daughter we
shall not attempt to describe, beyond saying that both were too
stunned and affected by the dreadful happenings of the last hour,
their grim surroundings, to be very demonstrative. Indeed, Muriel
seemed too stunned by the news to quite grasp its import.
So the dreaded White Hood Gang was no more--broken and rounded up to
its very last member. The difficulty of bringing home any actual
murder or atrocity to the prisoners, as none of them turned King’s
evidence, resulted in their all escaping the death penalty and
receiving various terms of imprisonment instead.
Amos and Abner, however, within three months of their sentence,
attempted to break jail and were both mortally wounded by their
armed guards. As for “Bud,” or Bill, Seymour and Aunt Kate, they
both died in prison.
Eighteen months after Muriel or Agnes Medhurst had been restored to
her father, she was led to the altar-rails in the little backwoods
church of Paquita Springs by Inspector John Dick, for he was
sergeant no longer, having been promoted to control of a
far-stretching territory adjoining Lonewater for the prominent part
he had taken in the detection and rounding-up of the dreaded White
Hoods.
As for Jenny Arnold--the poor, innocent half-witted daughter and
sister of that evil family--Muriel or Agnes Medhurst had taken her
under her wing from the hour which witnessed the capture and ruin of
the stronghold on the lake, their joint home up to that hour. And
the two girls were not parted by Agnes’s marriage; Jenny went to
live with the married pair, and was as a sister to them both, under
their roof.
The End
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SEA STORIES FOR BOYS
By JOHN GABRIEL ROWE
Large 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Colored jacket
Price per volume, $1.00 Net
Every boy who knows the lure of exploring and who loves to rig up huts
and caves and tree-houses to fortify himself against imaginary enemies
will enjoy these books, for they give a vivid chronicle of the doings
and inventions of a group of boys who are shipwrecked and have to make
themselves snug and safe in tropical islands where the dangers are too
real for play.
1. CRUSOE ISLAND
Dick, Alf and Fred find themselves stranded on an unknown island with
the old seaman Josh, their ship destroyed by fire, their friends lost.
2. THE ISLAND TREASURE
With much ingenuity these boys fit themselves into the wild life of the
island they are cast upon in storm.
3. THE MYSTERY OF THE DERELICT
Their ship and companions perished in tempest at sea, the boys are
adrift in a small open boat when they spy a ship. Such a strange
vessel!--no hand guiding it, no soul on board,--a derelict.
4. THE LIGHTSHIP PIRATES
Modern Pirates, with the ferocity of beasts, attack a lightship
crew;--recounting the adventures that befall the survivors of that
crew,--and--“RETRIBUTION.”
5. THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN IDOL
Telling of a mutiny, and how two youngsters were unwillingly involved in
one of the weirdest of treasure hunts,--and--“THE GOLDEN FETISH.”
Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE KING OF THE MOUNTAINS
(Le Roi des Montagnes)
By EDMOND ABOUT
Translated by Florence Crewe-Jones
Illustrated by George Avison
12mo. Illustrated. Beautiful cloth binding, stamped in gold. Jacket in
colors. Price $1.50 Net
Edmond About’s classic masterpiece of whimsical humor, romantic action
and wild surroundings, appeals to all classes and ages of readers. The
lawless, happy-go-lucky bands of the Grecian mountains, bargaining with
prisoners and government officials in a kind of uncivilized traffic,
affords the uncertainty in adventure which makes delightful reading for
boy or man.
Hadji Stavros is the never-to-be-forgotten representative of the right
to get without limits. To him the only injustice or error in life was in
being weak, in which any unselfishness was weakness. And yet, he allowed
his love for his daughter to overthrow his system of life. To be
entertained by “The King of the Mountains” as a dramatic story is not
enough, it is a profound study of character and life.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOM MARTIN
THE BREAKER BOY
By R. P. PHELPS
Illustrated by Howard L. Hastings.
Large 12mo.
Beautifully bound in cloth, stamped in gold, jacket in full colors.
Price $1.50 Net.
Tom Martin is the story of a boy’s struggle to make the best of life,
though in the worst of circumstances. His experience has the interest of
a boy who had been lost to his family from babyhood and was brought up
in the hardships and abuse of a shiftless miner’s household. But he
could overcome difficulties and endure the hardships because of his will
to become an honorable and successful man.
Tom Martin’s adventures and exciting experience were real events in the
work of the mines and the mistreatments of his supposed parents. How he
turned failure into success, righted his wrongs, and at last found his
own real friends and relatives, makes a strong story that any courageous
boy will enjoy reading. As the descriptions of life in the mines of West
Virginia and Pennsylvania are genuine, it is of great educational value
as to the coal-mining industry. Many improvements have been made in the
various methods of mining since Tom Martin’s experience, but the life of
the miners remains much the same. For interest in the life of a
courageous boy and the educational value as to the miner’s living, it is
a book that every boy should have joy in reading.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everybody will love the story of
NOBODY’S BOY
By HECTOR MALOT
The dearest character in all the literature of child life is little Remi
in Hector Malot’s famous masterpiece Sans Famille (“Nobody’s Boy”).
All love, pathos, loyalty, and noble boy character are exemplified in
this homeless little lad, who has made the world better for his being in
it. The boy or girl who knows Remi has an ideal never to be forgotten.
But it is a story for grownups, too.
“Nobody’s Boy” is one of the supreme heart-interest stories of all time,
which will make you happier and better.
4 Colored Illustrations. $1.50 net.
At All Booksellers
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COLLEGE SPORTS SERIES
By LESTER CHADWICK
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in Colors.
Price 75 cents per volume. Postage 10 cents additional.
Mr. Chadwick has played on the diamond and on the gridiron himself.
1. THE RIVAL PITCHERS
A Story of College Baseball
Tom Parsons, a “hayseed,” makes good on the scrub team of Randall
College.
2. A QUARTERBACK’S PLUCK
A Story of College Football
A football story, told in Mr. Chadwick’s best style, that is bound to
grip the reader from the start.
3. BATTING TO WIN
A Story of College Baseball
Tom Parsons and his friends Phil and Sid are the leading players on
Randall College team. There is a great game.
4. THE WINNING TOUCHDOWN
A Story of College Football
After having to reorganize their team at the last moment, Randall makes
a touchdown that won a big game.
5. FOR THE HONOR OF RANDALL
A Story of College Athletics
The winning of the hurdle race and long-distance run is extremely
exciting.
6. THE EIGHT-OARED VICTORS
A Story of College Water Sports
Tom, Phil and Sid prove as good at aquatic sports as they are on track,
gridiron and diamond.
Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GREAT MARVEL SERIES
By ROY ROCKWOOD
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in Colors
Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid
Stories of adventures in strange places, with peculiar people and queer
animals.
1. THROUGH THE AIR TO THE NORTH POLE or The Wonderful Cruise of the
Electric Monarch
The tale of a trip to the frozen North with a degree of reality that is
most convincing.
2. UNDER THE OCEAN TO THE SOUTH POLE or The Strange Cruise of the
Submarine Wonder
A marvelous trip from Maine to the South Pole, telling of adventures
with the sea-monsters and savages.
3. FIVE THOUSAND MILES UNDERGROUND or The Mystery of the Center of the
Earth
A cruise to the center of the earth through an immense hole found at an
island in the ocean.
4. THROUGH SPACE TO MARS or The Most Wonderful Trip on Record
This book tells how the journey was made in a strange craft and what
happened on Mars.
5. LOST ON THE MOON or In Quest of the Field of Diamonds
Strange adventures on the planet which is found to be a land of
desolation and silence.
6. ON A TORN-AWAY WORLD or Captives of the Great Earthquake
After a tremendous convulsion of nature the adventurers find themselves
captives on a vast “island in the air.”
7. THE CITY BEYOND THE CLOUDS or Captured by the Red Dwarfs
The City Beyond the Clouds is a weird place, full of surprises, and the
impish Red Dwarfs caused no end of trouble. There is a fierce battle in
the woods and in the midst of this a volcanic eruption sends the
Americans sailing away in a feverish endeavor to save their lives.
Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE JACK RANGER SERIES
By CLARENCE YOUNG
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in Colors
Price 75 cents per volume. Postage 10 cents additional
Lively stories of outdoor sports and adventure every boy will want to
read.
1. JACK RANGER’S SCHOOL DAYS or The Rivals of Washington Hall
You will love Jack Ranger--you simply can’t help it. He is bright and
cheery, and earnest in all he does.
2. JACK RANGER’S WESTERN TRIP or From Boarding School to Ranch and Range
This volume takes the hero to the great West. Jack is anxious to clear
up the mystery surrounding his father’s disappearance.
3. JACK RANGER’S SCHOOL VICTORIES or Track, Gridiron and Diamond
Jack gets back to Washington Hall and goes in for all sorts of school
games. There are numerous contests on the athletic field.
4. JACK RANGER’S OCEAN CRUISE or The Wreck of the Polly Ann
How Jack was carried off to sea against his will makes a “yarn” no boy
will want to miss.
5. JACK RANGER’S GUN CLUB or From Schoolroom to Camp and Trail
Jack organizes a gun club and with his chums goes in quest of big game.
They have many adventures in the mountains.
6. JACK RANGER’S TREASURE BOX or The Outing of the Schoolboy Yachtsmen
Jack receives a box from his father and it is stolen. How he regains it
makes an absorbing tale.
Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Boy Hunters Series
By Captain Ralph Bonehill
12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, $1.00, postpaid
FOUR BOY HUNTERS Or, The Outing of the Gun Club
A fine, breezy story of the woods and waters, of adventures in search of
game, and of great times around the campfire, told in Captain Bonehill’s
best style. In the book are given full directions for camping out.
GUNS AND SNOWSHOES Or, The Winter Outing of the Young Hunters
In this volume the young hunters leave home for a winter outing on the
shores of a small lake. They hunt and trap to their heart’s content, and
have adventures in plenty, all calculated to make boys “sit up and take
notice.” A good healthy book; one with the odor of the pine forests and
the glare of the welcome campfire in every chapter.
YOUNG HUNTERS OF THE LAKE Or, Out with Rod and Gun
Another tale of woods and waters, with some strong hunting scenes and a
good deal of mystery. The three volumes make a splendid outdoor series.
OUT WITH GUN AND CAMERA Or, The Boy Hunters in the Mountains
Takes up the new fad of photographing wild animals as well as shooting
them. An escaped circus chimpanzee and an escaped lion add to the
interest of the narrative.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BASEBALL JOE SERIES
By LESTER CHADWICK
12mo. Illustrated. Price 50 cents per volume.
Postage 10 cents additional.
1. BASEBALL JOE OF THE SILVER STARS or The Rivals of Riverside
2. BASEBALL JOE ON THE SCHOOL NINE or Pitching for the Blue Banner
3. BASEBALL JOE AT YALE or Pitching for the College Championship
4. BASEBALL JOE IN THE CENTRAL LEAGUE or Making Good as a Professional
Pitcher
5. BASEBALL JOE IN THE BIG LEAGUE or A Young Pitcher’s Hardest Struggles
6. BASEBALL JOE ON THE GIANTS or Making Good as a Twirler in the
Metropolis
7. BASEBALL JOE IN THE WORLD SERIES or Pitching for the Championship
8. BASEBALL JOE AROUND THE WORLD or Pitching on a Grand Tour
9. BASEBALL JOE: HOME RUN KING or The Greatest Pitcher and Batter on
Record
10. BASEBALL JOE SAVING THE LEAGUE or Breaking Up a Great Conspiracy
11. BASEBALL JOE CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM or Bitter Struggles on the Diamond
12. BASEBALL JOE CHAMPION OF THE LEAGUE or The Record that was Worth
While
13. BASEBALL JOE CLUB OWNER or Putting the Home Town on the Map
14. BASEBALL JOE PITCHING WIZARD or Triumphs Off and On the Diamond
Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE JEWEL SERIES
By AMES THOMPSON
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in colors
Price per volume, 65 cents
A series of stories brimming with hardy adventure, vivid and accurate in
detail, and with a good foundation of probability. They take the reader
realistically to the scene of action. Besides being lively and full of
real situations, they are written in a straightforward way very
attractive to boy readers.
1. THE ADVENTURE BOYS AND THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS
Malcolm Edwards and his son Ralph are adventurers with ample means for
following up their interest in jewel clues. In this book they form a
party of five, including Jimmy Stone and Bret Hartson, boys of Ralph’s
age, and a shrewd level-headed sailor named Stanley Greene. They find a
valley of diamonds in the heart of Africa.
2. THE ADVENTURE BOYS AND THE RIVER OF EMERALDS
The five adventurers, staying at a hotel in San Francisco, find that
Pedro the elevator man has an interesting story of a hidden “river of
emeralds” in Peru, to tell. With him as guide, they set out to find it,
escape various traps set for them by jealous Peruvians, and are much
amused by Pedro all through the experience.
3. THE ADVENTURE BOYS AND THE LAGOON OF PEARLS
This time the group starts out on a cruise simply for pleasure, but
their adventuresome spirits lead them into the thick of things on a
South Sea cannibal island. Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue
Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BOMBA BOOKS
By ROY ROCKWOOD
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. With colored jacket.
Price 50 cents per volume.
Postage 10 cents additional.
Bomba lived far back in the jungles of the Amazon with a half-demented
naturalist who told the lad nothing of his past. The jungle boy was a
lover of birds, and hunted animals with a bow and arrow and his trusty
machete. He had a primitive education in some things, and his daring
adventures will be followed with breathless interest by thousands.
1. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY or The Old Naturalist’s Secret
2. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE MOVING MOUNTAIN or The Mystery of the
Caves of Fire
3. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AT THE GIANT CATARACT or Chief Nasconora and His
Captives
4. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON JAGUAR ISLAND or Adrift on the River of
Mystery
5. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE ABANDONED CITY or A Treasure Ten Thousand
Years Old
6. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY ON TERROR TRAIL or The Mysterious Men from the
Sky
7. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY IN THE SWAMP OF DEATH or The Sacred Alligators
of Abarago
8. BOMBA THE JUNGLE BOY AMONG THE SLAVES or Daring Adventures in the
Valley of Skulls
Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WEBSTER SERIES
By FRANK V. WEBSTER
Mr. WEBSTER’S style is very much like that of the boys’ favorite author,
the late lamented Horatio Alger, Jr., but his tales are thoroughly
up-to-date.
Cloth. 12mo. Over 200 pages each. Illustrated. Stamped in various
colors.
Price per volume, 50 cents.
Postage 10 cents additional.
Only a Farm Boy or Dan Hardy’s Rise in Life
The Boy from the Ranch or Roy Bradner’s City Experiences
The Young Treasure Hunter or Fred Stanley’s Trip to Alaska
The Boy Pilot of the Lakes or Nat Morton’s Perils
Tom the Telephone Boy or The Mystery of a Message
Bob the Castaway or The Wreck of the Eagle
The Newsboy Partners or Who Was Dick Box?
Two Boy Gold Miners or Lost in the Mountains
The Young Firemen of Lakeville or Herbert Dare’s Pluck
The Boys of Bellwood School or Frank Jordan’s Triumph
Jack the Runaway or On the Road with a Circus
Bob Chester’s Grit or From Ranch to Riches
Airship Andy or The Luck of a Brave Boy
High School Rivals or Fred Markham’s Struggles
Darry the Life Saver or The Heroes of the Coast
Dick the Bank Boy or A Missing Fortune
Ben Hardy’s Flying Machine or Making a Record for Himself
Harry Watson’s High School Days or The Rivals of Rivertown
Comrades of the Saddle or The Young Rough Riders of the Plains
Tom Taylor at West Point or The Old Army Officer’s Secret
The Boy Scouts of Lennox or Hiking Over Big Bear Mountain
The Boys of the Wireless or a Stirring Rescue from the Deep
Cowboy Dave or the Round-up at Rolling River
Jack of the Pony Express or The Young Rider of the Mountain Trail
The Boys of the Battleship or For the Honor of Uncle Sam
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BOB DEXTER SERIES
By WILLARD F. BAKER
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in Colors
Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid
This is a new line of stories for boys, by the author of the Boy
Ranchers series. The Bob Dexter books are of the character that may be
called detective stories, yet they are without the objectionable
features of the impossible characters and absurd situations that mark so
many of the books in that class. These stories deal with the up-to-date
adventures of a normal, healthy lad who has a great desire to solve
mysteries.
1. BOB DEXTER AND THE CLUB-HOUSE MYSTERY or The Missing Golden Eagle
This story tells how the Boys’ Athletic Club was despoiled of its
trophies in a strange manner, and how, among other things stolen, was
the Golden Eagle mascot. How Bob Dexter turned himself into an amateur
detective and found not only the mascot, but who had taken it, makes
interesting and exciting reading.
2. BOB DEXTER AND THE BEACON BEACH MYSTERY or The Wreck of the Sea Hawk
When Bob and his chum went to Beacon Beach for their summer vacation,
they were plunged, almost at once, into a strange series of events, not
the least of which was the sinking of the Sea Hawk. How some men tried
to get the treasure off the sunken vessel, and how Bob and his chum
foiled them, and learned the secret of the lighthouse, form a great
story.
3. BOB DEXTER AND THE STORM MOUNTAIN MYSTERY or The Secret of the Log
Cabin
Bob Dexter came upon a man mysteriously injured and befriended him. This
led the young detective into the swirling midst of a series of strange
events and into the companionship of strange persons, not the least of
whom was the man with the wooden leg. But Bob got the best of this
vindictive individual, and solved the mystery of the log cabin, showing
his friends how the secret entrance to the house was accomplished.
Send For Our Free Illustrated Catalogue
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BOY RANCHERS SERIES
By WILLARD F. BAKER
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Jacket in full colors
Price 50 cents per volume.
Postage 10 cents additional.
Stories of the great west, with cattle ranches as a setting, related in
such a style as to captivate the hearts of all boys.
1. THE BOY RANCHERS or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X
Two eastern boys visit their cousin. They become involved in an exciting
mystery.
2. THE BOY RANCHERS IN CAMP or the Water Fight at Diamond X
Returning for a visit, the two eastern lads learn, with delight, that
they are to become boy ranchers.
3. THE BOY RANCHERS ON THE TRAIL or The Diamond X After Cattle Rustlers
Our boy heroes take the trail after Del Pinzo and his outlaws.
4. THE BOY RANCHERS AMONG THE INDIANS or Trailing the Yaquis
Rosemary and Floyd are captured by the Yaqui Indians but the boy
ranchers trailed them into the mountains and effected the rescue.
5. THE BOY RANCHERS AT SPUR CREEK or Fighting the Sheep Herders
Dangerous struggle against desperadoes for land rights brings out heroic
adventures.
6. THE BOY RANCHERS IN THE DESERT or Diamond X and the Lost Mine
One night a strange old miner almost dead from hunger and hardship
arrived at the bunk house. The boys cared for him and he told them of
the lost desert mine.
7. THE BOY RANCHERS ON ROARING RIVER or Diamond X and the Chinese
Smugglers
The boy ranchers help capture Delton’s gang who were engaged in
smuggling Chinese across the border.
8. THE BOY RANCHERS IN DEATH VALLEY or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery
The Boy Ranchers track Mysterious Death into his cave.
Send for Our Free Illustrated Catalogue.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Speedwell Boys Series
By ROY ROCKWOOD
Author of “The Dave Dashaway Series,” “Great Marvel Series,” etc.
12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid
All boys who love to be on the go will welcome the Speedwell boys. They
are clean cut and loyal lads.
The Speedwell Boys on Motor Cycles or The Mystery of a Great
Conflagration
The lads were poor, but they did a rich man a great service and he
presented them with their motor cycles. What a great fire led to is
exceedingly well told.
The Speedwell Boys and Their Racing Auto or A Run for the Golden Cup
A tale of automobiling and of intense rivalry on the road. There was an
endurance run and the boys entered the contest. On the run they rounded
up some men who were wanted by the law.
The Speedwell Boys and Their Power Launch or To the Rescue of the
Castaways
Here is an unusual story. There was a wreck, and the lads, in their
power launch, set out to the rescue. A vivid picture of a great storm
adds to the interest of the tale.
The Speedwell Boys in a Submarine or The Lost Treasure of Rocky Cove
An old sailor knows of a treasure lost under water because of a cliff
falling into the sea. The boys get a chance to go out in a submarine and
they make a hunt for the treasure.
The Speedwell Boys and Their Ice Racer or The Perils of a Great Blizzard
The boys had an idea for a new sort of iceboat, to be run by combined
wind and motor power. How they built the craft, and what fine times they
had on board of it, is well related.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New York
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Saddle Boys Series
By CAPTAIN JAMES CARSON
12mo. Illustrated. Price per volume, 65 cents, postpaid.
All lads who love life in the open air and a good steed, will want to
peruse these books. Captain Carson knows his subject thoroughly, and his
stories are as pleasing as they are healthful and instructive.
The Saddle Boys of the Rockies or Lost on Thunder Mountain
Telling how the lads started out to solve the mystery of a great noise
in the mountains--how they got lost--and of the things they discovered.
The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon or The Hermit of the Cove
A weird and wonderful story of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, told in
a most absorbing manner. The Saddle Boys are to the front in manner to
please all young readers.
The Saddle Boys on the Plains or After a Treasure of Gold
In this story the scene is shifted to the great plains of the southwest
and then to the Mexican border. There is a stirring struggle for gold,
told as only Captain Carson can tell it.
The Saddle Boys at Circle Ranch or In at the Grand Round-up
Here we have lively times at the ranch, and likewise the particulars of
a grand round-up of cattle and encounters with wild animals and also
cattle thieves. A story that breathes the very air of the plains.
The Saddle Boys on Mexican Trails or In the Hands of the Enemy
The scene is shifted in this volume to Mexico. The boys go on an
important errand, and are caught between the lines of the Mexican
soldiers. They are captured and for a while things look black for them;
but all ends happily.
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, Publishers--New YorkProject Gutenberg
Sergeant Dick of the Royal Mounted Police : $b A thrilling story of the Canadian woods
Rowe, John G. (John Gabriel)
Chimera47
College