“Wessah is as stout-hearted as any of us,” observed Mark. “And I am certain that he knows that we are under attack.”
“Ja, he went along to help me look out at them,” said Schneider. “Wessah is brave—he makes me brave.”
Mark was at the door, looking out at the roofed open space to eastward. From there he could get a good view of the dam and the woods on the far side, as well as the road that led away to the tavern. Far along that road rolled the thunder of more shooting. Another siege was in progress there, too, and apparently the Jarretts and the Hollons were defending themselves well. Mark wondered if Durwell had reached them with his warning. He wondered, too, if either of his parents had been hurt, or his brother Will, or Esau, or his aunt and uncle, or Celia’s little cousins. He prayed that all had come safely within the stockade and within the tavern at its center.
How many of Moxley’s horde of Indians were there at the tavern, with arms in their hands and black hate in their souls? Tsukala had thought he had seen tracks of at least twenty, perhaps more. If ten had been told off for the surprise attack here at the mill, there must be a considerably larger force marshalled against the tavern. Mark felt concern, felt a tense readiness for combat, but no sense of doom whatever.
Schneider and Celia finished their food and put the dishes on the table alongside Mark’s.
“We must use no more water than we need,” Mark heard Celia say. “There is enough for a while, but not what I’d call plenty.”
“You’re right, waste no water,” Mark seconded her. “We can fight hungry, but not thirsty. Nor waste powder and shot. Make those count, too.”
As he spoke, he went to the chink between the big logs in the east wall of the sleeping room. From there he could see the pond above the dam. It seemed bright and pleasant, that penned stretch of mountain water. Its sunny expanse rippled as he looked. Mark narrowed his eyes to look again.
Because swimmers made those ripples, their forms shadowy beneath the surface.
“Stand to your arms, all,” Mark said, very quietly and meaningfully. “I think they are trying to come upon us by way of the pond. Schneider, be ready at the door.”
“Donnerwetter!” exclaimed Schneider excitedly, and sped past Mark’s line of vision, as though to the loopholed planks. “I see noddings outside here,” his voice came after a moment.
“You’ll see something ere long,” said Mark, more quietly still. “Wait until you have a fair and close target, then fire straight to the center of it.”
For he could see those shadows of the swimmers no longer. He watched, and thought there was movement behind the water gate. One of them must have mounted to its shelter above the dam. Next moment, a set of brown fingers showed, to clutch the edge of the floor of the open part of the shed, not far from where the millstones were hung.
“Take the man at the water gate if he shows himself,” Mark breathed. “I’ll deal with this one, sneaking up to the floor.”
Celia whispered hurriedly to Schneider, as if passing on Mark’s word, and Schneider muttered, “Jawohl.”
A tussock of black hair, gleaming wet, rose slowly into view from below the planks. Then Mark could see a coppery, hawk-nosed face, its paint washed into dripping streaks. The Indian hoisted himself upon the floor on his hands and knees. One hand clutched a spear with a gleaming head of hammered iron.
Mark thrust his rifle through the loophole, and fired at point blank range. The burst of smoke obscured his view, but he heard a howl as the Indian was struck. Trying to peer through the drifting gray cloud, Mark saw another form move clear of the water gate, and then Schneider’s musket spoke.
That attacker yelled, too, and went headlong into the pond, which splashed violently. Mark saw the Indian as he swam like an otter for the far side. The brown water showed streaks and blotches of crimson, that spread swiftly. On the floor outside the chink in the logs, so close as to be almost within touch of the wall, lay the one Mark had shot. He sprawled motionless as a felled log, his spear still clutched in his hand.
“Another gun!” cried Mark, and Celia came running in and thrust a loaded rifle at him. She took Mark’s emptied weapon and made haste with horn and shot-pouch to reload it.
Mark knelt at the chink and saw the wounded Indian reach the far bank and scramble out. A comrade burst from shrubbery to help him ashore. Again Schneider fired, and both Indians whooped, but they were able to hurry back out of sight together. Mark turned from his place to look through the shutter of the north window.
From the woods up the slope flashed guns, and their reports rent the air. Bullets thudded into the logs and the shutter. Mark held his own fire.
“Hurrah, friends, we’ve mauled them again!” he yelled, his blood tingling with hot triumph. “Bravo, Schneider!”
“My man gets away,” Schneider said unhappily.
“Aye, but he carries your bullet with him,” Mark said. “And there’s one out yonder on the platform beside the stones, and he’ll carry nothing anywhere again.” He counted under his breath. “I make it five we’ve struck so far, and they’ll have to see that we’ll never be taken.”
Celia screamed then, so piercingly that Mark’s ears rang. He left the loophole in the shutter and dashed into the main room.
Celia stood staring before the fireplace. Her finger pointed into it.
Down into view from the chimney above came sliding two long brown legs with moccasined feet.
CHAPTER XI
Fall of a Giant
At THAT sudden, grotesque apparition, Mark brought up his rifle, but Celia had moved, as though unthinkingly. She partially blocked his view of the fireplace. The legs came down, the feet struck the bricks of the hearth. The whole form of a half-naked Indian came into view and crouched there, his war paint smeared with soot. He carried a knife and a tomahawk, and out into the room he sprang.
Schneider roared in German, and came rushing to close quarters. He made a long, vigorous thrust with his bayonet, and at the same moment the Indian took a step toward him, with a sweeping blow of the tomahawk. But one moccasined foot trod on the edge of Wessah’s water dish, and the Indian stumbled and rocked sideways. Both the stab of the bayonet and the stroke of the tomahawk missed, and Schneider and the savage blundered toward each other, almost breast to breast.
“Stand away from him, Schneider!” cried Mark, trying to take aim. But Schneider had ideas of his own. He drew his musket back close to his body and struck upward with its butt. Mark heard the solid thump of the iron-shot wood on the painted face. As the Indian reeled backward against the stones of the fireplace, Schneider drove the butt with all his strength at the Indian’s head. And down slumped the stricken man, to lie prone and motionless.
Celia had a pistol in her hand. She was at the fireplace and halfway within it, looking up at something. She lifted the pistol and fired. It sounded as loud as a cannon within the chimney.
“Did you get one?” he asked hoarsely.
“I fear not,” said Celia, as calm and businesslike as though she was at potato-peeling. “I saw a shadow above there, and fired. The shadow went, but I heard my bullet smite only into the bricks.”
She was out of the fireplace again. Kneeling, she hustled an armful of wood upon the hearth. She thrust a great fistful of tinder among the splinters, and scraped flint and steel to throw sparks upon it. The sparks caught, the tinder blazed up.
“Good, that will keep another from trying our chimney,” Mark said, and looked to where the Indian lay on the floor.
Schneider squatted down, and examined the body.
“Ach” he said, “he is not going to get up again.” Dropping his musket, Schneider gathered the limp form in his arms and rose to his feet with a sturdy effort. “Open the south shutter,” he said to Mark. “I think nobody watches there.”
Mark raced to swing the shutter back. Schneider moved with him, and grunted as he tumbled the Indian outside.
“So!” Schneider yelled out at the window. “Here is the vel
come guests can expect today!”
Mark slammed the shutter and made it fast again. Angry yells and execrations rose from the surrounding woods.
Celia had fanned the fire into a brisk crackle. Flames darted up the chimney.
“We don’t need to worry about any other visitors from overhead,” said Mark. “That fellow must have crept close and climbed up while we were concerned with his comrades swimming the pond. We must not be tricked into another surprise. Now, rifles again, and to our loopholes.”
But the yelling had died down outside, and there was no shooting. Mark, returning to the sleeping chamber, divided his attention between the chink that showed him the pond and dam and the loophole at the north window. Schneider was at the west window once more, and Celia at the door.
“What’s o’clock, think you?” Celia asked. “How long have we stood them off thus? To me, it seems an eternity.”
“To my estimation, ’tis mid-afternoon,” Mark said to her. “And we have three hours, perhaps, to sunset. Meanwhile, since late this morning we’ve run up a long score against them.”
“Ja” assented Schneider. “Not too many now for us to fight, maybe so, you think?”
“Enough to keep us penned here, though,” Mark cautioned him. “Should we try to venture forth, we’d never live long under their fire.”
He sat on the edge of the bed beside the pistol and his tomahawk, at a point where he could see out at the north loophole. He tried to let his tight muscles go loose and rest themselves. Like Celia, he felt that they had been defending the mill for an unthinkable time. But their defense, thus far, had been starkly successful. Full half a dozen of their besiegers had been killed or wounded, as Mark counted. And neither he nor Celia nor Schneider had as yet suffered so much as a scratch.
Far away, Mark heard more bursts of gunfire, softened by miles of distance. That would be at the tavern. He judged, he hoped that all had gained the palisaded shelter and were giving good account of themselves.
As for the mill, while he and Celia and Schneider waited inside it, Moxley and his Indians waited outside. Perhaps Moxley had grown wiser with his losses. The efforts to cross the pond, to send attackers up on the roof and down the chimney, had failed. Moxley might decide to do some waiting himself. On the other hand, might he have already led his followers away in defeat?
Mark left his post of survey and went to study the garments that hung on the pegs against the wall. There was a pair of tattered old leggings and an ancient coat of spotted cowhide, tanned with the hair still upon it.
“Celia,” he raised his voice, “I have a device in mind.”
“What device?” she asked, coming into the room with him.
“These clothes,” said Mark, taking them from their pegs. “What if we should make an effigy of them and put it out to draw fire? That would give us a chance to see if our foes still lurk close at hand, and perhaps it would tell us how many.”
“Das ist gut," Schneider heartily endorsed the suggestion, from where he stood in the other room.
“Then, Schneider do you walk and tour the loopholes as before,” Mark said to him. “Celia and I will fashion a scarecrow that may trick these birds who hunger for our corn.”
At once Schneider set up a pacing patrol of the various peepholes, while Mark and Celia fetched the clothes into the main room and spread them out upon the table.
= Mark rummaged among the sticks of firewood beside the hearth. He found a piece some two feet long, and another of about a foot and a half. Groping in the pouch at his belt, he found a twist of sinew and used this to tie the sticks together into a cross. Upon the cross he draped the cowhide coat and looped up the buttons at the front.
“Now hold it high,” said Celia, and Mark did so. Celia knelt down and held the leggings against the coat. Then she set them aside, took another stick and with the knife from the table she split several little pegs of wood and sharpened them. With these makeshift pins she fastened the leggings in proper position within and below the coat, so that they hung down like limp legs. Mark held the dummy at arm’s length by the crossed sticks, and they surveyed it carefully.
“Here, vait,” said Schneider, entering from the sleeping room. “This can help.”
He took a shabby cocked hat from where it hung beside the outer door, and set it on the upper arm of the cross. Celia actually laughed.
“Come, now it looks like a valiant, fighting frontiersman,” she said. “At a distance, even a sharp-eyed Indian would be cozened by it. What will you do now, Mark?”
“That I will show you, if Schneider will but trade guns with me for the nonce.”
Schneider passed Mark his British musket with its fixed bayonet and resumed his moving lookout duty with Mark’s rifle. Mark thrust the bayonet into the coat from behind, just beneath the roll of the collar. Now he could dangle the loose fabric of clothing at the length of his extended arms.
“Stand to the bar of the door, Celia,” he directed her, and himself stepped close against the wall at one side. “Now, very quickly, open for me.”
She did so. As the door moved inward, Mark pushed his dummy into view at bayonet point and held it there. He jiggled the barrel of the musket, and the sleeves and the leggings stirred, in a manner that Mark thought must be truly lifelike. But there was no sign of life, out there in the open toward the east. Mark drew the dummy back again.
“Close the door and bar it,” he ordered. “Very well, friends, I’m ready to believe that no Indian waits for us from the east there, where the road leads on to my own house and my uncle’s tavern.”
“Maybe fewer Injuns left to watch,” suggested Schneider hopefully.
“Or they have grown weary of shooting,” Ceila hazarded.
“Nay, had one been out yonder and with any sort of weapon, he’d have shot readily enough,” Mark said confidently. “I’ll warrant they are rather to the north and west of us. From there they can watch from good cover, and if we should go out at the door and beyond the house, we’d come in sight and range of them.”
“Or they hope to see us go, maybe so,” put in Schneider. “You say they must be hungry. So they might rejoice for us to leave them to take our mill and our corn.”
“Again, in any case, they’ve not been so ready with bullets of late,” Mark elaborated. “They may well be running short of those, too. But come, if they do not keep watch at the east, let’s learn if they keep watch at the west. Stand again to open the shutter of the window, Celia.”
He moved across to the wall there, holding up the clothes spiked on the bayonet. Celia unfastened the shutter with steady hands, and drew it open. Mark thrust his dummy into view as before, twitching it here and there to make it seem alive.
A gun boomed, and the cocked hat went flying away. An arrow leaped in at the window and struck into the floor, humming there. At once Mark let the dummy fall, as though it were a real man and stricken. As Celia pushed the shutter to, exultant war whoops rose from the woods.
“They think they killed one of us,” said Schneider.
“And we know they watch out there,” nodded Mark, handing Schneider his musket again and repossessing his rifle, while Celia gathered up the fallen clothes.
Schneider took the cocked hat and poked a finger through the hole. “Ach ” he mourned, “mein poor hat. But I am glad mein head was not within it.”
Guns were barking again, and bullets slapped the logs. Mark was getting used to those sounds. The gunfire came from the west, where the mill’s assailants must be gathering; or, perhaps, where they wished the defenders to think they were gathering.
“Ward us to northward, Schneider,” said Mark, and fetched his own rifle and that of Moxley to the window on the side where the bullets struck. As he looked out at the loophole, one slug smote the heavy planks and made them creak and quiver, at just about the point where his forehead pressed them. He saw a puff of smoke rise from the brush where Moxley had crept close to demand the mill’s surrender, and he fired at that. If he
did not hit whoever crouched there, he told himself, at least he must have made the fellow cringe. He dropped the empty weapon beside him and took up the loaded one.
Then there were war cries, whooping and quivering—a whole weird assortment of war cries. Those must be the shouts raised by various tribes as they went into battle, Mark realized. He tried to estimate how many voices raised them. Half a dozen? More? Surely not as many as had yelled defiance and insults earlier, before he and Schneider had reduced the number by their lucky marksmanship.
“Is there any noise there to the north, Schneider?” Mark asked.
“Nein. All ruhrig—peaceful.”
“Keep watching the more keenly,” Mark urged him. “This may be a lot of empty brabbling, to keep our attention fixed here. Their assault may yet develop there where you watch.”
“I am ready,” Schneider declared. All trace of his earlier timid dismay seemed to have departed, and he was every ounce the stout old soldier.
More howling and jabbering from the trees outside the west window, full-lunged and sustained. High in a tree flourished a bright scarflike piece of orange cloth, and Mark fired at it, but could not tell whether his shot did any damage.
“Guard there to the north,” he warned Schneider again, for he felt ever more certain that the Indians were making an effort to attract attention so as to make an advance from another quarter. He moved back from his loophole and quickly loaded one of the rifles, laid it on the floor in readiness, then set about loading the other.
Even as he rammed home the bullet and drew out the rod again, there came a new and violent racket at the outer door itself, a rain of tremendous, deafening blows.
Mark sprang to his feet, the rifle in his left hand with the firing pan open to be primed, his powder horn in his right.
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 Page 9
