Sergeant Dick of the Royal Mounted Police A thrilling story of the Canadian woods
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