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