Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 (11 page)

 
          
“Come
now and have your
noon
rations, Schneider,” he invited. “I’ll have a look through those loopholes in
my turn. After me, Celia shall be our sentinel.”

 
          
Rifle
in hand, Mark began to pace here and there. At each of the openings he paused a
long moment, trying to observe every tree trunk, every clump of bushes, every
rise of ground where an adversary might be sheltered. Again he told himself
that Mox- ley’s renegades would most likely try a rush from the north, where
they could take a commanding jump-off position on the slope and could approach
very near through the cover of woods there. But the mill house was most stoutly
built there at its northern wall, and only the one window, with its heavy
barred shutter, could give them a possible entrance.

 
          
Schneider
sat down. He, too, seemed to be enjoying his simple dinner, and he sliced small
bits of venison and fished tags of bacon out of the greens to put on the floor
for Wessah. The cat ate them eagerly, purring as though in thanks, and then strolled
to seek a tin dish of water set for him on the stone hearth of the broad
fireplace.

 
          
“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.

 
          
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 velcome 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.