Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 (9 page)

 
          
“Soothly,
Mark, young Celia Vesper hath the makings of a good housewife,” he commented.
“Are you not asking yourself if she might be a sweet mistress in a house of
your own?”

 
          
“Nay,
sir, I’ve not thought of such matters,” said Mark, leaning against the post as
before and studying his rifle fixedly.

 
          
Durwell’s
eyes twinkled shrewdly at him. “You dissemble,” he accused good-humoredly.
“Dissemble me no dissembles, Mark. You’ve thought of little else for many a
day, or I don’t read young minds. I’ve called you a lad, but you’re growing into
a man, and a brave frontier hunter at that. And if you don’t cast warm eyes at
Celia, she casts them at you.”

 
          
“We
dwell in my parents’ house, like brother and sister,” said Mark, feeling his
face grow red. “I do like Celia well, and doubtless she knows it. But beyond
that I’ve not spoken to her.” He drew himself up, trying to be dignified. “Such
matters take a long and serious time of thinking.”

 
          
Durwell’s
hand clapped Mark’s shoulder. “Don’t think about them while the years pass by,”
he advised, seriously now. “That was my policy, to think and to think. And ere
I knew it, I’d grown from a young man like you into an old bachelor, crusty and
grave. It was too late for any lass to look at me then.” “My thanks for your
advice,” began Mark, “but until—”

 
          
He
broke off, for Celia was returning. She walked past them and in at the door to
put the bowls and spoons away.

 
          
“I
haf finished grinding your meal,” Schneider announced, and went to lower the
water gate, then came back and bent over the basket to scoop out the miller’s
share. “Now, Mark, I help you put it in the sack.” Then he straightened. “But
look—vot ails Wessah?”

           
The big cat was hurrying toward them
around the side of the building. He ran faster than Mark thought a cat could
run. He hurled himself upon the platform like a furry missile. Schneider
dropped to one knee and scooped him up.

 
          
“Wessah,
vas
ist
?”
he
demanded. “Vot frighted you?”

 
          
A
rifle shot sounded from the scrub down by the river, and a bullet tore a chip
from the post just above Mark’s head.

 
          
Besieged

 
          
Both
mark and Durwell spun around where they stood and made for the door, but
Schneider, for all his usual clumsiness, moved far more quickly than either of
them. He fairly flew across the planks, clutching Wessah frantically to him,
and flung himself inside. Durwell sprang in just behind him, and Mark followed
Durwell.

 
          
Outside,
a ragged volley of shots crackled in the sunny air, and shrill, wild whoops
rose on all sides.

 
          
Mark
caught the door, slammed it shut, and swung the heavy bar into place across it.
He put his eye to the loophole. Across that open porchlike space where the
grinding was done, he saw the dam, the water gate, and the road to eastward.
But there was no movement anywhere. Behind him he heard the flat noise of
shutters being closed and secured.

 
          
“Into
our sleeping chamber with you, Mark,” Durwell snapped at him. “There’s a window
there, looking northward up the ridge. Be ready to fight them off.”

 
          
Mark
crossed the room with leaping strides. Celia stood by the table, the sheaf of
spoons still clutched in her hand. She looked at Mark with wide, terrified
eyes. Durwell was grabbing his rifle from where it lay balanced across the
antlers.

 
          
The
bedroom was small and square, not much larger than the addition to the Jarrett
house that Mark had just finished building. It held two bunklike beds, a big
old wooden chest with brass hinges and lock, and into the walls were driven
pegs on which hung clothes. Mark sprang to the window and dragged the shutter
across to close it. As he did so, more shots rang out and he heard the bullets
slap murderously into the planks of the shutter, flat and hard as the blows of
war hatchets. Sliding the bar across the shutter, he looked through the
loophole.

 
          
Smoke
still quivered among the trees up slope, where a lacework of vines hung from
one trunk to another. Mark sighted with his rifle just below that wisp of
smoke, and waited. He thought he saw a movement of bronze skin, and touched the
trigger. His own rifle spoke, and back came a yell. He heard
Bolly’s
hoofs stamping outside, and she whinnied in startled fear.

 
          
“I
think I’ve taken one down,” Mark said in grim triumph, as he made haste to
measure another charge of powder and ram it down, with a fresh bullet.

 
          
“More
power to your eye and hand,” growled Durwell through the open door to the front
room. “We can see nothing from here. The woods close at hand to east and west
are too open for them to crawl close to us.”

 
          
Mark
spared a glance around the room where he took his stand. At its eastern side,
where a wall divided it from the open milling shed, a chink showed between the
logs. That would make a good natural loophole, for observing in that direction
or for firing at an enemy.

 
          
“Get
that British gun of yours, Bram,” Durwell was saying. “With that, we’ll have
four long guns among us, beside my big pistols. Celia, can you load for us if
we’re hard pressed to stand off a charge of these savages?”

 
          
“I
can load a gun, Mr. Durwell, and fire one if need be,” Celia replied, and her
voice did not shake.

 
          
“She
speaks truth,” Mark assured Durwell. “I have given her practice at shooting. At
fairly close range, she can drill the cross on the target.”

 
          
Schneider
bustled into the sleeping room and squatted down to rummage under one of the
beds. He fetched out a musket, old and well kept.

 
          
“I
carried it ven I vos a Hessian soldier,” he said to Mark, and put his hand
under the bed for something else. It was a long bayonet, and this he fixed to
the musket’s muzzle.

 
          
“Brown
Bess, the redcoats called their guns,” Durwell said from the other room. “I
know not why that name. We reaped a harvest of them after the Cowpens, when we
drove Tarleton’s men like cattle before us.”

 
          
Mark
returned to the loopholed window and studied the outdoors north of the mill.
Trees grew there, belt after belt of them, up the rocky steep of Jarrett’s
ridge beyond his range of vision. Among the trees grew tufts of weeds, clumps
of shrubbery, some of it fairly close to the mill. Mark judged that a stealthy,
woodswise Indian brave might approach within a dozen yards of his loophole
without being seen.

 
          
In
his mind, Mark pondered the plan of the whole mill building. He knew it well,
for he had done his part in making it. Perhaps half of it was as yet unwalled,
with only a broad-eaved shingled roof held up with posts, to contain the
mechanism of the mill and several sacks and barrels of corn. The other half,
here at the westward side, was divided for living quarters into the main room
at the south, with a door opening upon the decklike floor of the open part and
windows to west and south. This smaller sleeping room, where Mark now was
stationed, had only the window to the north and the chink between the logs at
the west.

 
          
In
short, this place was a fortress, with massive walls that could turn bullets
even at close range, and loopholes to command the ground in all four
directions. Even should those beleaguering Indians be able to muster numbers
enough to surround the mill and assail it at pointblank range, they would have
bloody trouble opposing the guns of a determined garrison.

 
          
He
listened, holding his breath. Outside was no sound at all, save more stamping
of
Bolly’s
hoofs. He glanced over his shoulder into
the other room. There he saw Durwell at the loophole of the shutter that
covered the south window.

 
          
“I
see nobody stirring out here,” Durwell announced. “Who is looking to westward?”

 
          
“I
am looking,” said Celia. “No movement this way, either.”

 
          
“Nobody
shows to the east,” Schneider added in his turn.

 
          
“Do
you see aught, Mark?” prompted Durwell.

 
          
“Not
a sound or motion on the slope at our north,” replied Mark, gazing out again.
“Yet the woods here may be full of them.”

 
          
“Hark
you all,” said Durwell authoritatively. “Mark’s horse is tied just outside,
within a step of the door. One of us must mount and ride to the tavern with the
news.” He gazed around. “Bram,” he said, “if you will—”

 
          
“Nein, nein,”
spluttered the German
frantically. “Not for gold or silver do I put
mein
face from our door out.”

 
          
“Then
I will ride,” volunteered Celia boldly.

 
          
“That
you shall never do,” Mark said quickly. “You must bide here, under safe cover.”

 
          
“But
someone must go,” Celia insisted.

           
“Not you, Celia. I forbid it.”

 
          
“Good
lack, he speaks as though he means it,” commented Durwell gruffly. “If she must
stay, Mark, I make no doubt but that you will stay here, too, and protect her
from danger.”

 
          
“You
read me truly,” Mark answered. “I stay with Celia, and do you go, sir. Bolly
will carry you like a wind.”

 
          
Durwell
frowned protestingly. “What, am I to run off and leave the three of you against
this savage host?”

 
          
“You
yourself have said that the alarm must be carried,” said Mark. “To my mind, he
who will ride with the warning is as bold and true as he who stays within these
walls to fight.”

 
          
“And
Mark is right, Mr. Durwell,” seconded Celia. “Come, arm yourself and try to get
away. God protect you.”

 
          
Durwell
frowned at them all in turn. His face was creased into lines as hard as furrows
cut in frozen ground. Mark offered him his rifle.

 
          
“Nay,
I shall take no weapons,” Durwell decided. “No firearms, in any case, only a
knife and a tomahawk. I won’t be able to shoot if I ride fast. Hark you
all,
I leave Mark here in charge, as captain of this fort.”

 
          
“Goot,”
approved Schneider, back at the westward loophole.

 
          
“There
is my rifle and that other one taken from Moxley, and my two horse pistols,”
went on Durwell. “Those pistols are loaded, each with three balls, and they
would bring down a buffalo at close quarters. Schneider hath his Brown Bess and
Mark his own good, proper gun, and that makes six shot in all for you to check
them with. Celia speaks bravely when she says she will fire if need be. I
cannot think how my mill can be left in safer hands to hold it.”

 
          
“We’ll
hold the mill,” promised Mark. “Here, Celia, watch at this lookout in the
sleeping room. Mr. Durwell, make ready for your dash.”

 
          
He
came into the main room, his rifle ever ready in his hands. Durwell stuck a
tomahawk into his belt and drew his big hunting knife.

 
          
“Stand
at the door, Mark, and be ready to lift the bar and let me out,” Durwell said.

 
          
He
stared through the loophole there a last time, stepped clear and poised himself
tensely. “Now,” he said.

 
          
Mark
threw up the bar and snatched the door inward. “Good luck,” he said, as he did
so.

 
          
“And
God prosper you!”

 
          
Durwell
sprang out to where
Bolly
was tied. A slash of his
knife severed the halter rope, and he threw himself upon her back. Yells rent
the air, a rifle banged and an arrow hissed like a snake, but neither Durwell
nor
Bolly
seemed to be struck. Still at the open
doorway, Mark saw the miller drive his heels hard against
Bolly’s
brown sides, and she leaped into the air, then sped away and along the road at
an instant gallop.

 
          
More
whoops and shouts, in jabbering Indian tongues. From among some weed-fringed
rocks at the very edge of the river sprang an Indian, stripped to the war belt
and brightly blotched with paint on his face and chest. He swung a tomahawk
about his black- tufted head as he scuttled into the road and put out his other
hand as though to snatch at the bridle. But
Bolly’s
hurrying shoulder struck him and he went reeling backward, almost falling.

 
          
As
Durwell rushed past the Indian and away, Mark steadied his rifle against the
door jamb and took quick aim. That was the Chickasaw he had seen spying with
Jipi, Mark felt sure. He fired, and the Chickasaw gave a strangled roar of pain
and went tumbling into the river with a great splash. Mark pushed the door shut
and set the bar in its place.

 
          
“I
have hit another,” he cried at his companions. “Here, Celia, load my rifle
again.”

 
          
He
caught up Moxley’s weapon and hurried into the sleeping room once more, to peer
to the northward. Even as he did so, there came another clattering fusillade of
shots, and bullets smote the log walls like storm-driven hail. Mark saw five or
six puffs of smoke and flashes of exploding powder among the trees on the
slope,
threateningly close above him.

           
“Did you count any guns?” he asked
the others, stepping to the inner door.

 
          
“I
think I saw two guns shoot out here,” Schneider made his report from where he
had taken his station at the loophole of the westward window.