“What is it, Sim?” echoed a dozen voices.
“The Tories and Injuns are at us, that’s all!” returned Sim. “Call the colonel, you darned blunder-heads!”
“Here I am!” exclaimed a manly voice, and the commander appeared from the inner room. “What has happened?”
Sim explained in a few energetic words the scene that he had witnessed, and the projected attack upon Davis’s house.
“You hain’t got no time to lose,” continued Sim. “There’s twenty-eight of ’em, Injuns and Tories, and that Walter Butler at their head, and old Ike Shoemaker is as bad as any, cuss him! Only let me get my grip on him! Only to think that I’ve lived in his house a’most a year, and he a flat-footed Tory all the time!”
Colonel Wesson quickly arranged the plan of action, and in a few moments the men he selected were in marching order.
“All you’ve got to do is to surround the house,” said Sim. “The men are up in the loft, and there’s no winder for ’em to fire out of. We’ll have them like so many rats in a haystack.”
“Come on, men,” said the colonel. “Sim, do you go with us?”
“Go with you? Wal, now, that’s a pooty question, ain’t it? When did you ever know Sim White to shrink out of a fight with the bloody Tories? Give me a pitchfork, or a scythe, or anything that comes handy. I’ll stick ’em, or mow off their heads to the tune of Yankee Doodle. Go with you? I wonder what you mean by that!”
“We’ll look you up a gun, Sim,” said the colonel, laughing; “you’ll find that more useful.”