“I ain’t thinkin’,” said Ben. “I know.”
“The deuce you do!” Neither Barreau’s tone nor face bespoke more than the mildest surprise. “Had a big fire going, I suppose, and a live coal flew out. Eh?”
“Nary coal,” Ben declared. “Some feller climbed the stockade, cut open one uh them deer-skin winders, touched a match to a bucket uh oil an’ gunpowder, boosted it through the window—an’ there yuh are. That there’s no dream, let me tell yuh.”
“And then went on his way rejoicing,” Barreau suggested.
“I reckon he did, all right,” Ben owned, looking rather downcast at the thought. “I never got to see nothin’ but his tracks. If I’d seen him he wouldn’t ’a’ done much rejoicin’.”
“I dare say,” Barreau laughed. “Meantime the joke is on the party of the first part, it seems to me. Logs are plenty. You have ample time to put on a roof and lay some sort of floor. It would be a different matter if we should be burned out after our goods arrive; but this is a cheap lesson. I see you have put up a good stock of hay. That’s fortunate, for they are bringing more stock than we figured on. Altogether, Ben, you haven’t done so badly. Now, hustle us some decent grub—it’s near noon, and this boy and I have been living on straight meat for some time.”
Thus, we were once more fairly at our ease; the bugaboo of arrest and subsequent lying in jail seemed a remote contingency. The confidence born of successful escape stilled any misgivings I might have had as to the future.
We lay at the post doing naught but eat and sleep and watch the long storehouse creep higher log by log, till the skeleton of a roof took form above the blackened walls. At night the eight of us would sprawl around a fire in the open, talking of everything under the sun, sometimes playing with a soiled and tattered pack of cards that these exiles cherished as their dearest possession. If we were in hostile territory no hint of apprehension cropped out in our intercourse; except as one or another referred casually to incidents past—now a fragmentary sentence which hinted of sharp action, or a joking allusion to the “H. B. C.” It was all in the day’s work with them. But I noticed that each night one man stood guard, pacing from corner to corner of the stockade, a rifle slung in the crook of his arm.
Two weeks of this slipped by. Then one morning Barreau sat up on his bed and looked over to where I humped on my blankets, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“Bob,” he announced, “it is high time we bestirred ourselves once more.” After which he got quickly into his clothes, and went rummaging in a box by his bed—we had a little cabin to ourselves. His search bore fruit in the shape of moccasins, a bundle of them.