"White man, him go Dead Land!
"White man, him go Dead Land!
"White man, him go Dead Land!"
CHAPTER XXVII
THE FORT FALLS
"Now, by the holy," O'Hara whimpered, "it's fight for our lives, or hand them away like so many maundy pennies."
"Fight, is it?" Gleazen roared. And forgetting his stiff wounds, he sprang to his feet. "Load those guns! Name of heaven, be quick!"
Why at this particular time the bawling voice of the native should thus have called us to action is not easy to say, for you would think that, having become familiar with it, we should have regarded it with proverbial contempt. But we knew that the deadlock could not last forever; Seth Upham's fate was all too vivid in our minds; and I really think that, in the strange voice itself, there was more than a hint of what was to follow.