"Jo! is that you?" he asked in a whisper.
"Sh! Sh!"
He caught the warning, almost inaudible as it was, and instantly drew the door inward six or eight inches.
Even then a vague suspicion that all was not right led Colonel Preston to step back a single step, and, though he had no weapons, he clenched his fist and braced himself for an assault which he did not expect.
The darkness was too complete for him to see anything, while the faint ember, smouldering in the fire-place, threw no reflection on the figure of the pioneer, so as to reveal his precise position.
It was a providential instinct that led Colonel Preston to take this precaution, for as he recoiled some one struck a venomous blow at him with a knife, under the supposition that he was standing on the same spot where he stood at the moment the door was opened. Had he been there, he would have been killed with the suddenness almost of the lightning stroke.
The pioneer could not see, and he heard nothing except a sudden expiration of the breath, which accompanied the fierce blow into vacancy, but he knew like a flash that, instead of Jo, it was a Wyandot Indian who was in the act of making a rush to open the way for the other warriors behind him.
The right fist shot forward, with all the power Colonel Preston could throw into it. He was an athlete and a good boxer. As he struck, he hurled his body with the fist, so that all the momentum possible went with it. Fortunately for the pioneer the blow landed on the forehead of the unprepared warrior, throwing him violently backward against his comrades, who were in the act of rushing forward to follow in his wake.
But for them he would have been flung prostrate full a dozen feet distant.