"You haven't harmed a hair of his head!" laughed Jim Turner, who was peering through one of the loopholes; "it wasn't your bullet that made him jump."
"You're right," muttered the chagrined scout; "if I had another gun, I would break this one to pieces."
"It wasn't the fault of your rifle," was the truthful remark of his companion.
At the very moment Jo Stinger took his hasty aim and fired his gun, the fleeing Wyandot was so near the cabin that he bounded upward from the ground and went through the door, as the performer in the circus bounds through the hoop covered with paper.
The bullet which so rarely missed its mark did so in this instance by a hair's-breadth; but under such circumstances, a miss was as good as a mile, and the courageous Wyandot plunged through the entrance without a scratch, or so much as the "smell of fire" about his garments.
He had played a most desperate game and won so brilliantly that the veteran Jo Stinger, while exasperated over his own failure, felt like cheering the exploit.
The safety of the brave seemed to be the signal for a general fire along the lines. The Wyandots began discharging their rifles from the wood beyond the stockade, north, east and south, while Deerfoot was somewhat alarmed to hear several shots from the river bank where he was crouching, and at no great distance from him.
A number crept up to the rear of the nearest cabin, into which they entered without much danger to themselves, and from the windows of which they discharged their pieces at the block-house. This seemed a useless expenditure of ammunition, but there was a chance or two of doing something. Some of the bullets sent from the woods and cabins might enter a loophole: a number did pass through the narrow windows and were buried in the heavy logs beyond.
Unless the inmates were specially careful, one or more of these invisible messengers would strike them, and it was this hope which led the assailants to keep up the desultory firing for more than an hour succeeding the remarkable incidents on the clearing.
The garrison did not throw away their ammunition: they kept a sharp lookout for signs of their enemies, and, when there was a chance of doing execution, they were quick to take advantage of it, but there was no shooting at random, as is too often the case, under similar circumstances.