The youth felt not the slightest fear of the reptile, but he dreaded lest its threshings should attract the notice of the Wyandots, whom he furtively watched, until the rattlesnake lay still.
One of the warriors did look around, as though he heard something unusual, but he seemed satisfied with a mere glance, and, turning back, sighted his gun at the block-house and threw away a charge, as so many of his people were doing around him.
"Now is my chance," thought Deerfoot, as he once more began his stealthy, shadow-like creeping around the decayed log, from behind which had glided the venomous serpent that confronted him.
The dead reptile still lay in his path, and Deerfoot reached his bow forward, thrust one end under it and flung it aside, for he shared the sentiments of the great generality of mankind, who look upon all ophidians as the most detestable plagues which encumber the earth.
CHAPTER XII.
"BIRDS OF THE NIGHT."
The garrison within the block-house saw the November day draw to an end, and the darkness of night closing in over river, forest and clearing, with sad forebodings of what was to come before the rising of the morrow's sun.
Colonel Preston and Jo Stinger agreed that the experiment with the burning arrows had resulted more favorably to the Wyandots than to the whites. The flaming missiles were undoubtedly launched as a test or experiment. True, each one had fallen to the ground without inflicting material damage, but one of them clung to its position so long as to encourage the assailants to repeat the attempt.
"When the roof is stuck full of 'em," said Stinger, "and they're p'inting upward like the quills of a porcupine, and every one of them arrers is a camp-fire of itself, why then, look out,—that's all I've got to say."
"I know of no reason why—hello! there's another!"
The speakers ran to the loopholes and looked out. Megill said it had been fired from the cabin nearest them: he had noticed the wisp of burning tow at the moment it sprang upward from the window. The archer who dispatched it, kept himself out of view, Megill only catching sight of his brawny hand, as he launched the flaming shaft.