Stepping nearer the door, he bent his head and listened. The pressure against the structure had ceased, but he caught the murmur of voices when a few broken sentences were uttered. Their meaning, of course, was beyond his reach.
"Why don't dey be gemmen?" he asked himself, "or talk in American, so dat anoder gemmen can understand 'em? I don't know what dey's talkin' 'bout, and it sounds as if dey don't know demselves."
He could understand, however, that no immediate cause for fear existed.
A dozen brawny Shawanoes could not force the door, and the windows, as has been explained, were too narrow for any one to push his body through.
But, all the same, some mischief was afoot at one of the rear window's—the one into which Jethro Juggens had fired that very day with fatal effect. The disturbance was transferred from the door to the window.
The youth was standing in the middle of the lower apartment, gun in hand, watching and listening. The moon was so placed in the heavens that this particular opening was seen more clearly than any of the others, and peering intently at it, Jethro became conscious of some dark object that was slowly obtruding into his field of vision.
"What de mischief am dat?" he muttered. "Looks like a hobblegoblin, but I knows it am an Injin."
Dimly seen in the partial illumination, the resemblance to the head of a warrior was so close that all doubt was removed from the mind of Jethro Juggens.
"Dat's what I's waiting for," was his thought, as he brought his piece to a level, took the best aim he could in the darkness, and let fly.
The report within the close room was so thunderous that his ears tingled, but confident of the accuracy of his shot, he looked through the smoke at the moonlit opening.