“Each for himself, Hunter,” said the Buck. “I will see you at Aukwick.”
Captain Strobo had turned away, to be gone before anybody should interfere.
“Now!” prompted the Buck. “It is time.”
He put his moccasins in his belt and clinging with his toes and fingers to the logs set on end twelve feet high and forming the stockade he shinned right up. Robert was after. They vaulted over, landing lightly; but they had no more than straightened after tying on their moccasins again ere a tall figure rose right before them.
“My young brothers are going to hunt owls?” asked Pontiac. “Or do they wish to see their fathers?”
He reached for the Buck. The Buck might have drawn hatchet or knife and struck to kill; but Robert doubled up and drove forward right into Pontiac’s stomach. Pontiac doubled up, too; and his breath gushed in a loud whoop. As the two messengers raced on they heard another whoop, a real alarm whoop, from Pontiac’s lips. He could not run yet, but he could yell.
The stockade was skirted by a ditch with dirt breastworks. They scampered along the stockade and were almost at the next corner. But people were running about inside the fort; there were shouts and thud of moccasins from around the corner, and a sentry’s musket flamed—Bang!—from the bastion there, calling for the guard.
They swerved sharply, and scrambled through the shallow ditch and fairly bounded over the breastworks seven feet high and were outside, between the breastworks and the Monongahela.
It was lucky that on the river side of the Forks the French had few guards. Now the Hunter and the Buck made for the water.