“I think they all got to the chimney, and began to climb up,” replied Bart.
“Just like ’em,” growled Joses. “My word, what a brave set o’ fellows they are! I don’t wonder at the Injun looking down upon ’em and making faces, as if they was an inferior kind of beast. Ah, would you?”
Joses lowered himself down again, for a bullet had whizzed by in unpleasant proximity to his head.
“Are you hurt, Joses?” cried Bart, half rising to join him.
“Keep down, will you, Master Bart! Hurt me? No. They might hit you. I say, have you fired yet?”
“Yes, three times,” replied Bart; “but I fired over their heads to frighten them.”
“Hark at that!” cried Joses; “just as if that would frighten an Injun. It would make him laugh and come close, because you were such a bad shot. It does more harm than good, my lad.”
Crack!
Joses’ rifle uttered its sharp report just then, and the firing ceased from a spot whence shot after shot had been coming with the greatest regularity, and the rough fellow turned grimly to his young companion.
“I don’t like telling you to do it, Master Bart, because you’re such a young one, and it seems, of course, shocking to say shoot men. But then you see these ain’t hardly like men; they’re more like rattlesnakes. We haven’t done them no harm, and we don’t want to do them no harm, but all the same they will come and they’ll kill the lot of us if they can; so the time has come when you must help us, for you’re a good shot, my lad, and every bullet you put into the Injun means one more chance for us to save our scalps, and help the Doctor with his plans.”