The Yeoman Adventurer

by George W. Gough

With a clash the first bullet came through the window and knocked a huge splinter off a bedpost. There were six shots without, and six bullets spattered in a small area opposite.

"That's quite good shooting," said the Colonel. "Much better than I expected from such poor stuff."

I told him what Jack had said about the mixed quality of Brocton's dragoons. These good shots, I explained, were picked men off the Ridgeley estates, probably gamekeepers and bailiffs.

"Very like," he said. "They're used to shooting but not to fighting. Rabbits are more in their line."

There was no stir in the passage, and I wondered what the job was these men had in hand. The fusillade at the window was kept up unceasingly, generally in single shots, sometimes in twos and threes. The barricade took on a ragged appearance. I occupied my mind in thoughts of Margaret. She was in the corner, beyond her father.

The bullets had by now nearly cleared the window of glass, fragments of which covered the floor of the room. Through the cracking and spluttering we at last heard the noise of a wagon moving. The Colonel and I leaped up and peered round the edge of the window. It was being pulled by two horses, and was shifted till it was exactly opposite the window, and to my surprise some twelve feet distant. The sacks made a firm platform level with the window-sill. Flush with the window it would have made an admirable means of attack, but why the space between?

While the wagon was being put in position, there was a cessation of firing. We saw the six dragoons from the road climbing on to the wagon, while as many again joined them from the inn. The Colonel said, "Now's our chance!" and fired carefully. One man, who was poised on the rear wheel, fell into the road and hopped round to the back of the wagon holding his right foot in his hand; another, already mounted, sprawled full length on the sacks.

"That's the way," he said, with much satisfaction, and stepped aside to reload. "See if you can improve on it."

By this, under orders from the sergeant, two or three dragoons were creeping under the wagon to fire from behind the wheels. I dropped a man standing at the horses' heads and then, in the nick of time and on second thoughts, made sure of the mare and hit her in the neck. She squealed, kicked, and plunged, and the other horse sharing her fears, they began to drag the wagon off. The sergeant and two or three men leaped at them and managed to quiet them, and then took them out of the traces to save further trouble of the sort. The Colonel, meanwhile, having reloaded, brought down another dragoon with one shot, and ripped open a sack with another. It was barley.

For perhaps a minute the window had been as safe as her corner, and Margaret had been quietly watching the scene. Now, with seven or eight men lying on the top of the sacks, with a stout row of them piled in front as a bulwark, it was time for us to run to cover again. This time, of her own accord, she came my side, and nestled beyond me in the nook between the wall and my body.