Just as Bob reached the edge of the bank, the attackers mustered up courage for a rush, and with wild shouts swept forward. It looked dark, indeed, for the lone defender of the upturned canoes. Bob looked back to see how close were his companions, but they were not yet in sight. His dash had carried him farther than he had believed to be the case.
It had taken only a glance to show Bob which way the land lay. The lone defender was the survivor of Thorwaldsson’s party, if the explorer’s party it was, of which Bob had little doubt. He was a white man. The others were half-breeds, and if Bob was not mistaken they were of the same gang which he had encountered before.
It was distinctly up to him to lend a hand. Throwing his rifle to his shoulder, he prepared to open fire on the crushing enemy. But as his finger pressed the trigger, he groaned. The mechanism of the rifle had became jammed in some fashion. Desperately he worked to release the trigger, but to no avail.
Then the light of battle came into big Bob’s eyes. The half-breeds were just below him now. Several of their number had fallen in the rush, shot down by the defender of the canoes. Four were left, and they evidently were bent on polishing off their lone opponent. So absorbed were all in their own drama, they had not seen Bob.
Clubbing his rifle, Bob leaped. He came down on the back of one of the attackers, and bore him to the ground. With catlike swiftness, Bob, who himself had fallen on his hands and knees, gathered himself together, regained his feet, and swinging his clubbed rifle, let out a yell fit to “frighten a wolf pack,” as Frank later described it.
The stock of the rifle came down with a thud on the shoulders of another of the half-breeds, felling him as if he had been struck by lightning. So tremendous was the blow, that it tore the rifle from Bob’s grasp. But he leaped for another of the enemy, a fellow whose startled face was close to his, seized him about the waist and whirled him aloft to be tossed aside as if he were a sack of meal. The fourth man was dropped by a shot from the defender of the canoe.
“Attaboy, Bob,” came Frank’s voice, from the bluff above.
One after the other, Bob’s friends leaped to the beach.
As Frank and Jack clapped him on the back, and tried to grasp his hand, uttering enthusiastic praise the while, Bob looked around.
“Say, where’s that chap? Why, he’s fainted.”