“We’ll try it fast enough and we’ll do it fast enough, too,” he cried, with some prodigious oaths, bad enough for any pirate. “Look here; I ain’t got any gun with me, and I s’pose you ain’t, if you’re any man at all. But you’re as near your gun as I am mine, hey?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then this here flag of truce is ended right 161 now. When I get hold of my gun I shoot, and you’re welcome to do the same!”
He turned and started back on the run. So there was nothing for me but to face about and do the same.
CHAPTER XVII
The Fight, and not much else: except a little Happening at the End which startles me greatly.
It seems a good deal to believe, but I actually half think that Kaiser had begun to get hold of the fine points of a flag of truce, and that he understood it was ended. What makes me have this idea is that I think he must have taken after Pike at first, though I wasn’t doing much looking back just then, being busy at something more important; but anyhow he wasn’t with me till I was halfway to the store, when he passed me with a great bark and went on tearing up the snow a few steps ahead. I wish he had got ahead sooner, as I think I ran faster trying to keep up with him; but as it was I don’t know but he saved my life.
Either Pike got back before I did, or one of his cutthroats fired for him; I know not, probably the latter, but the shot was for me 163 and well aimed, so well that I guess the bullet went where I was when it started. Thus it was: Kaiser was ahead, and reared up and threw himself at the store door, which, being unlatched, flew open; it stopped him a little, and I, being close behind, went down over him and into the store head first, as if I had been fired out of a cannon; and at that instant the bullet I spoke of struck the open door halfway up. I slammed the door shut, grabbed my rifle, stuck the muzzle through the port-hole, and pumped three shots out of it without once trying to aim.