“About six, and perhaps eight; for to tell the truth I could not count them surely,” said Soroka.
“That is our luck! They cannot stand against us.”
“They cannot. Colonel; but we must take one of them alive, and scorch him so that he will show the road.”
“There will be time for that. Be watchful!”
Kmita had barely said, “Be watchful,” when a streak of white smoke bloomed forth from the thicket, and you would have said that birds had fluttered in the near grass, about thirty yards from the cabin.
“They shot from old guns, with hob-nails!” said Kmita; “if they have not muskets, they will do nothing to us, for old guns will not carry from the thicket.”
Soroka, holding with one hand the musket resting on the saddle of the horse standing in front of him, placed the other hand in the form of a trumpet before his mouth, and shouted,—
“Let any man come out of the bushes, he will cover himself with his legs right away.”
A moment of silence followed; then a threatening voice was heard in the thicket,—
“What kind of men are you?”