His old face screwed up in pain.
“Mistress Granville and the two children, shot dead. Perhaps it’s best that way. I’m wounded—that don’t count. You going to keep on shooting?”
“As long as we can pull trigger.”
“I’ll tell Granville. He wants to save his sister if he can.”
“Then he must fight. Tell him so,” I warned.
I turned back to Cousin. He was scowling savagely through his peephole. “Take the back side ’n’ watch for signs on the ridge,” he mumbled. “Them out front are huggin’ dirt an’ not tryin’ to git nearer. They’re waitin’ for somethin’.”
At the back of the cabin I found a tiny chink and applied my eye. My first thought was that a comet was streaming down into my face. The long war-arrow, weighted with a blazing mass of pitch-smeared moss, stuck in a log a few inches below my peephole. From the ridge came a howl of triumph.
By thrusting my knife-blade through the hole and against the shaft of the arrow I managed to dislodge it, and it burned itself out against the huge bottom log. We did not fear fire until the arrows stuck in the roof. The same thought was in Cousin’s mind. He did not look around, but he had smelled the smoke and he directed:
“Climb up an’ work the roof-poles apart a bit so’s you can knock ’em off the roof when they land.”
I soon had the poles slightly separated in two places. As I finished a dozen flying brands poured down on the Granville cabin and ours. One arrow lodged on our roof close to the eves. Two were burning on the ridgepole of the Granville cabin. The others either stuck harmlessly in the logs or overshot and stood so many torches in the ground. By means of the table I scrambled back to the roof and managed to knock the menace to the ground. While I was thus engaged Cousin fired both barrels.