“Yes, why do you think so?” interposed Joe, much interested in the reply.
“Because the snow is so deep and so firm, they will leap over the palisade, if there be a great many of them,” replied Mary. Glenn felt a chill shoot through his breast, for this fact had not before occurred to him.
“Oh, goodness!—let us all go to work and shovel it away on the outside,” cried Joe, running about in quest of the spades. “Oh, St. Peter!” he continued, “the spades are out at the cave-spring!”
“Run and bring them,” said Glenn.
“Never—not for the world! They’d take my scalp to a certainty before I could get back again,” replied Joe, trembling all over.
“There is no danger yet,” said Roughgrove, the deep snow having occurred to him at the first announcement of the threatened attack, and produced many painful fears in his breast, which caused a sadness to rest upon his time-worn features; “but,” he continued, “it would not be in our power to remove the snow in two whole days, and a few hours only are left us to prepare for the worst.”
“Let them come within the inclosure,” said Glenn, “and even then they cannot harm us. The walls of my house are made of stone, and so is the ceiling; they can only burn the roof—I do not think they can harm our persons. We have food enough to last for months, and there is no likelihood of the siege lasting a single week.”
“I’ll make sure of the deer,” muttered Joe; and before any one could interpose, he struck off the head of the doe with an axe, as it still lay bound upon the sled. And he was brandishing the reeking steel over the neck of the fawn, that stood by, looking on innocently, when a cry from Mary arrested the blow.
“If you injure a hair of Mary’s gift,” said Glenn, in anger, “you shall suffer as severe a fate yourself.”
“Pardon me,” said Joe to Mary; “I was excited—I didn’t hardly know what I was doing. I thought as we were going to be pent up by the Indians, for goodness only knows how long, that we’d better provide enough food to keep from starving. I love the fawn as well as you do, and Mr. Glenn loves it because you gave it to him; but its natural to prefer our own lives to the lives of dumb animals.”