But Colonel Winchester appeared and ordered a score of the men, with the heaviest rifles, to shoot away the entire clump of cedars. They did it with a method and a regard for mathematics that filled Warner's soul with delight, firing in turn and planting their bullets in a line along the front of the clump, cutting down everything like a mower with a scythe.
Dick with the glasses saw the ice fly into the air in a silver spray as bush after bush fell. Presently they were all cut away by that stream of heavy bullets, but no human being was disclosed.
"He's just gone over the other side of the ridge," said Warner in disgust, "and is waiting there until we finish. We couldn't shoot through a mountain, even if we had one of our biggest cannon here. He'll find another clump of bushes soon and be potting us from it."
"But we can shoot that away too," said Dick hopefully.
"We can't shoot down all the forests on the mountain. He must have heavy hobnails, or, like the mountaineers, he has drawn thick yarn socks over his boots, else he couldn't scoot about on the ice the way he does."
"Ah, there goes his rifle, behind the clump of bushes to the right of the one that we shot away!"
A second man was wounded by the bullet, and then an extraordinary siege ensued, a siege of three hundred men by a single sharpshooter on top of a mountain as smooth as glass. Whenever they shot his refuge away he moved to another, and, while they were shooting at it he had nothing to do but drop down a few feet on the far side of the ridge and remain in entire safety until he chose another ambush.
"I suppose this was visited upon us because we were puffed up with pride over our exploits," said Pennington, "but it's an awful jolt to us to have the whole Winchester regiment penned up here and driven to hiding by a single brigand."
"It's not a jolt," said Warner, "it's a tragedy. Unless we get him we can never live it down. We may win another Gettysburg all by ourselves, but history and also the voice of legend and ironic song will tell first of the time when Slade, the outlaw, held us all in the cove at the muzzle of his rifle."
Colonel Winchester, although he did not show it, raged the most of them all. The great taunt would be for him rather than his young officers and troopers, and the blood burned in his veins as he watched the operations of the sharpshooter on the ridges. One of his men had been killed, three had been wounded, and all of them were compelled to seek shelter for their lives as none knew where Slade's bullet would strike next. In his perplexity he called in Reed, the mountaineer, who fortunately was in camp, and he suggested that they send out a group of men through the entrance, who might stalk him from the far side in the same way that they had crushed his band.