The boys entered the headquarters building, and though Lieutenant Sheehan was surrounded by many men, all urgently anxious to transact their business with him, Al presently found an opportunity to tell him of Tommy's capture and to ask that men be sent after him. The officer listened intently to the story and when it was finished, laid his hand kindly on Al's shoulder.
"My boy," said he, with much emotion, "God knows, I wish I could send men after your brother instantly; I know how you feel and especially how your mother must feel, and I would gladly do it for your poor father's sake, for he was a gallant officer in the Mexican War. But there are two dozen people here already who have lost members of their families in the same way; and for many of them the situation is much worse than yours, because those they have lost are grown and are likely to be killed or tortured by the Indians, while your brother is a child, and I don't believe they will hurt him. But I have had to tell every one the same thing; I can do nothing now. This place is likely to be attacked by a thousand or more Indians at any moment and we have not one-tenth enough men to defend it properly. Not a man can be spared from here now, for it will be all we can do to save ourselves and all these women and children from massacre. Probably in a few days we shall have hundreds of troops from St. Paul and the East, and then we can go after these infernal red murderers and punish them and rescue their living victims. But, meantime, you must be prepared to stand with the rest of us in defending your mother and little sister. And I think you are a lad who will do your share." He glanced approvingly at Al's straight figure and steady eyes.
"I shall try to, sir," answered Al.
"I know you will," said the Lieutenant. "You had better go and help the men who are working on the storehouse."
He pointed to the building mentioned and then turned to several men who were waiting for him; while Al, very much downcast at his failure but still feeling a little more hopeful of Tommy's safety because of Lieutenant Sheehan's words, walked out again with Wallace.
CHAPTER III BESIEGED IN FORT RIDGELY
The remainder of that afternoon and the following night passed without serious alarms, but it was heavy with labor for the little garrison. The roofs of the storehouses and of the barracks for enlisted men were covered with earth to protect them against fire arrows, and their sides were loop-holed. Earth and log barricades were erected at various points overlooking the heads of ravines. Little could be done to protect the officers' frame quarters or the log stables and outbuildings, which lay, much exposed, at the western corner of the fort. Early in the evening Major Galbraith's Renville Rangers came into the fort, forty-five strong, weary with a twelve-hour forced march from St. Peter, where they had been overtaken by the courier sent to recall them. A large majority of these men remained loyal to their duty during the ensuing days but a few of them, their slumbering ferocity roused by the reports of the uprising of their savage kindred, skulked away and joined the hostiles, committing before they left an act of dastardly treachery. Several small cannon, in charge of the gallant Ordnance Sergeant John Jones, of the United States regular army, were placed in commanding positions in the fort, and that night a heavy chain guard was posted all around the place. But, though several false alarms were given, no Indians appeared, and the night passed in reasonable quiet. Mrs. Briscoe, still too overwhelmed with dumb grief to do more than mechanically comply with the arrangements made for her and Annie by Al and her friends, passed the night not uncomfortably in the hospitable but over-crowded home of the Smiths; and Al slept with a dozen men and boys, including Wallace, on the floor of the store below, his musket and revolver beside him.
The early part of the next day was spent like the one preceding it, in further strengthening the barricades and buildings, in cleaning weapons, and, beyond that, simply in endless discussion of the ghastly events of the past few days and uneasy speculation upon the future. Though many of the refugees would have gladly given all that remained of their shattered fortunes to get to St. Paul or some other place of assured security, the attempt was not to be thought of, for it was known that the hostiles were skulking all about the post and any party which might start out for the East would undoubtedly be set upon and destroyed. A few scattered survivors of the massacre continued to come in now and then, exhausted, famished, often wounded, and always nearly insane from the unnumbered perils and rigorous hardships through which they had passed. An attack on the fort was expected at any time, as Lieutenant Sheehan's words to Al had indicated, and the only cause for wonder was that it had not come sooner. Indeed, had the defenders but known it, Little Crow had been urgent in the councils of the Indians for an overwhelming assault on Fort Ridgely on the evening of the eighteenth, immediately after the bloody defeat of Captain Marsh's detachment. But some of his more cautious followers opposed the plan on the ground that many of the warriors were still out over the country, murdering settlers and destroying property, so that the full strength of their forces could not yet be brought against the fort. This view was eagerly sustained by the strong element among the hostiles who were opposed to the whole outbreak on principle, seeing in it nothing but ultimate disaster for their people, yet who did not dare openly to champion the cause of the whites for fear of being summarily dealt with by their more violent associates. This element hoped that a delay in the attack on the fort might enable the whites to gather a sufficient force there to repulse it when it should be made, and assuredly the delay had rendered it possible for the defenders to place the post in a much better state of defence by the afternoon of August 20 than it had been two days before.