Wild screams sounded from the squaws’ refuge; a bullet had found its way in and had killed a child. The men’s fury redoubled. The smoke settled lower and lower until figures were only as shadows flitting through it, firing, loading, and firing again from the yard and building-tops. A loud crash resounded thickly, and the splintering of wood; the big gates were buckling under the impact of some strong material. Crash! crackle! crack! The wood bent, sagged, broke, and fell inward bit by bit.
“Here, lads, for God’s sake stand ’em off; think of yer squaws, me lads!”
The factor’s voice sounded true and strong over the awful tumult. Trappers rushed to him, working their rifles frantically, some wounded, the bright red blood streaming from arms, sides, and faces. Big Indians, stoic in their pain, hard hit, fired regularly at the men outside.
“Ha!” shouted a Canadian as he rolled off the store roof to the ground below, striking it with a thud.
“At ’em, lads; gie it to ’em!” screamed the factor, seizing an axe and striking hard at a face that showed over the wall. For a second the growing gash showed livid and terrible, then the head sank. Always and ever the rifles outside and within the stockade spat tongues of flame.
Incessantly their death missiles twanged and shrilled, striking logs and living men. The yells and agonised cries grew fiercer and more wild; then “Le feu!” Verbaux shouted, as he saw tongues of flame creeping, licking, leaping over the logs of a shed. He tore off his shirt, wrapped it about his hands, and beat at the flames; they scorched and burned him, but he beat on; others joined him, leaping at the scarlet waves of fire, and together they put them out and returned to the stockade. An Indian near Verbaux dropped his rifle, swayed a moment, and tumbled without a word.
“Hurrt bad?” shrieked Jules.
The black eyes looked into his, a spasm crossed the strong face, and it was over.
From the trees themselves came a hail of bullets, humming, pi-i-i-inging in the yard. A hot thing passed through Jules’s forearm.
“Sacré-é-é-é!” he growled as he tied his handkerchief above the wound, that dripped blood steadily. It ached, it burned, it seared his mind, this wound. He became savage instead of defensive. Here and there forms and faces tried to climb over the stockade.