“It is no use, my dear Joy. The door is fastened on the outside. We are all prisoners until Joe returns.”
“No!” replied Miss La Farge stubbornly. “Not until then. Our men will be here in a few minutes if we do not meet them at the mouth of the creek. Then——”
A sharp cry of agony sounded somewhere outside, and as it reached them, the girl’s speech suddenly froze.
“What was that?” asked Joy, looking at Bracknell.
A deep frown had come upon his face, and there was apprehension in his voice as he replied, “I—I do not know. Some one may have been hurt. I——”
He was still speaking, haltingly, when the crash of a rifle broke on his words, followed by a shout, and that in turn by a great stillness. The three people in the shack looked at one another helplessly.
The girls’ faces were white, and Bracknell’s features showed wrathful. In silence they waited and nothing further happened. Half an hour passed, during which the girls whispered to each other, and still the silence outside was maintained, and to those in the cabin it seemed to hold a menace of mysterious things. Another half hour crept by, and then Bracknell spoke hoarsely—
“Something must have happened, or the Indian would have been back before this. And your men—you said they were to meet you at the mouth of the creek!”
“Yes,” answered Joy composedly. “And no doubt they are waiting there now.”
“I am afraid not,” answered her husband. “Something has occurred—what, we must find out!” He glanced at the window of skin parchment, then added, “That is the only way. We must cut that out. One of us must climb through and open the door——”