"Seems to me he's come to a halt," added Isa Blagg.
There was an anxious spell of silent, watchful waiting. No sound or movement betrayed the presence of marauding Indians, and already the clouds in the east had taken on the rosy tinge of daybreak.
Gideon Birkenshaw was beginning to comfort himself in the belief that there would be no attack after all; that his horses were safe. He was even on the point of laying aside his Winchester and bidding his men return home with him for breakfast, when suddenly from the farther side of the corral there came the sharply startling ring of a rifle shot. It came from a direction in which none of his men had been stationed.
"Who fired that shot?" he cried in wondering surprise. "Whose gun was it? Anybody know?"
Abe Harum rose to his feet, and, bending his body forward, ran swiftly past the corral gate. Then he went down on his knees and elbows and crept along by the stout timbers of the stockade, screened by the long grass.
The corral was built in a circle, and there were no corners or buttresses behind which he could conceal himself. Neither could he yet see anything of the man who had fired the shot. What he did see, when he had crept a few yards beyond the gate, was a crowd of Indians gathered close against the palisade. One of them was in the act of climbing over the sharp-pointed rails. Some seemed already to have dropped on the inner side, for the ponies were running about the enclosure in wild alarm.
Abe levelled his rifle and fired at the Redskin now slinging a naked leg over the spikes.
The shot missed its mark, and the Indian, balancing himself as he gripped one of the rails, was preparing to jump within when he was struck by a bullet fired from beyond the other Indians and between them and the main trail.
Believing that some of the cowboys from Three Crossings had arrived, and were already at work defending Birkenshaw's property, Abe ran back to hasten Gideon and his mates.
He met all five of them before reaching the gate.