The report of Mount's rifle answered; the Indian staggered, turned to run, reeled off sideways, and fell across a manure-heap. After a moment he rose again and crawled behind it.
And now, house after house burst into black smoke and spouts of flame. Through the spreading haze we caught fleeting glimpses of dark figures running, and our firelocks banged out briskly, but could neither hinder nor stay the doom of those poor, rough homes. Fire leaped like lightning along the pine walls, twisting in an instant into a column of pitchy smoke tufted with tongues of flame. Over the whirling cinders distracted pigeons circled; fowls fluttered out of burning barns and ran headlong into the woods. Somewhere a frightened cow bellowed.
Under cover of the haze and smoke, unseen, the Indians had advanced near enough to send arrows into the parade below us, where the women and children and the cattle were packed together. One arrow struck a little girl in the head, killing her instantly; another buried itself in the neck of a bull, and a terrible panic followed, women and children fleeing to the casemates, while the maddened bull dashed about, knocking down horses, goring sheep and oxen, trampling through bundles of household goods until a rifleman shot him through the eye and cut his throat.
Soldiers and farmers were now hastening to the parapets, carrying buckets and jars of water, for Cresap feared the sparks from the burning village might fall even here. But there was worse danger than that: an arrow, tipped with blazing birch-bark, fell on the parapet between me and Mount, and, ere I could pick it up, another whizzed into the epaulement, setting fire to the logs. Faster and faster fell the flaming arrows; a farmer and three soldiers were wounded; a little boy was pierced in his mother's arms. No sooner did we soak out the fire in one spot than down rushed another arrow whistling with flames, and we all ran to extinguish the sparks which the breeze instantly blew into a glow.
I had forgotten my bruises, my weakness, and fatigue; aches and pains I no longer felt. The excitement cured me as no blood-letting popinjay of a surgeon could, and I found myself nimbly speeding after the fiery arrows and knocking out the sparks with an empty bucket.
Save for the occasional rifle-shots and the timorous whinny of horses, the fort was strangely quiet. If the women and children were weeping in the casemates, we on the ramparts could not hear them. And I do not think they uttered a complaint. We hurried silently about our work; no officers shouted; there was small need to urge us, and each man knew what to do when an arrow fell.
All at once the fiery shower ceased. A soldier climbed the flag-pole to look out over the smoke, and presently he called down to us that the savages were falling back to the forest. Then our cannon began to flash and thunder, and the militia fell in for volley-firing again, while, below, the drawbridge dropped once more, and our riflemen stole out into the haze.
I was sitting on the parapet, looking at Boyd's inn, "The Leather Bottle," which was on fire, when Mount and Cade Renard came up to me, carrying a sheaf of charred arrows which they had gathered on the parade.
"I just want you to look at these," began Mount, dumping the arrows into my lap. "The Weasel, he says you know more about Indians than we do, and I don't deny it, seeing you lived at Johnstown and seem so fond of the cursed hell-hounds—"
"He wants you to read these arrows," interrupted the Weasel, dryly; "no, not the totem signs. What tribes are they?"