“We won’t surrender! we’ll fight you and your cutthroats, Tom Kyle, so help me God!”
Then the renegade consigned the inmates of the cabin to the depths of perdition, and turned to his followers again.
The trapper remained for a few moments at the gable loop-hole, and then ducked his head and disappeared.
“Did you hear everything, George?” he asked, as he struck the ground before the youth.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to surrender?”
“No!”
The young lips closed emphatically behind the monosyllable, and additional emphasis flashed from the young speaker’s dark eyes.
“You’re a man, by Joshua!” exclaimed Frontier Shack, grasping the boy’s hand. “We’ll fight the hounds to-day, and when night comes we’ll do suthing else, probably.”
After his failure in effecting a surrender, Tom Kyle moved his forces further up-stream, and halted just beyond rifle-shot of the cabin.