A strange and suspicious voice beyond the logs had startled him.
It sounded like a man’s voice, and his acute senses had already shaped it into the words, “All ready?”
He had not time to turn to join Silver Hand nor to signal him. He was within six feet of the cabin door, and was looking to his rifle, when the ponderous oaken portal swung wide, and five stalwart fellows threw themselves upon him.
They—the Night-Hawks—were the tenants of his cabin!
He retreated a step, and delivered a shot that stretched one man upon the ground, and then, after a desperate struggle, he was secured and his weapons taken from him.
Silver Hand lent no assistance to his friend; and his assistance would have availed the trapper nothing. Therefore the chief’s disappearance was not a sign of cowardice; on the contrary it was a sign of good judgment, big with assurances of future help.
“So, cabin-burner, you have bid defiance to the Night-Hawks,” said the spokesman of the outlaws, pointing to the paper still visible on the cabin door: “No block-house shall shelter me. I spare not, and no mercy ask.”
A wild laugh greeted this quotation from the trapper’s defiance, and the outlaws crowded near him.
“Men, I mean every word I have written on my door,” he said, calmly. “There war nine of ye; there ar’ but eight now,” and here his glance fell upon the man whom he had shot dead. “I war willin’ to take the odds ag’in’ me for I am no illegal squatter, and I hate outlaws. Royal Funk, I am free to confess that you’ve got the upper hand now.”
“And I’m going to keep it, Card Belt,” replied the desperado, with a smile. “I posted a fair warning on your door last night. ‘Fly or die,’ it said. You would not fly, so—”