“Too clever a one for us,” the captain answered, as he loaded his musket. “This is only a ruse, a diversion, Carew. There is something to follow.”
“I hope it will come soon,” I replied. “Then the savages will likely draw off and give us a chance to put a force of men to work at the tunnel. We should finish it by noon to-morrow, and escape through it at nightfall. If the snow keeps up—as it gives promise of doing—our tracks will be covered before we have gone a mile.”
“I like the plan,” said old Carteret, the voyageur. “It sounds well, and it’s possible to be carried out under certain conditions. But if you’ll not mind my saying—”
He paused an instant to aim and fire.
“One redskin the less,” he added, peering out the loophole; “he sprang three feet in the air when I plugged him. As for your plan, Mr. Carew, I think the odds are about evenly divided. There’s the chance that the varmints will suspect something of the sort, and watch the stockade on all sides.”
“Likely enough,” assented Captain Rudstone; “but it’s not to that quarter I look for the danger. The Indians can take the house by assault in an hour if they choose to sacrifice a lot of lives.”
“It would cost fifty or a hundred,” said I. “They won’t pay such a price.”
“There is no telling how far they will go,” the captain answered gravely, “with Northwest Company men to egg them on.”
As he spoke there was a sudden and noisy alarm from the room on the right of the hall, which commanded the south side of the house. Half a dozen muskets cracked in rapid succession, the reports blending with a din of voices. Then Menzies yelled hoarsely: “This way, men! Come, for God’s sake! Quick, or we are lost!”
The summons was promptly responded to. I was the first to dash into the room, followed by Rudstone and Carteret. I put my eyes to a vacant loophole and what I saw fairly froze the blood in my veins.