After that, in the intervals when my terror left me, I tried to speculate upon the plan of the savages.Their own numbers could not be great, and yet they must have known from our trace how few we were.Scanning the ground, I noted that the forest was fairly clean of undergrowth on both sides of us.Below, the stream ran straight, but there were growths of cane and briers.
Looking up, I saw Weldon faced about.It was the obvious move.
But where had Tom gone?
Next my eye was caught by a little run fringed with bushes that curved around the cane near the bend.Itraced its course, unconsciously, bit by bit, until it reached the edge of a bank not fifty feet away.
All at once my breath left me.Through the tangle of bramble stems at the mouth of the run, above naked brown shoulders there glared at me, hideously streaked with red, a face.Had my fancy lied? I stared again until my eyes were blurred, now tortured by doubt, now so completely convinced that my fingers almost released the trigger,--for I had thrown the sights into line over the tree.Iknow not to this day whether I shot from determination or nervousness.My shoulder bruised by the kick, the smoke like a veil before my face, it was some moments ere I knew that the air was full of whistling bullets; and then the gun was torn from my hands, and I saw Polly Ann ramming in a new charge.
``The pistol, Davy,'' she cried.
One torture was over, another on.Crack after crack sounded from the forest--from here and there and everywhere, it seemed--and with a song that like a hurtling insect ran the scale of notes, the bullets buried themselves in the trunk of our oak with a chug.Once in a while Iheard Weldon's answering shot, but I remembered my promise to Tom not to waste powder unless I were sure.
The agony was the breathing space we had while they crept nearer.Then we thought of Tom, and I dared not glance at Polly Ann for fear that the sight of her face would unnerve me.
Then a longing to kill seized me, a longing so strange and fierce that I could scarce be still.I know now that it comes in battle to all men, and with intensity to the hunted, and it explained to me more clearly what followed.
I fairly prayed for the sight of a painted form, and time after time my fancy tricked me into the notion that I had one.And even as I searched the brambles at the top of the run a puff of smoke rose out of them, a bullet burying itself in the roots near Weldon, who fired in return.I say that I have some notion of what possessed the man, for he was crazed with passion at fighting the race which had so cruelly wronged him.Horror-struck, Isaw him swing down from the bank, splash through the water with raised tomahawk, and gain the top of the run.
In less time than it takes me to write these words he had dragged a hideous, naked warrior out of the brambles, and with an avalanche of crumbling earth they slid into the waters of the creek.Polly Ann and I stared transfixed at the fearful fight that followed, nor can I give any adequate description of it.Weldon had struck through the brambles, but the savage had taken the blow on his gun-barrel and broken the handle of the tomahawk, and it was man to man as they rolled in the shallow water, locked in a death embrace.Neither might reach for his knife, neither was able to hold the other down, Weldon's curses surcharged with hatred.the Indian straining silently save for a gasp or a guttural note, the white a bearded madman, the savage a devil with a glistening, paint-streaked body, his features now agonized as his muscles strained and cracked, now lighted with a diabolical joy.But the pent-up rage of months gave the white man strength.
Polly Ann and I were powerless for fear of shooting Weldon, and gazed absorbed at the fiendish scene with eyes not to be withdrawn.The tree-trunk shook.Along, bronze arm reached out from above, and a painted face glowered at us from the very roots where Weldon had lain.That moment I took to be my last, and in it Iseemed to taste all eternity, I heard but faintly a noise beyond.It was the shock of the heavy Indian falling on Polly Ann and me as we cowered under the trunk, and even then there was an instant that we stood gazing at him as at a worm writhing in the clay.It was she who fired the pistol and made the great hole in his head, and so he twitched and died.After that a confusion of shots, war-whoops, a vision of two naked forms flying from tree to tree towards the cane, and then--God be praised--Tom's voice shouting:--``Polly Ann! Polly Ann!''
Before she had reached the top of the bank Tom had her in his arms, and a dozen tall gray figures leaped the six feet into the stream and stopped.My own eyes turned with theirs to see the body of poor Weldon lying face downward in the water.But beyond it a tragedy awaited me.Defiant, immovable, save for the heaving of his naked chest, the savage who had killed him stood erect with folded arms facing us.The smoke cleared away from a gleaming rifle-barrel, and the brave staggered and fell and died as silent as he stood, his feathers making ripples in the stream.It was cold-blooded, if you like, but war in those days was to the death, and knew no mercy.The tall backwoodsman who had shot him waded across the stream, and in the twinkling of an eye seized the scalp-lock and ran it round with his knife, holding up the bleeding trophy with a shout.Staggering to my feet, I stretched myself, but I had been cramped so long that I tottered and would have fallen had not Tom's hand steadied me.
``Davy!'' he cried.``Thank God, little Davy! the varmints didn't get ye.''
``And you, Tom?'' I answered, looking up at him, bewildered with happiness.
``They was nearer than I suspicioned when I went off,''
he said, and looked at me curiously.``Drat the little deevil,'' he said affectionately, and his voice trembled, ``he took care of Polly Ann, I'll warrant.''
He carried me to the top of the bank, where we were surrounded by the whole band of backwoodsmen.
``That he did!'' cried Polly Ann, ``and fetched a redskin yonder as clean as you could have done it, Tom.''
