Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 by Battle at Bear Paw Gap (v1.1)

Author:Battle at Bear Paw Gap (v1.1) [Gap, Battle at Bear Paw]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX

Besieged

Both mark and Durwell spun around where they stood and made for the door, but Schneider, for all his usual clumsiness, moved far more quickly than either of them. He fairly flew across the planks, clutching Wessah frantically to him, and flung himself inside. Durwell sprang in just behind him, and Mark followed Durwell.

Outside, a ragged volley of shots crackled in the sunny air, and shrill, wild whoops rose on all sides.

Mark caught the door, slammed it shut, and swung the heavy bar into place across it. He put his eye to the loophole. Across that open porchlike space where the grinding was done, he saw the dam, the water gate, and the road to eastward. But there was no movement anywhere. Behind him he heard the flat noise of shutters being closed and secured.

“Into our sleeping chamber with you, Mark,” Durwell snapped at him. “There’s a window there, looking northward up the ridge. Be ready to fight them off.”

Mark crossed the room with leaping strides. Celia stood by the table, the sheaf of spoons still clutched in her hand. She looked at Mark with wide, terrified eyes. Durwell was grabbing his rifle from where it lay balanced across the antlers.

The bedroom was small and square, not much larger than the addition to the Jarrett house that Mark had just finished building. It held two bunklike beds, a big old wooden chest with brass hinges and lock, and into the walls were driven pegs on which hung clothes. Mark sprang to the window and dragged the shutter across to close it. As he did so, more shots rang out and he heard the bullets slap murderously into the planks of the shutter, flat and hard as the blows of war hatchets. Sliding the bar across the shutter, he looked through the loophole.

Smoke still quivered among the trees up slope, where a lacework of vines hung from one trunk to another. Mark sighted with his rifle just below that wisp of smoke, and waited. He thought he saw a movement of bronze skin, and touched the trigger. His own rifle spoke, and back came a yell. He heard Bolly’s hoofs stamping outside, and she whinnied in startled fear.

“I think I’ve taken one down,” Mark said in grim triumph, as he made haste to measure another charge of powder and ram it down, with a fresh bullet.

“More power to your eye and hand,” growled Durwell through the open door to the front room. “We can see nothing from here. The woods close at hand to east and west are too open for them to crawl close to us.”

Mark spared a glance around the room where he took his stand. At its eastern side, where a wall divided it from the open milling shed, a chink showed between the logs. That would make a good natural loophole, for observing in that direction or for firing at an enemy.

“Get that British gun of yours, Bram,” Durwell was saying. “With that, we’ll have four long guns among us, beside my big pistols.

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