CHAPTER XIII.

SHADOWY VISITORS.

When the eye gazes steadily at the Pleiades, in the midnight splendor of the starlit sky, one of the blazing orbs shrinks modestly from view and only six remain to be admired by the wondering gazer below: it is the quick, casual glance that catches the brilliant sister unawares, before she can hide her face.

So, when the pioneers within the block-house looked intently at the stockade, they saw nothing but the wall of shadow and the outline of the sharp pickets above; but, as their vision flitted along the front, they caught the faint suggestions of the figures of men standing erect and doubtless intently watching the block-house, from which the rifles of the Kentuckians had flashed but a short time before.

Whenever the moon's light was obscured, nothing but blank darkness met the eye, the line of stockades themselves vanishing from sight. Once one of the warriors moved a few steps to the left, and Jo Stinger and Ned Preston detected it.

"Why not try another shot?" asked the Colonel, when the matter was referred to.

"It is too much guess-work: nobody can take any sort of aim, when it is so dark in the block-house."

"I wonder what their purpose can be," muttered the Colonel, speaking as much to himself as to those near him.

"I knows what it am," said Blossom Brown, who had been drawn to the spot by the firing and the words he had overheard.

"You do, eh?" remarked the Colonel, looking toward him in the darkness; "what is it?"

"Dey're comin' to steal de well."

"What will they do with it, after they steal it?"

"Take it off in de woods and hide it, I s'pose."

"They won't have any trouble in preventing _us_ from stealing it,--that is certain," observed the Colonel, bitterly.

"Why can't we dig the well inside the block-house, as you intended?" asked Ned; "there are shovels, spades and picks, and I don't suppose it would take us a great while."

"If we are driven to it, we will make the attempt; but there is no likelihood that we will have a chance. All our attention will be required by the Indians."

"You can set Blossom to work if you wish to," said Ned Preston; "he is good for little except to cut wood and dig. If he worked steadily for two or three days, he might reach water."

Ned was in earnest with this proposition, and he volunteered to take his turn with his servant and the others; but the scheme filled Blossom with dismay.

"I neber dugged a well," he said, with a contemptuous sniff; "if I should undertook it, de well would cave in on me, and den all you folks would hab to stop fightin' de Injines and go to diggin' me out agin."

Colonel Preston did not consider the project feasible just then, and Blossom Brown was relieved from an anticipation which was anything but pleasant.

Jo Stinger was attentively watching the stockade where the figures of the Wyandot warriors were faintly seen. He was greatly mystified to understand what their object could be in exposing themselves to such risk, when, so far as he could judge, there was nothing to be gained by so doing; but none knew better than did the veteran that, brave as were these red men, they were not the ones to face a danger without the reasonable certainty of acquiring some advantage over an enemy.

"I will risk a shot anyway," he thought; "for, though I can't make much of an aim, there is a chance of doing something. As soon as the moon comes out, I will see how the varmints will stand a bullet or two."

So he waited "till the clouds rolled by," but, as he feared, the straining eye could not catch the faintest suggestion of a warrior, where several were visible only a short time before.

They had vanished as silently as the shadows of the clouds swept across the clearing.

The action of the Indians in this respect was the cause of all kinds of conjectures and theories, none of the garrison being able to offer one that satisfied the others.

Megill believed it was a diversion intended to cover up some design in another direction. He was sure that, when the Wyandots made a demonstration, it would come from some other point altogether. He, therefore, gave his attention mainly to the cabins and the clearing in front.

Turner suspected they meant to destroy the well by filling it up, so that it would be useless when the supply of water within the block-house should become exhausted. Precisely how this filling up was to be done, and wherein the necessity existed (since the Wyandots could command the approaches to the water day and night), were beyond the explanation of the settler.

Jo Stinger, the veteran of the company, scouted these theories, as he did that of the Colonel that it was a mere reconnoissance, but he would not venture any guess further than that the mischief was much deeper than any believed, and that never was there more necessity of the most unremitting vigilance.

Megill asserted that some scheme was brewing in the cabin from which the two warriors emerged, when they sought to cut off the boys in their run to the block-house. He had seen lights moving about, though the ones who carried the torches took care not to expose themselves to any shot from the station.

The silence lasted two hours longer without the slightest evidence that a living person was within a mile of the block-house. During that period, not a glimmer of a light could be detected in the cabin, there was not a single burning arrow, nor did so much as a war-whoop or signal pass the lips of one of the Wyandots.

The keen eyes of Jo Stinger and Ned Preston failed to catch a glimpse of the shadowy figures at which they discharged their rifles, and which caused them so much wonderment and speculation.

But the keen scrutiny that seized every favoring moment and roamed along the lines of stockades, further than the ordinary eye could follow, discovered a thing or two which were not without their significance.

On the northern and eastern sides a number of pickets had been removed, leaving several gaps wide enough to admit the passage of a person. This required a great deal of hard work, for the pickets had been driven deep into the earth and were well secured and braced from the inside.

"They needed men on both sides of the stockade to do that," said Colonel Preston, "and those whom we saw, climbed over, so as to give assistance."

"That's the most sensible idee that's been put forward," replied Jo Stinger, "and I shouldn't be s'prised if you was right; but somehow or other----"

"By gracious! I smell smoke sure as yo's bo'n!"

Blossom Brown gave several vigorous sniffs before uttering this alarming exclamation, but the words had no more than passed his lips, when every man knew he spoke the truth.

There was smoke in the upper part of the block-house, and though it could not be seen in the darkness, yet it was perceptible to the sense of smell.

Consternation reigned for a few minutes among the garrison, and there was hurrying to and fro in the effort to learn the cause of the burning near them.

The most terrifying cry that can strike the ears of the sailor or passenger at sea is that of fire, but no such person could hold the cry in greater dread than did the garrison, shut in the block-house and surrounded by fierce American Indians.

The first supposition of Colonel Preston was that it came from the roof, and springing upon a chair, he shoved up the trap-doors, one after the other, to a dangerously high extent. But whatever might have happened to the other portions of the structure, the roof was certainly intact.

The next natural belief was that it was caused by the fire on the hearth in the lower story, and Colonel Preston and Blossom Brown made all haste down the ladder. Blossom, indeed, was too hasty, for he missed one of the rounds and went bumping and tumbling to the floor, where he set up a terrific cry, to which no attention was paid amid the general excitement.

"Here it is! Here's the fire!" suddenly shouted Ned Preston, in a voice which instantly brought the others around him.

Ned had done that wise thing to which we have all been urged many a time and oft: he had "followed his nose" to the north-east corner of the block-house, where the vapor was so dense that he knew the cause must be very near.

It so happened that this very nook was the least guarded of all. Looking directly downward through the holes cut in the projecting floor, his eyes smarted so much from the ascending vapor that he was forced to rub them vigorously that he might be able to see.

He could detect nothing but smoke for a minute or so, and that, of course, made itself manifest to the sense of smell and touch rather than to that of sight; but he soon observed, directly beneath his feet, the red glow of fire itself. Then it was he uttered the startling cry, which awoke Mrs. Preston and brought the rest around him.

Despite the care and skill with which the station had been guarded by the garrison, all of whom possessed a certain experience in frontier-life, the wily Wyandots had not only crept up to the block-house itself without discovery, but they had brought sticks, had piled them against the north-east corner, had set fire to them, and had skulked away without being suspected by any one of the sentinels.

The fact seemed incredible, and yet there was the most convincing evidence before or rather under their eyes. Jo Stinger gave utterance to several emphatic expressions, as he made a dash for the barrel of water, and he was entirely willing to admit that of all idiots who had ever pretended to be a sensible man, he was the chief.

But the danger was averted without difficulty. Two pails of water were carefully poured through the openings in the floor of the projecting roof, and every spark of fire was extinguished.

The water added to the density of the vapor. It set all the inmates coughing and caused considerable annoyance; but it soon passed away, and, after a time, the air became comparatively pure again.

Megill complimented the cunning of the Wyandots, but Jo insisted that they had shown no special skill at all: it was the utter stupidity of himself and friends who had allowed such a thing to be done under their very noses.

"And, if it hadn't been for that darkey there," said he, with all the severity he could command, "we wouldn't have found it out till this old place was burned down, and we was scootin' across the clearin' with the varmints crackin' away at us."

"De gemman is right," assented Blossom, as he stopped rubbing the bruises he received from tumbling through the ladder; "you'll find dat it's allers me dat wokes folks up when de lightnin' am gwine to strike somewhar 'bout yar."

"We won't deny you proper credit," said Colonel Preston, "though Jo is a little wild in his statements----"

The unimportant remark of Colonel Preston was bisected by the sharp report of Jo Stinger's rifle, followed on the instant by a piercing shriek from some point near the block-house, within the stockade.

"I peppered him _that_ time!" exclaimed the veteran; "it's all well enough to crawl into yer winder, gather all the furniture together and set fire to it, and then creep out agin, but when it comes to stealin' the flint and tinder out of your pocket to do it with, then I'm going to get mad."

When the scout had regained something of his usual good nature, he explained that he had scarcely turned to look out, when he actually saw two of the Wyandots walking directly toward the heap of smoking brush, as though they intended to renew the fire. The sight he considered one of the grossest insults ever offered his intelligence, and he fired, without waiting till some one could arrange to shoot the second red man.

With a daring that was scarcely to be wondered at, the warrior who was unhurt threw his arm about his smitten companion and hurried to one of the openings in the stockade, through which he made his way.

This slight check would doubtless cause the red men to be more guarded in their movements against the garrison.

"It has teached them," said the hunter, with something of his grim humor, "that accidents may happen, and some of 'em mought get hurt if they go to looking down the muzzles of our guns."

All noticed a rather curious change in the weather. The sky, which had been quite clear early in the evening, was becoming overcast, and the clouds hid the moon most of the time. It remained cold and chilly, and more than one of the garrison wrapped a blanket around him, while doing duty at the loopholes.

The cloudiness became so marked, after a brief while, that the view was much shortened in every direction. Those at the front of the block-house could not see the edge of the clearing, where the Licking flowed calmly on its way to the Ohio. Those on the north saw first the line of stockades dissolve into darkness, and then the well-curb (consisting of a rickety crank and windlass), grew indistinct until its outlines faded from sight.

The two cabins to the south loomed up in the gloom as the hulls of ships are sometimes seen in the night-time at sea, but the blackness was so profound, it became oppressive. Within the block-house, where there was no light of any kind burning, it was like that of ancient Egypt.

Colonel Preston could not avoid a certain nervousness over the attempt of the Wyandots to fire the building, and, though it failed, he half suspected it would be repeated.

He descended the ladder and made as careful an examination as possible, but failed to find anything to add to his alarm and misgiving. Everything seemed to be secure: the fastenings of the doors were such that they might be considered almost as firm as the solid logs themselves.

While he was thus engaged, he heard some one coming down the ladder. "Who's there?" he asked in an undertone.

"It's Jo--don't be scart."

"I'm not scared; I only wanted to know who it is; what are you after?"

"I'm going out-doors, right among the varmints."

"What has put that idea in your head?"

"They've been playing their tricks on us long enough, and now I'm going to show them that Jo Stinger knows a thing or two as well as them."

Colonel Preston would have sought to dissuade the veteran from the rash proceeding, had he not known that it was useless to do so.