“How long’ll it take him?”
“Not long, and he says for us to keep right on planning till he shows up.”
“We’ve made our plan. We’re going to scatter and rush the shack from all sides at once. The old boy,” Baldy went on to explain, “always figures that we ain’t got the gumption to do anything or plan anything while he’s away. Like as not he’s lying back there in the brush and laughing to himself because we sit around and do nothing, with dead Bud Kent lying here to urge us along. Well, boys, let’s up and show lack Moon that with him or without him we can get along. It’s time he was showed that, anyway! I say, let’s scatter. Best place to start from is the shack beside Ronicky’s. Well, let’s half of us get in there and the rest scatter out sort of promiscuous and get ready for the run. We’ll call in the other gents that are watching now, and then we’ll let drive. If them two in the shack ain’t got nine lives apiece, well salt ‘em away and plant ‘em under ground. Are you with me?”
There was a grumble of sullen acquiescence in answer, and the eight began to spread swiftly around the edges of the clearing, taking advantage of all shelter of the trees until they should be within short sprinting distance of the shack.
That hut, in the meantime, remained as silent and as black as though the two men who formerly occupied it had long since taken to flight, melting unseen into the forest by mysterious stealth.
As a matter of fact, they had been hard at work during most of the past hour. It was Ronicky who possessed the feverish urge to get out of the confining quarters of the shack and strive to break through the lines of the enemy by a surprise attack. But the sober warnings of his companion deterred him. As Hugh Dawn repeatedly pointed out, they were being watched all the time, no matter how hushed the silence around the clearing might be. They were being watched by eyes that squinted down the deadly length of rifle barrels, and if they left their shelter and the thick log walls which were strong enough to stop a revolver bullet at least, they would certainly go down before they had taken more than two steps from their place of refuge.
Ronicky Doone submitted.
“But it sure galls me,” he had remarked through his teeth, “to think of lying here and getting trapped like a rat! It sure galls me, Hugh. I’d rather die ten times fighting in the open than once behind the walls of a cage!”
The other had nodded, and, reaching through the darkness of the shack, he had laid his hand on the shoulder of his young friend and pressed it with a reassuring firmness. Indeed, Hugh was a rock of unperturbed strength during the entire crisis.
“We got the strong position,” he kept assuring Ronicky.
“But suppose they rush us? It ain’t more’n a couple of jumps to that nearest hut.”
“That’s right. But a gent can do a pile of shooting while somebody else is taking a couple of steps.”
“In the night?”
“That makes it bad, all right. But I don’t think they’ll rush your guns, Ronicky! We might hang out the lantern after lighting it. That’d give us some light on one side of the house, anyway.”
Ronicky merely laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion.
“They’d smash the lantern to bits with a couple of shots.”
“Didn’t think of that.”
“How much oil is in that lantern?” asked Ronicky suddenly.
“It’s a big one. About a quart of oil in it, I guess.”
“And what’s that old mattress in the corner stuffed with?”
“I dunno.”
Ronicky crossed the floor and ripped open the small section of mattress which had once served on the corner bunk. An instant later he muttered a low exclamation of satisfaction and came back with a liberal armful of the waste with which the mattress had been stuffed.
“Now lemme have the lantern,” he suggested.
It was given him, and to the astonishment of the elder man Ronicky opened the bottom of the tin support and thoroughly wet large portions of the waste with the kerosene.
“And what in Sam Hill,” muttered Hugh Dawn, “d’you figure to win by wasting all that oil, son?”
“I’ll show you in a minute.”
He continued by lighting the lantern and taking off the chimney. Then he turned down the wick, so that there was only a quivering tongue tip of flame visible.
“They’s enough oil,” he explained, “to keep that lantern going till pretty near morning, if we don’t bum it no faster’n that.”
“I don’t foller you, Ronicky.”
“Well,” explained the other, “here I put a pile of this oil-soaked stuff in my corner, and there I put a pile of it alongside of you. Suppose they was to start a rush. The first one of us that sees a move gives a yell and instead of shooting grabs up the waste and passes it over the lantern. The minute the oil comes anywhere near that flame it will bust into fire, and we throw the stuff out through the windows. It’ll light up everything for a minute or two. It’ll make us miss a half second that we could of used for shooting, but it’ll also give us a chance to get in three or four aimed shots. I’d rather have one aimed shot than ten chance cracks at shadows.”
Hugh Dawn, as the idea struck home to him, gasped with pleasure.
“I been lying here waiting to die,” he admitted. “And now I figure that we got a ghost of a chance to keep ‘em off. Just a ghost of a chance. But, Ronicky, ghosts can be mighty important things!”
There was another time of silence. The hour was now close to half past four in the morning, or thereabouts, and it was the period of greatest fatigue, when nervous reactions are slower, when the muscles are deadened for lack of sleep, and the mind is sick for weariness. And yet, once or twice at about this time, Ronicky heard humming.
After all, happiness is a comparative thing. Hugh Dawn had felt that he was to be slaughtered without a chance even to fight. The fighting chance was now to him almost as much as the promise of complete safety to most men. Ronicky, listening, wondered and admired.
“Suppose Jerry could look inside here and see you fighting for me, Ronicky. She’d have to change her mind about a couple of things, eh?”
“Not while Moon is there to talk to her. He won’t give her a chance to think. The skunk has double crossed me, Hugh. I was a fool ever to listen to him, but I took his word. He swore that if there was trouble coming, he’d never let his crowd jump me. Him and me would fight it out man to man. That’s why I come in—like a fool, partner! But here we are, both trapped, and me in no position to help the way I’d be if I was loose out there among the trees!”
“Maybe not, son. And if there was ever a square-shooter, it’s you, Ronicky. Look!” Dawn pointed suddenly. “I seen something move behind the trees.”
“And me!” answered Ronicky. “I think I hear somebody sneaking beside the other shack and—”
Suddenly he leaped up from his knees with a yell.
“Hugh! They’re at us!”
XXV. THE ATTACK
Ronicky had seen two low-moving shadows detach themselves from the front of the neighboring shack and start toward the front of his own at full speed, while from the window of the hut a rifleman began blazing away at his window. That hurricane of bullets, one after the other, should have the effect of making it lively for a marksman attempting to shoot from the aperture.