trong. Besides, the sounds heard outside
were not those of mirth, mocking its opposite. The shouts and shrieks
had the true ring of terror, and the accents of despair.

No. It could not be anything of a merrymaking, but what they at first
supposed it--a tragedy.

Their rage returns, and they think only of revenge. As before, but to
feel their impotence. The door, again tried, with all their united
strength, refuses to stir from its hinges. As easily might they move
the walls. The window railings alike resist their efforts; and they at
length leave off, despairingly scattering through the room.

One alone remains, clinging to the window bars. It is Hawkins. He
stays not with any hope of being able to wrench them off. He has
already tested the strength of his arms, and found it insufficient. It
is that of his lungs he now is determined to exert, and does so,
shouting at the highest pitch of his voice.

Not that he thinks there is any chance of its being heard at the
_rancheria_, nearly a half-mile off, with a grove of thick timber
intervening. Besides, at that late hour the settlers will be asleep.

But in the grove between, and nearer, he knows there is a tent; and
inside it a man who will be awake, if not dead--his comrade, Cris
Tucker.

In the hope Cris may still be in the land of the living, Hawkins leans
against the window bars and, projecting his face outward, as far as the
jawbones will allow, he gives utterance to a series of shouts,
interlarded with exclamations, that in the ears of a sober Puritan would
have sounded terribly profane.

CHAPTER FIFTY THREE.

A HORRID SPECTACLE.

On a log outside the tent sits Cris Tucker, with the fire before him,
kindled for cooking the turkey. The bird is upon a spit suspended above
the blaze. A fat young "gobbler," it runs grease at every pore, causing
the fire to flare up. Literally is it being broiled by its own grease,
and is now well-nigh done brown.

Perceiving this, Tucker runs his eyes inquiringly along the path leading
towards the mission, at the same time setting his ears to listen. What
can be keeping his comrade, who promised so soon to be back?

"Promises are like pie-crust," says Cris in soliloquy; "Old Hawk aint
keeping his, and I guess aint goin' to. I heard they war to have a big
dine up there the night. So I suppose the colonel's axed him in for a
glass o' his whiskey punch. Hawk's jest the one to take it--a dozen, if
they i