. I was burning to climb the bank and ask him whether he
had seen the Indian fall.

Again there was silence,--a silence even more awful than before. The
sun crept higher, the magic of his rays turning the creek from black to
crystal, and the birds began to sing again. And still there was no sign
of the treacherous enemy that lurked about us. Could Tom get back? I
glanced at Polly Ann. The same question was written in her yearning
eyes, staring at the spot where the gray of his hunting shirt showed
through the bushes at the bend. Suddenly her hand tightened on mine. The
hunting shirt was gone!

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. I traced 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. I know 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 I heard
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