Chapter XX: Besieged

A little tent of pale green silk, trim and elegant, was pitched for Gault in the meadow below, a short distance from the big fire built by the Crees. After supper they could see Gault seated in the place of honor beside the fire, surrounded by his men. Apparently all was peace and good-fellowship in that camp. The attitudes of the men suggested story-telling, and hearty laughter.

“This is for our benefit,” said Loseis with a scornful smile.

“I shall watch through the night,” said Conacher.

“There will be no open attack.”

“Just the same, I’ll stay up.”

“I will take turns with you.”

However, Gault presently crept under his little tent; and the Crees one by one rolled up in their blankets, and lay completely covered up in the redskin manner like a long row of corpses along the edge of the creek bank. The sun went down, and the great silence crept like long fingers out of the darkening sky. The brief hours of darkness passed, and there was no suspicious move nor sound from below. The last of the sunset glow stole around the northern horizon towards the east. In due course the sun rose again, and the camp below lay exactly as before.

Soon afterwards a great bustle began. They built up the fire, breakfasted, caught their horses, and packed up. Moale and the main body of the Crees crossed the creek, and galloped away over the trail to the south. Gault and two men rode up the rise, crossed the little square without a glance towards the Women’s House, and went on up the trail behind the store.

“There are four men unaccounted for,” said Loseis suddenly. “Only ten went with Moale. I counted them.”

“Let’s go out and take a look about,” said Conacher. “Whatever they are plotting, it will take them a certain time to organize it. For a few minutes anyhow, we will be safe.”

They left Mary-Lou, gray with terror, alone in the house. Conacher took his gun. After their night-long vigil it was a delight to get out into the open. Running down the grassy rise together, they joked at danger.

“Funny, here in my own place to be expecting to hear a bullet sing past my ears,” said Loseis.

“’S all right if it sings past,” said Conacher, grinning.

As soon as Loseis looked over the creek bank she said: “There was a damaged dug-out lying in the mud here. They have repaired it and gone in it. They must have gone down river, close under the bank. We should have seen them if they had gone up. I don’t know why they should go down river.”

“I think I can explain that,” said Conacher. “There are three possible ways of escape from this place; south by the trail to the lake and beyond; east by the trail to Fort Good Hope; and north down the river. All three ways are now watched by our enemies.”

“I never should have thought of going down river,” said Loseis. “There is nothing there.”

“I have thought of it,” said Conacher. “It would be many hundreds of miles to a post, but it’s a possibility. But with the river watched it would be the most dangerous way of all. All they’d have to do would be to smash our boat, or set it adrift in the current. It would be all day with us then.”

“Just to keep us from escaping wouldn’t do Gault any good,” said Loseis. “We have plenty of grub; and help is bound to arrive in the end. That cannot be the whole of his plan.”

“Oh, no; not the whole of it,” said Conacher grimly. “Time will tell.”

Loseis shivered. “Let’s get back under cover,” she said.

Before returning to the house they made sure that Conacher’s dug-out was still safe where he had left it hidden in the willows with the paddle in the bottom.

“Who knows? It may come in handy,” he said.

The hours of that day dragged by with leaden feet. Nothing happened, and that was the hardest thing to bear. All needed sleep; and all were too highly keyed up to obtain it. Clouds had come up with the sun, and by breakfast time a soft persistent rain was falling, driven in sheets by a cold wind from the northeast. Sharp squalls swept across the little square at intervals, almost blotting out the buildings opposite.

“Well, at any rate we’re better off than the other fellows,” said Conacher with a grim chuckle. “We’ve got a roof over our heads.”

After breakfast in spite of Loseis’ protests, he took up his position in the open doorway, with his gun across his knees. His view out of the window was too much narrowed by the thickness of the log walls, he explained.

“But you offer such a fair mark where you are!” complained Loseis.

“Nobody could shoot me here except from behind the house opposite,” said Conacher. “In order to do that he’s got to show himself; and my eyes are as quick as the next man’s.”

The house opposite bothered Conacher. “If they gained possession of it, it would render our position untenable, as they say in the army communiqués,” he said.

It transpired that there were staples in the door, and a padlock lying somewhere within to fasten it. Conacher announced his intention of going across to bar the shutters and lock the door.

And so it was done. Loseis stood at the door with her gun to cover his passage to and fro across the little square.

Loseis and Conacher, half exasperated, half affectionate, disputed endlessly over who should bear the heavier part of the burden.

“You _must_ sleep!” insisted Loseis. “It is to-night that the real danger will come.”

“You sleep first,” said Conacher, “and I’ll promise to match whatever you do, later.”

Towards the end of the afternoon the sky cleared, and the grass of the little square steamed up in the warmth of the late sun.

“I’d give something to be able to run down to the river and back to stretch my legs,” said Conacher longingly.

“Every foot of the flat is commanded from the bench to the north,” said Loseis sharply.

“Very little danger of getting hit if I zigzagged,” said Conacher, partly to tease her.

Loseis changed her tactics. “Very well, I’ll come too,” she said.

“Not on your life!” said Conacher; and the subject was dropped.

They ate their supper; the sun went down; and the great stillness descended. Conacher closed and barred the door then; and went back to the kitchen window. The window was open; and the slender black barrel of his rifle stuck out across the thick log that formed its sill. Accustomed as they were to the evening stillness, in this tense hour it struck awe into their breasts as if it was the first time. They had an indefinable feeling that whatever It was, It would come in this hushed moment. Loseis was at her window; Mary-Lou was crouched on the floor at the back of the room with her hands pressed to her mouth.

Presently they heard that sound which is always associated with the sunset stillness of the Northwest; the long-drawn, intolerably mournful howl of a coyote; a sound calculated to shake stretched nerves. It rose startlingly close; in fact from the ravine through which the creek flowed behind the men’s house opposite.

“That is no coyote,” said Loseis sharply. “They never come so close to the Post.”

Mary-Lou moaned.

The cry was repeated; and was answered from down the river.

“That coyote is afloat in a canoe,” said Conacher with a grim chuckle. “The men who went down the river to-day have been instructed to come back at evening to watch us.”

Another heartrending howl was raised from the hill back of the store.

“The outposts are establishing communications,” said Conacher, carrying it off lightly in order to hearten the girls. “Well, it’s a relief to know what and where they are. At this God-awful moment of the day you could imagine anything!”

For awhile the quavering cries went back and forth; then silence. Darkness drew slowly in. At first the sky across the river was like a sea of amber with one or two scraps of cloud floating in it like golden ships. As the warmth gradually faded out it took on the hue of blued steel. The moon was rising later now; to-night there would be an hour or so of darkness before her coming. Conacher had to strain his eyes to make out the details of the house across the way.

The slow minutes passed. In the big chimney the night-breeze kept up a gentle, uneven murmuring that was like somebody speaking to somebody else a little way off. Occasionally the man and the girl whispered from room to room in the dark just to reassure themselves of the other’s warm and breathing presence.

“Paul?”

“Yes, pardner?”

“There’s no need for both of us to be watching.”

“Well, you take a sleep, old girl.”

“Sleep!”

“My sentiments exactly!”

And later:

“Paul, do not remain at the window. Even though they cannot see you, they will guess that you are there. It is like a bull’s eye in the side of the house!”

“But I must be looking out!”

“Do as I do. Scrape away the clay, and use a chink between the logs for a peep-hole.”

After that Paul lay full length on the floor of the kitchen, with his rifle barrel poked out through the chink.

Suddenly his gun roared outside, blowing the night to pieces as it seemed. A dreadful, low cry escaped from Mary-Lou.

“What was it?” whispered Loseis sharply.

“Man crawling towards the door of the men’s house.”

“Did you get him?”

“No,” said Conacher ruefully. “He streaked back around the corner. It was the merest shadow. I shot too soon.”

There was another long wait, much harder to bear for nerves that still recollected the explosion of that shot. Then they became aware by a gentle grayness pervading the scene outside, that the moon had risen. The orb itself was hidden by the buildings opposite.

“He’s gone into the little warehouse beyond the store,” said Conacher suddenly. “The door has been opened. . . . Damn it! I should have locked that door.”

“You couldn’t have locked it,” said Loseis. “They broke the staples.”

“I’ve a good mind to go over there and get him,” muttered Conacher.

“Right across the open, I suppose,” said Loseis bitterly.

“I might steal around behind the buildings.”

“There are probably others there.”

“If I sent a shot through the open door it would give him a good scare.”

“Nothing to be gained by scaring him.”

The edge of the moon peeped over the ridge of the men’s house. A few minutes later she was shining directly into their faces. This had them at a cruel disadvantage, for the other side of the square where one or more of their enemies were lurking, was hidden in the deepest shadow. Conacher swore helplessly under his breath.

By and by a cloud crept across the moon dimming her silvery glare.

“He’s come out of the warehouse,” said Conacher in surprise. “The door is closed now. . . . I don’t understand that. Why should he come out unless he had found a better place? What other place is there where he could sit in hiding and watch us?”

There was no answer forthcoming. The moon came out again, bathing the little square within the crouching buildings in her misty radiance. As she rose higher their vision was the less obscured. Nothing stirred outside. The earth was so still, one fancied one could feel its great swing to the east. Time passed, and that fear against which the bravest hearts are not proof, lay upon them heavier and heavier; the fear of the unknown.

Conacher at his loophole muttered and swore under his breath. “When I knew where he was it was all right. . . . This is hellish . . . !”

Finally, when the eastern sky was beginning to get ready for dawn, he jumped up. “I can’t stand this,” he cried. “I’ve got to find out where they are, and what they’re up to!”

Loseis found him in the dark. “Oh, hush!” she whispered. “Maybe there’s an ear pressed against the back wall! . . . What are you going to do?”

Conacher put his lips to her ear. “Make a dummy, and show it at the door,” he said. Even at that moment a chuckle sounded in his voice.

They closed the shutters, stuffed up their peep-holes and lighted a lamp. Conacher tied a broom to the back of a chair with the brush uppermost. He then tied a piece of firewood athwart the broom handle just under the brush. This was for shoulders. They dared not use hammer and nails. Upon this frame he hung one of Mary-Lou’s dresses, and completed the figure by forcing a small cooking pot over the brush of the broom, with a piece of white cloth hanging down in front to represent a face. In the moonlight at a hundred paces distance they judged that it would serve. Conacher blew out the light again.

“I’ll manipulate the chair,” he said to Loseis. “You go back to your peep-hole. You must be watching for the flash in case he shoots. Mary-Lou, you must open the door. There’s no danger if you keep behind it.”

Conacher waited until Loseis was at her place. “All clear outside?” he asked.

“I can see nothing,” she whispered.

“All right then, Mary.”

They could hear her gasping softly for breath, as she drew the door slowly open. The night stole into the room. All three hearts were beating furiously. Conacher, lying on the floor, grasped the legs of the chair, and thrust it forward a little. At first he tipped it to represent a face peeping around the doorframe, and quickly withdrew it. After repeating this once or twice, he allowed the whole figure to show in the doorway, swaying a little like a living body.

“Any movement across the way?” he whispered to Loseis.

“Nothing!”

Finally he allowed the figure to tip forward as if to peer outside the door. From across the square two shots crashed out almost simultaneously. One bullet shattered the chair back; the other buried itself deep in the log wall across the kitchen. It was a relief to hear those shots, waiting for them was so dreadful. Conacher jerked the remains of the chair out of sight, and Mary-Lou slammed the door. All three of them were panting for breath.

“Well?” demanded Conacher excitedly.

“They are inside my father’s house,” said Loseis desperately.

“Impossible!” he cried in dismay.

“Yes! They are doing the same as us. Shooting through chinks between the logs.”

“How could they have got in? There are no windows in the back.”

“Who knows? Dug underneath the wall, maybe.”

For the first time Conacher showed discouragement. “Oh, God!” he groaned. “By night or day they’ve got us covered!”