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Delighted with this success, he immediately cut with his knife, a branch of one of the hardest trees he could find, and formed it into an axe-handle. Some of Pauline's cord he tied round the middle of this, and then split it at one end, using his flint for the purpose, and a stone for a hammer.
He stood leaning on his axe-handle and looking down upon the scene so far below; for Pur-dee's house was perched half-way up on the mountain-side, and he could see over the world how it fared as the sun went down.
His assailant sprang back in time to escape the deadly sweep of the axe, but at the same instant the other three were leaping in. One of these caught a glancing blow, which drove him off, snarling. But the other two were so close that there was no time for Dave to recover. Instinctively he jabbed a short back-stroke with the end of the axe-handle, and caught one of his assailants in the belly.
"There!" he exclaimed, "if the telegraph hadn't been invented the idiot would have written to me, and I'd have sent a letter by return coach, and got the goods before he found out prices had gone up in Chicago. If that boy brings me another of those tapeworm telegraphs, I'll throw an axe-handle at him." His pessimism extended up, or down, to generally recognized canons of orthography.
I picked my axe-handle from the floor and dashed out after the robbers. The five men were with the boat at the water's edge. Two were sitting at the oars in readiness, two were on the beach raising Jake's trunk to the fifth man who was standing in the stern of the boat. I sprang upon them. I hit one, with a sickening crash, over the head.
He took and laid it on the bridge of the bow, and held the notch and drew the string, even from the settle whereon he sat, and with straight aim shot the shaft and missed not one of the axes, beginning from the first axe-handle, and the bronze-weighted shaft passed clean through and out at the last.
"Lord ..." said the Bohemian, bending down and picking up in his hands some ashes from the snow, to prevent the axe-handle from slipping in his hand; "perhaps Christ will permit me quickly to despatch that vile Prussian, and then perhaps, if not to defeat this Teuton, at least put the handle of the axe between his knees and upset him."
I put on my clothes without haste, picked up a broken axe-handle that lay near the doorway and started noiselessly down the back path in the direction of Meaghan's shack, reaching there about half an hour after I had first detected the boat. When I came to the clearing, I saw a light in the cabin. As I drew closer, I heard the sound of hoarse voices.
Thornton stood between him and Buck, and evinced no intention of getting out of the way. Hal drew his long hunting-knife. Mercedes screamed, cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria. Thornton rapped Hal's knuckles with the axe-handle, knocking the knife to the ground. He rapped his knuckles again as he tried to pick it up.
On returning to the spot they found an arctic fox in his last gasp, lying flat on the snow, with the heavy log across his back, which seemed to be broken. A slight tap on the snout with the accountant's deadly axe-handle completed his destruction. "We're in luck to-night," cried Harry, as he kneeled again to reset the trap.
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