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The Indians yelled lustily at the success of their raid, the stampeded horses dashed panic-stricken before them, and the braves shouted back in derision at the vain efforts of the troopers to stop them with useless bullets. Bucks's own impulse was to empty a charge of birdshot into the last of the fleeing warriors, but this he knew might cost him his life, and he resisted the temptation.
"But I killed it with a revolver!" exclaimed the young fellow, struggling to his feet again. "That pistol throws a good-sized bullet," said the ranchman's daughter, smiling. "But I'd never think of picking a quarrel with a lion unless I had a good rope, or something that threw heavier lead than birdshot."
By noon there were some sixty in the straggling ranks, but when shortly afterward they met a squad of eighteen rallying whites, armed like themselves mainly with fowling pieces with birdshot ammunition, they fled at the first fire, and all but a score dispersed.
When Jack came in sight of the farmhouse, humped under his bulky burden, the enraged moonshiner seized a shotgun and ran toward him, breathing death and destruction. Jack, however, trudged along about his business. Edwards, seeing that no bluff would work, fired; but the range was too great for his birdshot even to pepper holes through the copper still. Edwards made a mistake in firing that shot.
"Why?" demanded the riverman, "I won't let any boss stump me; but why in hell should I go out and get my hide full of birdshot? If this outfit don't know enough to get its drive down, that ain't my fault." Bob had seen enough of the breed to recognize this as an eminently characteristic attitude. "Well," he remarked comfortably, "somebody'll be down from the mill soon."
The Marshal, having closed the door behind the women, returned to the group before the fireplace. They watched him interestedly. "Colonel," he said, "make no effort to seek Beauvais. As for Kopf, that is different. But Beauvais " "To let him go?" exclaimed the Colonel in dismay. "Aye, to let him go. We do not seek bears with birdshot, and that is all we have. He will leave the country."
The wind raved about them, buffeted them, tore their breath away, rain pelted them like birdshot; but they clung to each other and were unaware of reason for complaint. Presently, however, Karslake remembered, and anxiously endeavoured to disengage from these tenacious arms. "Let me go, dearest," he muttered. "I must go back I left your father to take care of Victor, and "
The next thing to do is to start and keep right on moving, for as old Omar has it, 'The bird of time hath but a little way to flutter, and the birdshot is catching up with him. We have a year in which to build our road; if we do not hurry, the mill will have to shut down for lack of logs, when our contract with Pennington expires."
For a moment a twinkle came into the veiled grey eyes; the new expression illumined the girl's face like a flash of sunlight across the shadowed field. "You rather back up her opinion when you tackle a lion with nothing but birdshot and one barrel of your gun fouled in the bargain," she said. "Don't you think so?"
An old feller by the name of Rufe Daniels who wouldn't jine the night-riders had been shot to death on his own door step, jest about a mile away, only a week or so before. The night-riders mostly used these here automatic shot-guns, but they didn't bother with birdshot. They mostly loaded their shells with buckshot.
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