" In the power of his emotion he
continued to grip the old man's hand with increasing severity of
pressure.
"Ventrebleu! let go! Needn't smash a feller's fingers 'bout it!"
screeched Oncle Jazon. "I can't shoot wo'th a cent, nohow, an' ef
ye cripple up my trigger-finger--"
Kenton had been peeping under the low-hanging scrub-oak boughs
while Oncle Jazon was speaking these last words; and now he
suddenly interrupted:
"The devil! look yonder!" he growled out in startling tone.
"Injuns!"
It was a sharp snap of the conversation's thread, and at the same
time our three friends realized that they had been careless in not
keeping a better look-out. They let fall the meat they had not
yet finished eating and seized their guns.
Five or six dark forms were moving toward them across a little
point of the prairie that cut into the wood a quarter of a mile
distant.
"Yander's more of 'em," said Oncle Jazon, as if not in the least
concerned, wagging his head in an opposite direction, from which
another squad was approaching.
That he duly appreciated the situation appeared only in the
celerity with which he acted.
Kenton at once assumed command, and his companions felt his
perfect fitness. There was no doubt from the first as to what the
Indians meant; but even if there had been it would have soon
vanished; for in less than three minutes twenty-one savages were
swiftly and silently forming a circle inclosing the spot where the
three white men, who had covered themselves as best they could
with trees, waited in grim steadiness for the worst.
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