hey saw their comrades fall into the room. 'Don't you
know, you blame fools, you've fell in with experienced hands at the
shooting business?'

"Spat! Something hit Al, and he was the first wounded, but it was only a
scratch, and he kept right on attending to business.

"'By gosh! look at Rube, will you?' said Al. The dumb boy had in his
grasp the very chief of the band, who had just then discovered the hole
in the roof made by the three Ingins who had passed in their checks for
their impudence, and was trying his best to push himself down. Rube had
made a strike at him with an axe, but the edge was turned aside, and the
savage was getting the better of the boy; he had grappled Rube by the
hair and one arm, and they was flying 'round like a wild cat and a
hound. Bill tried three times to sink his knife into the old chief, but
there was such a cavortin' in the wrastle between him and the boy, he
was afraid to try any more, for fear it might hit Rube instead. Suddenly
the Ingin fell to the floor as dead as a trapped beaver what's been
drowned; Rube had struck his buckhorn-handled hunting-knife right into
the heart of the brute.

"'Set him agin the hole in the side of the building,' said Bill; 'he
ain't fit for nothing else than to stop a gap'; so Rube set him agin the
hole, and pinned him there with half a dozen knives what was lying round
loose.

"Just as they had fastened the dead body of the old chief to the side
of the cabin, a perfect shower of bullets came rattling round like a
hailstorm. 'All right, let's have your waste lead,' said Bill.

"'A few more of these dead Ingins and we can make a regular fort of this
old cabin; we want two for that chunk,' said Al, as he pointed with his
rifle to a large gap on the west side of the wall; but before he had
fairly got the words out of his mouth, two of the attacking party jumped
down into the room. Al, being a regular giant, as soon as they landed,
surprised them by seizing one with each hand by the throat, and he
actually held them at arm's-length till he had squeezed the very life
out of them, and they both fell corpses.

"While Al was performing his two-Ingin act, a great light burst into the
cabin, and by the time he had choked his enemies to death, he saw, while
the Ingins outside gave a terrible yell of exultation, that they had
fired the place.

"'Damn 'em,' shouted Bill, as he pitched the corpse of the chief from
the gap where Rube had set him. 'Fellows, we'