"We see your wooden
cannon-piece mounted on that roof. When you hear our own pieces
battering down your walls you'll laugh in a different key. This is the
last summons. Refuse, and every soul of you will fall to bullet and
hatchet."

"Better to die that way, fighting, than to surrender and be butchered
like dogs, the Colonel Crawford way," Silas Zane answered.

The attack was launched furiously. In a howling mob the Indians
charged gates and loop-holes. They despised the threat of the little
French cannon-piece upon the roof of the headquarters cabin. It looked
to be the same "dummy" of seven years ago: a wooden cannon.

Captain Sullivan had climbed up. He stood with a fire-brand over the
touch-hole, waiting.

The Indians jeered and gestured.

"Boom! Boom!" they challenged. "Make noise!"

They were massed, capering and mocking. Captain Sullivan lowered the
fire-brand. The little "bull-dog" belched smoke.

"Boom!" A hail of grape-shot tore through the painted ranks, leaving a
bloody path. Captain Pratt rushed in, waving his sword.

"Stand back! Stand back, you fools!" he bawled. "By Jupiter, there's
no wood about _that_!"

And there wasn't. It was the genuine article.

The Indians had wildly scampered for safety. Simon Girty and the other
chiefs white and red rallied them and divided them into parties, with
due care for the cannon-piece. From every exposed side they volleyed
at the fort and the Zane cabin. They charged and fell back and charged
again. In fort and cabin the rifles, deftly loaded by the fast-working
women and girls, waxed hot.

With darkness the general firing died down. Under the cloak of night
an Indian crept to the kitchen end of the cabin, to start a blaze. The
cabin had proved a great hindrance to the attack on the fort.

He rose to his knees, to wave his torch for an instant and rekindle it--

"Crack!" This kitchen, added to the cabin, was the fort of Negro Sam
and Negress Kate. Sam had eyes and ears that equaled any Indian's, by
day or night either.

"Hi yah! How you like that, you Injun man!"

The fire-bug managed to crawl away, but he left his torch and the
kitchen too.

Morning dawned. The Indians seemed busy at something. They had
ransacked the dug-out and were carrying the cannon-balls in shore, to
the hill slope before the fort. Had their cannon come? Yes! No! But
look! There it was--they were propping it up, to load it and aim it.
A long,