Ray's name. Although the lead was pattering
on the other side of the logs, Cowan lifted me to the port. And there,
stretched on the ground behind a stump, within twenty feet of the walls,
was James. Even as I looked the puffs of dust at his side showed that
the savages knew his refuge. I saw him level and fire, and then Bill
Cowan set me down and began to ram in a charge with tremendous energy.

Was there no way to save Ray? I stood turning this problem in my mind,
subconsciously aware of Cowan's movements: of his yells when he thought
he had made a shot, when Polly Ann appeared at the doorway. Darting in,
she fairly hauled me to the shake-down in the far corner.

"Will ye bleed to death, Davy?" she cried, as she slipped off my legging
and bent over the wound. Her eye lighting on a gourdful of water on the
puncheon table, she tore a strip from her dress and washed and bound me
deftly. The bullet was in the flesh, and gave me no great pain.

"Lie there, ye imp!" she commanded, when she had finished.

"Some one's under the bed," said I, for I had heard a movement.

In an instant we were down on our knees on the hard dirt floor, and
there was a man's foot in a moccasin! We both grabbed it and pulled,
bringing to life a person with little blue eyes and stiff blond hair.

"Swein Poulsson!" exclaimed Polly Ann, giving him an involuntary kick,
"may the devil give ye shame!"

Swein Poulsson rose to a sitting position and clasped his knees in his
hands.

"I haf one great fright," said he.

"Send him into the common with the women in yere place, Mis' McChesney,"
growled Cowan, who was loading.

"By tam!" said Swein Poulsson, leaping to his feet, "I vill stay here
und fight. I am prave once again." Stooping down, he searched under the
bed, pulled out his rifle, powdered the pan, and flying to the other
port, fired. At that Cowan left his post and snatched the rifle from
Poulsson's hands.

"Ye're but wasting powder," he cried angrily.

"Then, by tam, I am as vell under the bed," said Poulsson. "Vat can I
do?"

I had it.

"Dig!" I shouted; and seizing the astonished Cowan's tomahawk from his
belt I set to work furiously chopping at the dirt beneath the log wall.
"Dig, so that James can get under."

Cowan gave me the one look, swore a mighty oath, and leaping to the port
shouted to Ray in a thundering voice what we were doing.

"Dig!" roared Cowan. "Dig, for the love of God, for he can't hear me."

The three of