makes it bad, all right. But I don’t think they’ll rush your guns, Ronicky! We might hang out the lantern after lighting it. That’d give us some light on one side of the house, anyway.”
Ronicky merely laughed at the absurdity of the suggestion.
“They’d smash the lantern to bits with a couple of shots.”
“Didn’t think of that.”
“How much oil is in that lantern?” asked Ronicky suddenly.
“It’s a big one. About a quart of oil in it, I guess.”
“And what’s that old mattress in the corner stuffed with?”
“I dunno.”
Ronicky crossed the floor and ripped open the small section of mattress which had once served on the corner bunk. An instant later he muttered a low exclamation of satisfaction and came back with a liberal armful of the waste with which the mattress had been stuffed.
“Now lemme have the lantern,” he suggested.
It was given him, and to the astonishment of the elder man Ronicky opened the bottom of the tin support and thoroughly wet large portions of the waste with the kerosene.
“And what in Sam Hill,” muttered Hugh Dawn, “d’you figure to win by wasting all that oil, son?”
“I’ll show you in a minute.”
He continued by lighting the lantern and taking off the chimney. Then he turned down the wick, so that there was only a quivering tongue tip of flame visible.
“They’s enough oil,” he explained, “to keep that lantern going till pretty near morning, if we don’t bum it no faster’n that.”
“I don’t foller you, Ronicky.”
“Well,” explained the other, “here I put a pile of this oil-soaked stuff in my corner, and there I put a pile of it alongside of you. Suppose they was to start a rush. The first one of us that sees a move gives a yell and instead of shooting grabs up the waste and passes it over the lantern. The minute the oil comes anywhere near that flame it will bust into fire, and we throw the stuff out through the windows. It’ll light up everything for a minute or two. It’ll make us miss a half second that we could of used for shooting, but it’ll also give us a chance to get in three or four aimed shots. I’d rather have one aimed shot than ten chance cracks at shadows.”
Hugh Dawn, as the idea struck home to him, gasped with pleasure.
“I been lying here waiting to die,” he admitted. “And now I figure that we got a ghost of a chance to keep ‘em off. Just a ghost of a chance. But, Ronicky, ghosts can be mighty important things!”
There was another time of silence. The hour was now close to half past four in the morning, or thereabouts, and it was the period of greatest fatigue, when nervous reactions are slower, when the muscles are deadened for lack of sleep, and the mind is sick for weariness. And yet, once or twice at about this time, Ronicky heard humming.
After all, happiness is a comparative thing. Hugh Dawn had felt that he was to be slaughtered without a chance even to fight. The fighting chance was now to him almost as much as the promise of complete safety to most men. Ronicky, listening, wondered and admired.
“Suppose Jerry could look inside here and see you fighting for me, Ronicky. She’d have to change her mind about a couple of things, eh?”
“Not while Moon is there to talk to her. He won’t give her a chance to think. The skunk has double crossed me, Hugh. I was a fool ever to listen to him, but I took his word. He swore that if there was trouble coming, he’d never let his crowd jump me. Him and me would fight it out man to man. That’s why I come in—like a fool, partner! But here we are, both trapped, and me in no position to help the way I’d be if I was loose out there among the trees!”
“Maybe not, son. And if there was ever a square-shooter, it’s you, Ronicky. Look!” Dawn pointed suddenly. “I seen something move behind the trees.”
“And me!” answered Ronicky. “I think I hear somebody sneaking beside the other shack and—”
Suddenly he leaped up from his knees with a yell.
“Hugh! They’re at us!”
XXV. THE ATTACK
Ronicky had seen two low-moving shadows detach themselves from the front of the neighboring shack and start toward the front of his own at full speed, while from the window of the hut a rifleman began blazing away at his window. That hurricane of bullets, one after the other, should have the effect of making it lively for a marksman attempting to shoot from the aperture.
Ronicky scooped up a quantity of the waste and passed it over the lantern. Instantly the flames burst out, fed by the kerosene, and he hurled the armful, with the flames already sweeping back across his shirt, through the window and out into the night. It fell a considerable distance from the wall, and the wind, catching the flames, lifted them high so that all the surroundings were suddenly and brilliantly illumined.
It revealed the sharpshooter at the opposite window. It revealed the two skulkers midway between the fronts of the shacks. It showed, to the rear, three more breaking toward the shack at full speed. But one and all were checked. They yelled with astonishment and fear at this unexpected flood of light, while at the same time reechoed shouts of rage and fear from the other side of the house proved that Hugh Dawn had carried out his portion of the maneuver with equal success. Ronicky, aiming only at light, gained more than light. He derived the advantage of a surprise attack.
He began shooting—and shooting to kill. Across the room he heard the roaring of Hugh Dawn’s gun as the sturdy old warrior began pumping lead from two revolvers at the same time. Very well. He might make a terrific amount of noise, but it was hardly likely that he would do as much execution as this slender, keen-eyed fellow at the window, planting his shots and wasting few of them indeed.
First of all he fired not at the onrushing forms, but directed his attention to the man at the opposite window. For he possessed a rifle, and he could take advantage of the flaring light from the waste, as it burned, to drive home a fatal shot. Straight at him Ronicky drove his first bullet, and he saw the other fling up his arms and sink from sight without a word.
In the meantime, the two men in the front had, after their moment of hesitation on being flooded with light, resumed their forward run, and another stride would take them into shelter around the corner of the hut. One of these Ronicky nailed midstride and saw the fellow pitch to his fate with a shrill scream of pain. But his companion shot out of view behind the corner of the logs.
There would be a future danger, for the man was now under the wall, and the logs protected him fully as much as they protected the men inside the hut.
Ronicky gave that danger only a fleeting thought. He had whirled, and now he looked to the south, where the three had been sweeping up from the woods.
His first bullet went wild—the sudden change of direction had thrown him off. His second bullet made the middle man of the
