Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/144

126 into the work of preparing food, burying the dead, strengthening the defences, and cleaning the rifles, that Connie felt extremely hopeful for the future.

When Tex Gordon and Ick Far had bound up his wounded arm, the boy called a council. It was the unanimous opinion that the Mooseheads would not risk another charge. Their losses could only be estimated as Connie forbade any one to venture beyond the barricade. An Indian, like a rattlesnake, is never dead till he is good and dead, and many a man has been treacherously murdered while endeavouring to aid a wounded enemy. The gravest danger that confronted the small garrison was the shortage of provisions. Figuring only one meal a day, Connie and Tex saw that their slender stock could last but four days—five at the most. Water, the Brushwoods assured them, could be procured by lowering a bucket on a line to the creek from a projecting ledge—but food they must have.

The small amount hastily commandeered from "Soapy" White's stock had been cached with the canoe, and Tex Gordon volunteered to slip out with a couple of Indians under cover of darkness and recover it. To this Connie reluctantly con-