Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/308

 "At 'em!" yelled Bridger, coming to his feet and rushing toward the door.

He snapped the pistol at Deschamps and it failed to explode. He hurled it and struck a man in the chest. Lander was at his side, his knife drawn. One of Rem's sons-in-law jumped to get the prisoners' rifles, but Lander threw his knife and pinned the man's arm to the wall.

The men knocked out by the log began crawling to their feet. Deschamps shrieked to the others to use their knives. Before they could draw their knives, however, Bridger was among them, trying to bore a hole to the door.

He instantly became the hub of a revolving wheel of fiercely fighting men. He caught old Deschamps by the scruff of the neck and flung him about as a shield while his free hand delivered smashing blows. The younger Deschamps boy tried to dirk the mountain man but drove his steel into his father's arm and was rewarded with a string of horrible curses.

Bridger looked for Lander to help him and was dismayed to see him on the floor with blood flowing from a cut on the head. A war-ax lay at his side with blood on the handle. The exulting face of the Deschamps girl in the doorway and the