Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/304

 But when the smoke of shots began to jet from the second window to the front and one horse went down in a kicking sprawl, the attackers made a rush for the cover of the corral and shed. Sure of their ultimate triumph, they settled down to siege tactics. They could well afford to wait until dark; then the house would be rushed.

It was a deadly game played there in the wide spaces of the prairie. Timberline at his window, Original on his belly behind a hole he had dug out with his knife through the clay chinking between the logs, strained their eyes at the distant cracks between the boards of the shed. Whenever by so much as an inch something cut the thin strip of blue sky showing through, the rifle of one or the other probed that substance with a bullet. Instantly from the shed wall answering puffs of smoke sprouted, and the thud of a bullet sounded against the heavy logs. All the windows were long since splintered; glinting shards of glass lay thickly over the cabin floor. Now and again there would be a smart "ping" of a missile that had ripped through window frame or between logs and found lodgment within the cabin. Once there was a clear bell stroke; the painted