"Set to work lively, boys," he shouted, as he began to throw up the smaller boulders in a circle. "Everything depends on our getting a fort ready before they come within shooting distance."
There was no necessity of urging the boys or Jake to labor industriously. They could see the enemy and hear their yells of triumph at having tracked the game so successfully, therefore not a second was wasted.
It seemed as if Poyor had the strength of a dozen men in his arms. He lifted huge boulders which the remainder of the party together could hardly have moved from their resting place; flung the smaller ones around as if they were nothing more than pebbles, and when the circle had been raised four feet high, set about digging away the sand from the center in order to increase the depth.
The preparations were not yet completed when the foremost of the pursuers came in view from beneath a ledge about forty yards away, and he said to Cummings:
"Three guns are enough to hold them back while Jake and I finish the work here. Do not hesitate to shoot, for they will stop at nothing when the time comes that we can hold out no longer."
"Teddy, you sit there," Cummings said, as he pointed to an aperture in the wall which had been left as a loop-hole. "Neal, you're stationed next to him, and I'll hold this place. Now work lively, and pick off every one of those yelling villains that comes within range."
He discharged both barrels of his weapon in rapid succession as he ceased speaking, and the two leaders disappeared immediately; but whether they had been hit by the leaden messengers, or only frightened, no one could say.
Teddy raised his gun as a third man pressed forward, and, as he afterward confessed, closed his eyes while pulling the trigger, for to fire deliberately at a human being was something inexpressibly terrible.
Even if he did not hit the mark the bullet must have gone so near the man as to frighten him, for when Neal discharged his weapon at a fourth Indian the entire party beat a retreat, disappearing behind the ledge.
"They can't send an arrow from that distance with any accuracy of aim," Cummings said in a tone of satisfaction, "therefore we may count on keeping them back until night, at all events."