Dick opened his mouth to cry out, but he could emit no sound. Before he could form a thought, the six rifles blazed forth in concert, and an instant later the room below was filled with smoke, shouts of pain, and furious curses. A terrible chorus of piercing war-screams from outside the house showed that the redskins who had crept up so silently were in large number. Dick tarried no longer, but sprang up into the loft and ran wildly to a little window at the end of it. He supposed that he had been seen and would be followed up the ladder. He thrust out his head and looked down. This little window was over the one through which three of the savages had fired into the room down-stairs. He saw three other Indians aiming in through the lower window, while the first three were reloading their rifles. Others were shrieking their war-whoop and brandishing the knives and tomahawks with which they were to complete the work begun with the rifles. Up from the ladder hatchway, amidst the noise of heavy bodies falling and of the men rushing to their arms and yelling and swearing, came the sound of another volley, fired probably through the doorway. Dick drew his head in and waited with wildly beating heart, wondering what to do, and fearing to look back towards the hatchway lest he might see savages rushing up after him, with gleaming knives and upraised tomahawks. But none came. The noise from the room below indicated that knives, tomahawks, and guns had business enough down there. After what seemed a space of several minutes, Dick cautiously looked again out of the window. He saw now but one savage, and that one soon disappeared through the lower window, into the room where his fellows were completing the slaughter of the unprepared reapers. The hideous shrieks of triumph that came up through the hatchway told clearly enough that victory was with the attacking party, and that the scalping-knife was already in use. Suddenly Dick's blood turned cold. A sound of sharp, eager grunting, detached from the general hubbub below, arose immediately beneath the hatchway. A red hand appeared through the opening, grasping the loft floor against which the ladder rested. The little window at which Dick stood was neither glazed nor papered. He went out through it, feet first; hung for a moment by his fingers to the ledge, then dropped to the ground below, fell on his side, scrambled to his feet, turned his back to the house of shrieking slaughter, and ran across the field towards the nearest woods. Though the direction in which he went took him farther from his grandfather's, he nevertheless did not stop or turn, on reaching the woods, but ran straight on, as fast as the irregularities of the ground would let him, and for once with reckless disregard of possible snakes, his only thought being to put the greatest distance between himself and the yelling murderers behind him.