"There are no Indians in these parts and I'm going out there to prove it." He stood in the center of a ray of moonlight, as he spoke, and it lighted up his red sneering face.

Lucy and Paul could see him plainly and each felt a little shiver of aversion.

But neither said anything and, in truth, standing in the dark by themselves they were not noticed by the others.
"I'm going outside," repeated Lowndes in a yet more noisy tone, "and if I run across anything more than a deer I'll be mighty badly fooled!" One or two uttered words of protest, but it seemed to Lucy that Braxton Wyatt incited him to go on, joining him in words of contempt for the alleged danger.
Lowndes reached the palisade and climbed upon it by means of the cross pieces binding it together, and then he stood upon the topmost bar, where his head and all his body, above the knees, rose clear of the bulwark.

He was outlined there sharply, a stout, puffy man, his face redder than ever from the effect of climbing, and his eyes gleaming triumphantly as, from his high perch, he looked toward the forest.
"I tell you there is not--" But the words were cut short, the gleam died from his eyes, the red fled from his face, and he whitened suddenly with terror.

From the forest came a sharp report, echoing in the still night, and the puffy man, throwing up his arms, fell from the palisade back into the inclosure, dead before he touched the ground.
A fierce yell, the long ominous note of the war whoop burst from the forest, and its sound, so full of menace and fury, was more terrible than that of the rifle.