When those in the house realised that all immediate danger was over, they took the change of situations characteristically.  The rancher went quietly to find his daughter.  She showed no signs of any reaction, although perhaps she had a hard struggle to conquer her feelings.  Jacques wanted to sally out and seek for Leopold St. Croix, so that they might settle once and for all their little differences, but Sergeant Pasmore vetoed this.  There was other work to do, he said.  It was no use remaining at the ranche; the women must go into the fort at Battleford—­if, indeed, it were possible to get through to it.  As for Rory, he had gone to the stables and seen to the horses and the dogs that were to pull the sleighs; these latter, by the way, were a remarkable lot, and comprised as many varieties as there are different breeds of pigeons.  There were Chocolats, Muskymotes, Cariboos, Brandies, Whiskies, Corbeaus, and a few others.  During the fight they had kept wonderfully quiet, but now they seemed to know that it was over, and began, after the playful manner of their kind, to indulge in a spirited battle on their own account.  Rory snatched up a whip with the object of seeing fair play.

An hour later and a strange scene that kitchen presented, with its wounded, smoke-stained men, Its shattered doors and windows, and splintered tables and dresser.  The four Mounted Policemen had come down from the ridges where they had so harassed the enemy and were now receiving steaming pannikins of coffee.

Child-of-Light had just come in, and told how to the north Big Bear and his Stonies were lurking somewhere, not to speak of Thunderchild and one or two others, so it would be as well to try Battleford first.  His braves at that moment were pursuing the fleeing breeds and Indians, but he had ordered them to return soon in order that they might remove the dead and wounded from the ranche, and then see after the stock belonging to their brother Douglas.  It had been as Sergeant Pasmore had said—­they had seen the fresh enemy coming up and delayed their attack until they could surround them.

But grey-eyed morn had come at last; the sleighs were packed and brought round to the door.  It was time to make a start.

CHAPTER V

TO BATTLEFORD

It was quite a little procession of jumpers and sledges that set out from the rancher’s that morning after the fight.  First went the police, each man on his little box-like jumper with its steel-shod runners drawn by a hardy half-bred broncho.  Next came Rory in a dog-sled cariole, with his several pugnacious canine friends made fast by moose-skin collars.  They would have tried the patience of Job.  They fought with each other on the slightest pretext from sheer love of fighting, and knew not the rules of Queensberry.  If one of them happened to get down in one of their periodical little outbreaks, the others promptly abandoned their more equal contests to pile on to that unfortunate one.