The sights and sounds were clean-cut, distinct, intensely thrilling—­but impersonal, like the shifting scenes of a photo-play.  She glanced about for MacNair.  Her eyes travelled swiftly from face to swarthy face of the men who charged out of the timber.  She directed her glance toward the wall, and there, not twenty feet away, she saw him reach for the rungs of the ladder.  And the next moment two forms crashed backward into the snow.  For an instant the girl closed her eyes, and in that instant her brain awoke with a start.  About her the sounds leaped into terrible significance.  She realized that she was outside the walls of the stockade.  That the sights and sounds about her were intensely real.

The forces of MacNair and Lapierre had locked horns in the final struggle, and her fate, and the fate of the whole North, hung in the balance.  All about her were the hideous sounds of battle.  She was surprised that she was unafraid; instead, the blood seemed coursing through her veins with the heat of flame.  Her heart seemed bursting with a wild, fierce joy.  Something of which she had always been dimly conscious—­some latent thing which she had always held in check—­seemed suddenly to burst within her.  A flood of fancies crowded her brain.  The wicked crack of the rifles became the roar of cannon.  Tall masts, to which clung shot-torn shrouds, reared high above a fog of powder-smoke, and beyond waved the tops of palm-trees.  The spirit of Tiger Elliston had burst its bounds!

With a cry like the scream of a beast, the girl leaped to her feet.  She tore the heavy mittens from her hands, and reached for the revolver which lay in the snow at her side.  She leaped toward MacNair who had regained his feet, red with the life-blood of the Indian who lay upon his back in the snow, staring upward wide-eyed, unseeing, throatless.  She called loudly, but her voice was lost in the mighty uproar, and MacNair sprang up the ladder.

Like a flash Chloe followed, holding her heavy revolver as he had held his.  She glanced upward; MacNair had disappeared over the edge of the stockade.  The next instant she, too, had reached the top.  She paused, looking downward.  MacNair was scrambling to his feet.  Ten feet away a man levelled a gun at him.  He fired from his knee, and the man pitched forward.  Upon him, from behind, rushed two men swinging their rifles high.  They had almost reached him when Chloe fired straight down.  The nearest man dropped his rifle and staggered against the wall.  The other paused and glanced upward.  Chloe shot squarely into his face.  The bullet ripped downward, splitting his jaw.  The man rushed screaming over the snow, tearing with both hands at the wound.