MacNair was upon his feet now.  Beyond him the fighting was hand to hand.  With clubbed guns and axes, Lapierre’s men were meeting the Indians who swarmed over the walls.  Once more the wild wolf-cry rang in the girl’s ears as MacNair leaped into the thick of the fight.  The girl became conscious that someone was pounding at her feet.  She glanced downward.  Two Indians were upon the ladder waiting to get over the wall.  Without hesitation she tightened her grip upon her revolver and leaped into the stockade.  She sprawled awkwardly in the snow.  She felt her shoulder seized viciously.  Someone was jerking her to her feet.  She looked up and encountered the gleaming eyes of Lapierre.

Chloe tried to raise her revolver, but Lapierre kicked it from her hand.  There was the sound of a heavy impact.  Lapierre’s hand was jerked from her shoulder; he was hurled backward, cursing, into the snow.  One of the Indians who had followed Chloe up the ladder had leaped squarely upon the quarter-breed’s shoulders.  Like a flash Lapierre drew his automatic, but the Indian threw himself upon the gun and tore it from his grasp.  Then he scrambled to his feet.  Lapierre, too, was upon his feet in an instant.

“Shoot, you fool!  Kill him!  Kill him!” cried Chloe.

But the Indian continued to stare stupidly, and Lapierre dashed to safety around the corner of his storehouse.

“MacNair say no kill,” said the Indian gravely.

“Not kill!” cried the girl.  “He is crazy!  What is he thinking of?” But the Indian was already out of ear-shot.  Chloe glanced about her for her revolver.  An evil-faced half-breed, dragging his body from the hips, pulled himself toward it, hunching along with his bare hands digging into the crust of the snow.  The girl reached it a second before him.  The man cursed her shrilly and sank into the snow, crying aloud like a child.

Suddenly Chloe realized that the battle had surged beyond her.  Shots and hoarse cries arose from the scrub beyond the storehouse, while all about her, in the trampled snow, wounded men cursed and prayed, and dead men froze in the slush of their own heart’s blood.  The girl followed into the scrub, and to her surprise came face to face with the Louchoux girl, who was carrying armfuls of dry brushwood, which she piled against the corner of the storehouse.

Chloe glanced into the black eyes that glowed like living coals.  The Indian girl added her armful to the pile and, drawing matches from her pocket, dropped to her knees in the snow.  She pointed toward the log storehouse.

“Lapierre ran inside,” she said.

With a wild laugh Chloe passed on.  The scrub thinned toward the point of the peninsula, where the rim-rocks rose sheer two hundred feet above the level of the lake.  Chloe caught sight of MacNair’s Indians leaping before her, and, beyond, the crowding knot of men who gave ground before the rush of the Yellow Knives.  One by one the men dropped, writhing, into the snow.  The others gave ground rapidly, shooting at their advancing enemies, cursing, crowding—­but always giving ground.