She glanced backward toward her own cottage where the light still glowed from the window.  It was reassuring, that little square of yellow lamp-light that shone softly from the window of her room.  She was not afraid now.  She would return to the cottage and lock the door.  She shuddered at the thought.  Before her rose the vision of that dark, shadowy face, tight-pressed against the glass.  Instinctively she knew that Indian was not alone.  There were others, and—­once more her eyes swept the blackness.

Suddenly the question flashed through her brain:  Why should these Indians seek to avenge MacNair—­the man who held the power of life and death over them—­who had practically forced them into servitude?  Then, swift as the question, flashed the answer:  It was not to avenge MacNair they came, but, knowing he was helpless, to strike the blow that would free themselves from the yoke.  Had Lapierre known this?  Had he left, knowing that the man’s own Indians would finish the work his bullet had only half completed?  No!  Lapierre would not have done that.  Did he not say:  “I am glad I did not kill him”?  He was thinking only of my safety.

“We’ll be safe enough till morning,” she muttered.  “Surely I have read somewhere that Indians never attack in the night.  Tomorrow we must hide MacNair where they cannot find him.  They will murder him, now that he is wounded.  How they must hate him!  Must hate the man who has oppressed and debauched and cheated them!”

The girl had nearly reached the door of the cottage when once more she halted, rooted in her tracks.  Out of the unnatural silence of the night, close upon the edge of the clearing, boomed the cry of the great horned owl.  It was a sound she had often heard here in the northern night—­this hooting of an owl; but, somehow, this sound was different.  Once more her heart thumped wildly against her ribs.  Her fists clenched, and she peered tensely toward the wall of the scrub timber that showed silent and black and impenetrable in the little light of the stars.  Again the portentous silence and then—­was it fancy, or were there shapes, stealthy, elusive, shadowy, moving along the wall of the intense blackness?

A light suddenly flashed from the window of the storehouse.  It disappeared.  The great door banged sharply, and out of the blackness sounded a rush of moccasined feet, padding the earth as they ran.

From the edge of the timber—­from the direction of the shadowy shapes—­came a long, thin spurt of flame, and the silence was broken by the roar of a smooth-bore rifle.  The next instant the roar was increased tenfold, and from the loopholes high on the walls of the storehouse flashed other thin red spurts of flame.

Terror-stricken, Chloe dashed for the cottage.  Along the entire length of the timber-line, spikes of flame belched forth, and the crash and roar of rifles drowned the rush of the moccasin feet.  A form dashed past her in the darkness, and then another, forcing Chloe from the path.  The terrified girl realized that these forms were speeding straight for the door of the cottage.  Her first thought was for MacNair.  He would be murdered as he slept.