She redoubled her efforts, feeling blindly in the darkness for the path that led toward the square of light.  In her ears sounded the sharp jangle of smashing glass.  Her foot caught in a vine, and she crashed heavily forward almost at the door.  All about her guns roared; from the edge of the scrub, from the river-bank, and from the corners of the long log dormitories.  Bullets whined above her like angry mosquitoes, and thudded dully against the logs of the cottage.

Again sounded the sharp jangle of glass.  She struggled to her knees, and was hurled backward as the huge form of an Indian tripped over her and sprawled, cursing, at her side.  The door of the cottage burst suddenly open, and in the long quadrangle of light the forms of the two Indians who had passed her stood out distinctly.  The girl gave a quick, short sob of relief.  They were LeFroy’s Indians!  At the sound the man on the ground thrust his face close to hers and with a quick grunt of surprise scrambled to his feet.  Chloe felt her arm seized, and realized that she was being dragged toward the door of the cottage through which the other two Indians had disappeared.  She was jerked roughly across the threshold, and lay huddled up on the floor.  The Indian released his hold on her arm and, stepping across her body, reached for the door.

Outside, the roar of the guns was incessant.  Suddenly, close at hand, Chloe heard a quick, wicked spat, and the Indian reeled from the doorway, whirled as on a pivot, and crashed, face downward, across the table.  There was a loud rattle of porcelain dishes, a rifle rang sharply upon the floor boards, and Chloe gazed in horrid fascination as the limp form of the Indian slipped slowly from the table.  Its momentum increased, and the back of the man’s head struck the floor with a sickening thump.  The face turned toward her—­a face wet and dripping with the rich red blood that oozed thickly from the irregular hole in the forehead where the soft, round ball from a smooth bore had torn into the brain.  The wide eyes stared stonily into her own.  The jaws sagged open, and the nearly severed tongue protruded from between the fang-like yellow teeth.

Someone blew out the lamp.  The door slammed shut.  Chloe felt strong hands beneath her shoulders; the voice of Big Lena sounded in her ears, and she was being guided through the pitch blackness to the door of her own room.  The lamp by the bedside had also been extinguished, and the girl glanced toward the window, which showed in the feeble starlight a pattern of jagged panes.  One of the Indians who had preceded her into the cottage thrust the barrel of a rifle through the aperture and fired rapidly at the flashes of flame in the clearing.

In the other room someone was shrieking, and Chloe recognized the voice of Harriet Penny.  Big Lena left her side, and a moment later the shrieking ceased, or, rather, quieted to a series of terrified, choking grunts and muffled cries, as though something soft and thick had been forcibly applied as a gag.  Chloe groped her way blindly toward the bed, where she had left the wounded man.  Her feet stumbled awkwardly through the confusion of debris that was the wreck of the over-turned medicine table.