“Are you hurt?” she gasped as she sank trembling upon the edge of the bed.  Close beside her sounded the sharp snap of metal as the Indian jammed fresh cartridges into his magazine.

“No!” said a voice in her ear.  “I’m not hurt.  Are you?” Chloe shook her head, forgetting that in the intense blackness she had returned no answer.  There was a movement upon the bed; a huge hand closed roughly about her arm.  The Indian was firing again.

“Tell me, are you hurt?” rasped a voice in her ear.  And her arm was shaken almost fiercely.

“No!” she managed to gasp, struggling to free herself.  “But oh, it’s all too, too horrible, too awful!  There is a dead man in the other room.  He is one of LeFroy’s Indians.  One of my Indians, and they shot him!”

“I’m damned glad of it!” growled MacNair thickly, and Chloe leaped from the bed.  The coarse brutality of the man was inconceivable.  In her mingled emotion of rage and loathing, she hated this man with a fierce, savage hatred that could kill.  She knew now why men called him Brute MacNair.  The name fitted!  These Indians had rushed from the security of the fortlike storehouse upon the first intimation of danger to protect the defenseless quartet in the cottage—­the three women and the wounded, helpless man.  In the very doorway of the cottage one had been killed—­killed facing the enemy—­the savage blood-thirsty horde who, having learned of the plight of their oppressor, had taken the warpath to venge their wrongs.  Surely MacNair must know that this man had died as much in the defense of him as of the women.  And yet, when he learned of the death of this man, he had said:  “I am damned glad of it!”

How long Chloe stood there speechless, trembling, with her heart fairly bursting with rage, she did not know.  Time ceased to be.  Suddenly she realized that the room was no longer in intense darkness.  Objects appeared dim and indistinct:  the bed with the wounded man, the contents of the table strewn in confusion upon the floor, and the Indian shooting from the window.  Then the flare of flames met her eyes.  The walls of the storehouse stood out distinctly from its black background of timber.  Savage forms appeared in the clearing, gliding stealthily from stump to stump.

The light grew brighter.  She could hear now, mingled with the sharp crack of the rifles, the dull roar of flames.  The dormitories were burning!  This added to her consuming rage.  Her eyes seemed fairly to glow as she fixed them upon the pale face of MacNair, who had struggled to a sitting posture.  She took a step toward the bed.  A dull red spot showed on either cheek.  A bullet ripped through the window and splintered the dull gold frame of Tiger Elliston’s portrait, but the girl had lost all sense of fear.  She shook her clenched fist in the bearded face of the man, and her voice quavered high and thin.

“You—­you—­damn you!” she cried.  “I wish I’d left you back there to the mercy of your savages!  You’re a brute—­a fiend!  It would serve you right if I should give you up to them!  He—­the man who was killed—­was trying to save you from the righteous wrath of those you have ground down and oppressed!”