“He’s safe!” murmured Ambrose.

At the same moment half of Tole’s pursuers stopped dead, and their rifles barked.  The flying figure spun around with uptossed arms, and plunged to the ground.

Ambrose groaned from the bottom of his breast.  Nerved by a blind rage, his own gun instinctively went up.  He could have picked off one or two from where he stood.  Macfarlane flung a restraining arm around him.

“Stop!  You’ll bring the whole mob down on us!” he cried.  He looked at Ambrose not unkindly.  The sacrifice of Tole obliged him to change his attitude.

Ambrose turned in the door, silently grinding his teeth.  At the end of the passage he found a chair, and dropped upon it, holding his head between his hands.

The face of Tole as he had first beheld it—­proud, comely, and full of health—­rose before him vividly.

He remembered that he had said to himself then:  “Here is one young, like myself, that I can make a friend of.”  And almost the last thing Tole had said to him was:  “I am your friend.”

It was his youth and good looks that made it seem most horrible.  Ambrose pictured the bloody ruin lying in the square, and shuddered.

Gordon Strange offered to go out in order to make sure that Tole was beyond aid.  It seemed like a kindly impulse, but Ambrose suspected its genuineness.

Even from where they were, a glance at the huddled figure was enough to tell the truth.  None of the others would hear of Strange’s going.  Colina and Giddings pleaded with him.  Gaviller forbade him.  Strange with seeming reluctance finally gave in.

Whenever he witnessed such evidences of their trust in the half-breed Ambrose’s lip curled in the darkness.  He was more than ever convinced that Strange was a blackguard.

Evidence he had none, only his warning intuition, which, among the male sex at least, is not considered much to go on.

It gave Ambrose a shrewd little twinge of jealousy to hear Colina begging this man not to risk his life by leaving the house.

About three o’clock it began to seem as if they might allow themselves to relax a little.  The madness of the Indians had burned itself out.  There had not been enough whisky perhaps to maintain it for more than a few hours.

In any case, since the whites had been spared at the height of their fury, it seemed reasonable to hope they might escape altogether.  The yelling had ceased.

Most of the men were now engaged in carrying flour and other goods down to the york boat.  The watchers from the house wondered if they dared believe this signified an early departure.

As the tension let down it could be seen that John Gaviller was on the verge of a collapse.  Colina strove with him to go to his room and rest on his bed.

He finally consented upon condition that she lay in her own room up-stairs.  Colina and Gordon Strange half led, half carried the old man up-stairs.