She swung on upward, catching a sapling here, a limb there, pulling herself over hard bits of going.  Once she turned and fired a chance shot in the direction of the howling.  Far away came the roar of one of the mountain lions; and the pack of red wolves became suddenly and magically silent.  Kathlyn made good use of this interval.  But presently the pack raised its howl again, and she knew that the grim struggle was about to begin.

She reached the door of the rest house just as the pack, a large one, came into view, heads down, tails streaming.  Pundita, who was at the fire preparing the noon meal, seized Kathlyn by the arm and hurried her into the house, barricading the door.  The wolves, arriving, flung themselves against it savagely.  But the door was stout, and only a battering-ram in human hands could have made it yield.

Unfortunately, there was no knowing when the men-folk would return from their chase of the horses, nor how long the wolves would lay siege.  The two women tried shooting, though Pundita was the veriest tyro, being more frightened at the weapon in her hands than at the howling animals outside.  They did little or no damage to the wolves, for the available cracks were not at sufficiently good angles.  An hour went by, Kathlyn could hear the wolves as they crowded against the door, sniffing the sill.

The colonel, Bruce, Ramabai and Ahmed had found the horses half a dozen miles away; and they had thrashed the thieving natives soundly and instilled the right kind of fear in their breasts.  At rifle point they had forced the natives back to the rest house.  The crack of their rifles soon announced to Kathlyn that the dread of wolves was a thing of the past.  She wisely refrained from recounting her experiences.  The men had worry enough.

After a hasty meal the journey toward the sea-port began in earnest.  Umballa’s attack had thrown them far out of the regular track.  They were now compelled to make a wide detour.  Where the journey might have been made in three days, they would be lucky now if they reached the sea under five.  The men took turns in standing watch whenever they made camp, and Kathlyn nor Pundita had time for idleness.  They had learned their lessons; no more carelessness, nothing but the sharpest vigilance from now on.

One day, as the pony caravan made a turn round a ragged promontory, they suddenly paused.  Perhaps twenty miles to the west lay the emerald tinted Persian Gulf.  The colonel slipped off his horse, dragged Kathlyn from hers, and began to execute a hornpipe.  He was like a boy.

“The sea, Kit, the sea!  Home and Winnie; out of this devil’s cauldron!  You will come along with us, Bruce?”

“I haven’t anything else to do,” Bruce smiled back.

Then he gazed at Kathlyn, who found herself suddenly filled with strange embarrassment.  In times of danger sham and subterfuge have no place.  Heretofore she had met Bruce as a man, to whom a glance from her eyes had told her secret.  Now that the door to civilization lay but a few miles away, the old conventions dropped their obscuring mantles over her, and she felt ashamed.  And there was not a little doubt.  Perhaps she had mistaken the look in his eyes, back there in the desert, back in the first day when they had fled together from the ordeals.  And yet . . . !