A wild yell, with the mad thrill of the war-whoop in it, suddenly assailed our ears; the Miamis broke to the left like a flock of frightened birds, and my startled glance revealed a horde of naked Indians, howling like maniacs, and with madly brandished weapons, pouring over the sand-ridge not thirty feet away from us.  With a shout of warning, which was half a curse at my own mad folly, I drove the spurs deep into my horse’s side in a vain endeavor to fling myself between them and the girl.  Hardly had the startled animal made one quick plunge, when we were locked in that human avalanche as if gripped by a vise of steel.  A dozen dark hands grasped my bridle or clutched at me, their swarthy faces fierce with blood-lust, the eyes that fronted me cruel with passion and inflamed by hate.  I heard shots not far away; but we were all too closely jammed to do more than fight in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle with club and knife.

The saddle is a poor place from which to swing a rifle, yet I stood high in my wooden stirrups and struck madly at every Indian head I saw, battering their faces till from the very horror of it they gave slowly back.  I won a yard—­two yards—­three,—­my horse biting viciously at their naked flesh, and lashing out with both fore-feet like a fiend, while I swept my gun-stock in a widening circle of death.  For the moment, I dreamed we might drive them back; but then those devils blocked me, clinging to my horse’s legs in their death agony, and laughing back into my face as I struck them down.

Once I heard De Croix swearing in French beside me, and glanced around through the mad turmoil to see him cutting and hacking with broken blade, pushing into the midst of the melee as if he had real joy in the encounter.  While I thus had him in view, a knife whistled through the air, there was a quick dazzle in the sunlight, and he reeled backward off his horse and disappeared in the ruck below.

Never in a life of fighting have I battled as I did then, feeling that I alone might hope to reach her side and beat back these foul fiends till help should come to us.  The stock of my rifle shattered like glass; but I swung the iron barrel with what seemed to me the strength of twenty men, striking, thrusting, stabbing, my teeth set, my eyes blurring with a mist of blood, caring for nothing except to hit and kill.  I know not now whether I advanced at all in that last effort, though my horse trod on dead bodies.  Only once in those awful seconds did I gain a glimpse of Mademoiselle through the mist of struggle, the maze of uplifted arms and striking steel.  She had reined her horse back against a wheel of the halted wagon, and with white face and burning eyes was lashing desperately with the loaded butt of her riding-whip at the red hands which sought to drag her from the saddle.

The sight maddened me, and again my spurs were driven into my horse’s flanks.  As he plunged forward, some one from behind struck me a crushing blow across the back of the head, and I reeled from my saddle, a red mist over my eyes, and went hurling face downward upon the mass of reeling, tangled bodies.