Two men dashed by.  I seized one by the fringe of his shirt, and he flung me from my feet.  The other leaped me as I knelt.

“Run, ye fools!” he shouted.  But we stood still, with yearning eyes staring back through the frantic forms for a sight of Tom’s.

“I’ll go back!” I cried, “I’ll go back for him.  Do you run to the fort.”  For suddenly I seemed to forget my fear, nor did even the hideous notes of the scalp halloo disturb me.  Before Polly Ann could catch me I had turned and started, stumbled,—­I thought on a stump,—­and fallen headlong among the nettles with a stinging pain in my leg.  Staggering to my feet, I tried to run on, fell again, and putting down my hand found it smeared with blood.  A man came by, paused an instant while his eye caught me, and ran on again.  I shall remember his face and name to my dying day; but there is no reason to put it down here.  In a few seconds’ space as I lay I suffered all the pains of captivity and of death by torture, that cry of savage man an hundred times more frightful than savage beast sounding in my ears, and plainly nearer now by half the first distance.  Nearer, and nearer yet—­and then I heard my name called.  I was lifted from the ground, and found myself in the lithe arms of Polly Ann.

“Set me down!” I screamed, “set me down!” and must have added some of the curses I had heard in the fort.  But she clutched me tightly (God bless the memory of those frontier women!), and flew like a deer toward the gates.  Over her shoulder I glanced back.  A spare three hundred yards away in a ragged line a hundred red devils were bounding after us with feathers flying and mouths open as they yelled.  Again I cried to her to set me down; but though her heart beat faster and her breath came shorter, she held me the tighter.  Second by second they gained on us, relentlessly.  Were we near the fort?  Hoarse shouts answered the question, but they seemed distant—­too distant.  The savages were gaining, and Polly Ann’s breath quicker still.  She staggered, but the brave soul had no thought of faltering.  I had a sight of a man on a plough horse with dangling harness coming up from somewhere, of the man leaping off, of ourselves being pitched on the animal’s bony back and clinging there at the gallop, the man running at the side.  Shots whistled over our heads, and here was the brown fort.  Its big gates swung together as we dashed through the narrowed opening.  Then, as he lifted us off, I knew that the man who had saved us was Tom himself.  The gates closed with a bang, and a patter of bullets beat against them like rain.

Through the shouting and confusion came a cry in a voice I knew, now pleading, now commanding.

“Open, open!  For God’s sake open!”

“It’s Ray!  Open for Ray!  Ray’s out!”

Some were seizing the bar to thrust it back when the heavy figure of McGary crushed into the crowd beside it.

“By Job, I’ll shoot the man that touches it!” he shouted, as he tore them away.  But the sturdiest of them went again to it, and cursed him.  And while they fought backward and forward, the lad’s mother, Mrs. Ray, cried out to them to open in tones to rend their hearts.  But McGary had gained the bar and swore (perhaps wisely) that he would not sacrifice the station for one man.  Where was Ray?