Where was Ray, indeed?  It seemed as if no man might live in the hellish storm that raged without the walls:  as if the very impetus of hate and fury would carry the ravages over the stockade to murder us.  Into the turmoil at the gate came Colonel Clark, sending the disputants this way and that to defend the fort, McGary to command one quarter, Harrod and Bowman another, and every man that could be found to a loophole, while Mrs. Ray continued to run up and down, wringing her hands, now facing one man, now another.  Some of her words came to me, shrilly, above the noise.

“He fed you—­he fed you.  Oh, my God, and you are grateful—­grateful!  When you were starving he risked his life—­”

Torn by anxiety for my friend, I dragged myself into the nearest cabin, and a man was fighting there in the half-light at the port.  The huge figure I knew to be my friend Cowan’s, and when he drew back to load I seized his arm, shouting Ray’s name.  Although the lead was pattering on the other side of the logs, Cowan lifted me to the port.  And there, stretched on the ground behind a stump, within twenty feet of the walls, was James.  Even as I looked the puffs of dust at his side showed that the savages knew his refuge.  I saw him level and fire, and then Bill Cowan set me down and began to ram in a charge with tremendous energy.

Was there no way to save Ray?  I stood turning this problem in my mind, subconsciously aware of Cowan’s movements:  of his yells when he thought he had made a shot, when Polly Ann appeared at the doorway.  Darting in, she fairly hauled me to the shake-down in the far corner.

“Will ye bleed to death, Davy?” she cried, as she slipped off my legging and bent over the wound.  Her eye lighting on a gourdful of water on the puncheon table, she tore a strip from her dress and washed and bound me deftly.  The bullet was in the flesh, and gave me no great pain.

“Lie there, ye imp!” she commanded, when she had finished.

“Some one’s under the bed,” said I, for I had heard a movement.

In an instant we were down on our knees on the hard dirt floor, and there was a man’s foot in a moccasin!  We both grabbed it and pulled, bringing to life a person with little blue eyes and stiff blond hair.

“Swein Poulsson!” exclaimed Polly Ann, giving him an involuntary kick, “may the devil give ye shame!”

Swein Poulsson rose to a sitting position and clasped his knees in his hands.

“I haf one great fright,” said he.

“Send him into the common with the women in yere place, Mis’ McChesney,” growled Cowan, who was loading.

“By tam!” said Swein Poulsson, leaping to his feet, “I vill stay here und fight.  I am prave once again.”  Stooping down, he searched under the bed, pulled out his rifle, powdered the pan, and flying to the other port, fired.  At that Cowan left his post and snatched the rifle from Poulsson’s hands.