She was conscious only of a giant form lurching, red-eyed and yelling, out of the turmoil, of brown hands that clutched her arms, and of another form which shot past her.  For the second time in a few moments one man had reached for her and another flung himself to her rescue.  She saw the Indian reel back with a red line spurting across his eyes, felt herself lifted and flung across a shoulder, and knew that the gate behind was swinging open.  The next instant she slid down to her feet with her face in the buckskin shirt of Marc Dupre, who leaned shaking against the stockade wall and held her in a grip like steel, while Henri Corlier shot the bolts into place.

Huddled in white groups were the women, some of them already raising their voices in weeping, others silent with the training of the women of the wilderness.  The men faced each other with lips drawn tight and breath that came swiftly.  Prix Laroux, his dark eyes cool and sharp, looked swiftly over the populace as they stood, for with that first shot every man in Fort de Seviere had rushed to the gate, and in that first moment of getting breath he calculated their strength and their ability.

A leader born himself, he was looking for a leader among McElroy’s men; but, with that intrepid factor himself gone and Edmonton Ridgar also, there was nowhere a man with the signs of leadership upon him.

Through Prix’s mind this went while they stood listening to the death-wail that was beginning to rise from the tepees without.

Then he quietly took command, knowing himself to be best fitted.

“Corlier,” he said quietly, “leave the gate to Cif Bordoux.  Take one man and get to the southwest bastion.  You, Gifford,” turning to that young clerk who worked in the sorting-room, “man the northwest.  Garcon and Dupre will take the forward two.  The rest will stand ready with guns and ammunition along the four walls and at the gates.  We know not what will transpire.”

As if their factor spoke, the men of De Seviere turned to obey, feeling that strange compelling which causes men to follow one man to death on the field of battle, and which is surely the gift of God.

Out of his shaking arms Marc Dupre loosed Maren, the trembling lessening as the danger passed.  That sight of the defenceless girl among the Indians had shaken him like a leaf in the wind, had nerved his arms with iron, had worked in him both with strength and weakness.

Now he looked into her eyes and said never a word, for once again he saw that they were dazed and void of knowledge.

As he set her upon her own strength, she swayed.  Her eyes went round the hushed groups of faces with wild searching.  At last they found the face of her leader, and clung there, dark and dull.

“Prix!” she cried.  “Prix!  Open the gate!”

“I cannot, Maren,” he said quietly; “’twould be but madness.”

“But they are without!”