if you would save our lives!"

It was a fool thing, yet in the excitement I did it, and De Croix was
beside me. Two or three of the settlers on foot rallied with us, and
together we struck so hard against those cowering renegades that for
the moment we held them, though their fear gave them desperation
difficult to withstand. I recall noticing De Croix, as he pressed his
rearing horse into the huddled mass, lashing at the faces of the
fellows mercilessly with his riding-whip, as if thinking Mademoiselle
would admire his reckless gallantry.

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