laughter, crested with brandished guns and gleam
of tomahawk.

There is nothing to remember--nothing but blows, curses, yells, the
crunch of steel on flesh, the horror of cruel eyes glowering into
yours, the clutching of fingers at your throat, the spit of fire
singeing you, the strain of combat hand to hand--the knowledge that it
is all over, except to die. I had no sense of fear; no thought but to
kill and be killed. I felt within me strength--desperate, insane
strength. The rifle butt splintered in my hands, but the bent and
shapeless barrel rose and fell like a flail. I saw it crush against
skulls; I jabbed it straight into red faces; I brought it down with all
my force on clutching arms. For an instant Tim was beside me. He had
lost his gun and was fighting with a knife. It was only a glimpse I
had of him through red mist--the next instant he was gone. A huge
fellow faced me, a Winnebago I knew, from his shaven head. I struck
him once, laying open his cheek to the bone; then he broke through and
gripped me.

The rest is what--a dream; a delirium of fever? I know not; it comes
to me in flashes of mad memory. I was struck again and again, stabbed,
and flung to the floor. Moccasined feet trod on me, and some fiend
gripped my hair, bending my head back across a dead body, until I felt
the neck crack. Above me were naked legs and arms, a pandemonium of
dancing figures, a horrible chorus of maddened yells. I caught a
glimpse of Asa Hall flung high into the air, shot dead in mid-flight,
the whirling body dropping into the ruck below. I saw the savage,
whose fingers were twined in my hair, lift a gleaming tomahawk and
circle it about his head; I stared into the hate of his eyes, and as it
swept down--there was a glare of red and yellow flame between us, the
thunder of an explosion; the roof above seemed to burst asunder and
fall in--and darkness, death.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE TRAIL TO OTTAWA

When my eyes again opened it was to darkness and silence as profound as
that of my former unconsciousness. My mind was a blank, and seemingly
I retained no sense of what had occurred, or of my present
surroundings. For the moment I felt no certainty even that I was
actually alive, yet slowly, little by little, reality conquered, and I
became keenly conscious of physical pain, while memory also began to
blindly reassert itself. It was a series of dim pictures projecting
themselves on the awakening brain--the