they had come to take. Macavoy's
rich voice roared as of old, before his valour was questioned--and
maintained--at Fort O'Angel. Pierre had diverted his mind from the woman
who, at Fort O'Angel, was even now calling heaven and earth to witness
that "Tim Macavoy was her Macavoy and no other, an' she'd find him--the
divil and darlin', wid an arm like Broin Borhoime, an' a chest you could
build a house on--if she walked till Doomsday!"

Macavoy stood out grandly, his fat all gone to muscle, blowing through
his beard, puffing his cheek, and ready with tale or song. But now that
they were facing the business of their journey, his voice got soft and
gentle, as it did before the Fort, when he grappled his foes two by two
and three by three, and wrung them out. In his eyes there was the
thing which counts as many men in any soldier's sight, when he leads
in battle. As he said himself, he was made for war, like Malachi o' the
Golden Collar.

Pierre guessed that just now many of the Indians would be away for the
summer hunt, and that the Fort would perhaps be held by only a few score
of braves, who, however, would fight when they might easier play. He had
no useless compunctions about bloodshed. A human life he held to be a
trifle in the big sum of time, and that it was of little moment when a
man went, if it seemed his hour. He lived up to his creed, for he had
ever held his own life as a bird upon a housetop, which a chance stone
might drop.

He was glad afterwards that he had decided to fight, for there was one
in Fort Comfort against whom he had an old grudge--the Indian, Young
Eye, who, many years before, had been one to help in killing the good
Father Halen, the priest who dropped the water on his forehead and set
the cross on top of that, when he was at his mother's breasts. One by
one the murderers had been killed, save this man. He had wandered north,
lived on the Coppermine River for a long time, and at length had come
down among the warring tribes at the Lake of Silver Shallows.

Pierre was for direct attack. They crossed the lake in their canoes, at
a point about five miles from the Fort, and, so far as they could tell,
without being seen. Then ammunition went round, and they marched upon
the Fort. Pierre eyed Macavoy--measured him, as it were, for what he was
worth. The giant seemed happy. He was humming a tune softly through his
beard. Suddenly Jose paused, dropped to the foot of a pine, and put his
ear to it.