er 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.

"Ye're but wasting powder," he cried angrily.

"Then, by tam, I am as vell under th