orest limbs fifty feet farther."

"Then try your fortune," he said eagerly. "It may be those fellows
have never heard the crack of a gun. The sound and sudden death might
terrorize them."

I took careful aim above the wall, resting my long rifle-barrel in a
groove between the stones, and fired. Ever since, it has seemed to me
that God, for some mysterious purpose of His own, deflected the
speeding ball, for never before or since did I miss such aim. Yet miss
I did, for while the old chief leaped wildly backward, his cheek fanned
by the bullet, it was the savage he conversed with who sprang high into
air, coming down dead. Nor did a single warrior make a movement to
flee. Instead of frightening, it enraged, driving them into savage
fury as they stared at the stiffening body of their comrade. Scarcely
had the smoke of the discharge drifted upward when, all their former
impressive silence broken, and yelling like fiends incarnate, they made
an impetuous rush for the hill.

"_Francais_! _Francais_!"

I was certain they used the word, fairly hissing it forth as if in
bitter hatred, yet I had short enough time in which to listen as I
hastily rammed home a second charge with which to greet them as they
came.

"It will be best to draw, Messieurs," spoke De Noyan in a cool,
drawling voice. "Ah, that was better, Master Benteen!" as two of the
advancing mob went stumbling to the bullet. "It leaves but
twenty-seven to the three of us; not such bad odds! Now, friends,
yield no step backward, and strike as you never struck before."

I enjoyed little space in which to glance behind where I knew Eloise
crouched beneath the protecting shadow of the great stone, yet I am
certain I felt the full magic of her eyes upon me. As I wheeled, newly
armed for strife, my hands clutched hard about the rifle-barrel, our
fierce assailants came surging up against the stone wall. It was no
time to note what others did; one realizes little at such a supreme
moment except the flashing in his eyes where menacing weapons play
across his front; the swift blows continually threatening to crush his
guard; the fierce, cruel faces glaring at him eye to eye, and his own
desperate efforts to drive and kill. It all abides in fevered memory
not unlike those pictures of horror coming of a dark night when
lightning leaps from the black void. I mind the first man to reach me,
a burly ruffian, whose shining spear-point missed my throat by so
narr