tone. Then, thank God! Up at the storehouse corner
a light came dancing into view. In honest soldier tones boomed out the
query "What's the matter, Six?" and then, followed by a scurry of hoofs,
a mad lashing of quirts, a scramble and rush of frightened steeds, and a
cursing of furious tongues, her own brave young voice rang out on the
night. "This way, sergeant! Help--Quick!"

Black forms of mounts and riders sped desperately away, and then with
all the wiry, sinewy strength of her lithe and slender form, Esther
hurled herself upon another slender figure, speeding after these, afoot.
Desperately she clung to it in spite of savage blows and strainings. And
so they found her, as forth they came,--a rush of shrieking, startled,
candle-bearing women,--of bewildered and unconsciously blasphemous men
of the guard--her arms locked firmly about a girl in semi-savage garb.
The villain of the drama had been whisked away, leaving the woman who
sought to save him to the mercy of the foe.

CHAPTER XXII

BEHIND THE BARS

In the whirl and excitement following the startling outcry from the
flats, all Fort Frayne was speedily involved. The guard came rushing
through the night, Corporal Shannon stumbling over a prostrate
form,--the sentry on Number Six, gagged and bound. The steward shouted
from the hospital porch that Eagle Wing, the prisoner patient, had
escaped through the rear window, despite its height above the sloping
ground. A little ladder, borrowed from the quartermaster's corral, was
found a moment later. An Indian pony, saddled Sioux fashion, was caught
running, riderless, toward the trader's back gate, his horsehair bridle
torn half way from his shaggy head. Sergeant Crabb, waiting for no
orders from the major, no sooner heard that Moreau was gone, than he
rushed his stable guard to the saddleroom, and in fifteen minutes had,
not only his own squad, but half a dozen "casual" troopers circling the
post in search of the trail, and in less than half an hour was hot in
chase of two fleeing horsemen, dimly seen ahead through the starlight,
across the snowy wastes. That snowfall was the Sioux's undoing. Without
it the trail would have been invisible at night. With it, the pursued
were well-nigh hopeless from the start. Precious time had been lost in
circling far out south of the post before making for the ford, whither
Crabb's instinct sent him at once, to the end that he and two of his
fellows ploughed through the fo