their guns, firing
with the swift surety of veterans of many a running fight. They reached
their objective unwounded; and when they reached it a fringe of dead
foes marked their passage along the face of the hostile array. Once
within the door, they rapidly reloaded and sprayed lead along the
trenches, which, though now nearly full, had become a dead-line past
which no Red Bone sought to go.

Up on the earth embankments within the chief's house the four Americans
fought steadily on; the soldiers shooting as coolly as if engaged merely
in rapid-fire target practice, the silent Rand methodically driving
arrows in swift succession from his wall-slit. Arrows thudded thickly
into the logs masking them. Bullets, too, slammed into their
rampart--bullets from the heavy revolvers of Schwandorf, who, ever
keeping himself protected by the bodies of his cannibal allies, shot
with both hands as the chance came. And the German could shoot. With
only the small gun muzzles as targets, he planted bullets so close as to
knock dirt more than once into the eyes of the riflemen and render them
momentarily useless. After a time he got a bullet fair into a loophole.

Knowlton grunted suddenly, swayed back, toppled, fell down the parapet.
For a few seconds he lay still.

"Looey!" howled Tim. "How ye fixed? Hurt bad?"

The lieutenant heaved himself into a sitting position, stared around,
clapped a hand to his right shoulder, looked at the red smear his palm
brought away, reeled up, and scrambled back to his rifle. Schwandorf's
bullet had drilled clear through the shoulder, and in falling his head
had struck one of the upright poles. Without a word he got his gun into
action once more, shooting now from the left shoulder. Tim, with a tight
grin of relief, devoted himself once more to trying to shoot down the
dodging German.

The encircling Mayorunas, their first paroxysm of fury vented, now
settled in cold hate to their work. On all sides their clubmen and
spearmen were bludgeoning and stabbing at the close-packed Red Bones,
leaping in, killing, springing back and onward with terrible efficiency.
Beyond these a thin but deadly line of bowmen poured arrows in
high-looping curves over the heads of the hand-to-hand combatants, the
shafts whizzing far up, turning, and plunging down unerringly into the
center of the enemy force. Each of those arrows could, and many did, end
the lives of two or three adversaries by gouging their skins and lettin