THE GUN-BRAND

Chloe Elliston lay in the snow, partially stunned by her fall from the
top of the stockade. She was not unconscious--her hearing and vision
were unimpaired, but her numbed brain did not grasp the significance of
the sights and sounds which her senses recorded. She wondered vaguely
how it happened she was lying there in the snow when she distinctly
remembered that she was standing upon the narrow firing ledge urging
MacNair to fight. There was MacNair now! She could see him
distinctly. Even as she looked the man drew his pistol and fired.
Something struck the snow almost within reach of her hand. It was a
revolver. Chloe glanced upward, but saw only the log wall of the
stockade which seemed to tower upward until it touched the sky.

A blood-curdling cry rang out upon the air--a sound she had heard of
nights echoing among rock-rimmed ridges--the pack-cry of the
wolf-breed. She shuddered at the nearness of the sound and turned,
expecting to encounter the red throat and slavering jaws of the
fang-bared leader of the pack, and instead she saw only MacNair.

Then along the wall of the forest came thin grey puffs of smoke, and
her ears rang with the crash of the rifle-volley. She heard the wicked
spit and thud of the bullets as they ripped at the logs above her, and
tiny slivers of bark made black spots upon the snow. A piece fell upon
her face, she brushed it away with her hand. The sounds of the shots
increased ten fold. Answering spurts of grey smoke jutted from the
walls above her. The loop-holes bristled with rifle-barrels!

In her nostrils was the rank smell of powder-smoke, and across the
clearing, straight toward her, dashed many men with ladders. A man
fell almost at her side, his ladder, tilting against the wall, slipped
sidewise into the snow, crashing against one of the protruding
rifle-barrels as it fell. Two other men came, and uprighting the
ladder, climbed swiftly up the wall. Chloe saw that they were
MacNair's Indians.

The scene changed with lightning rapidity. Men with rifles were in the
clearing, now running and shooting, and falling down to remain
motionless in the snow. Above the uproar of the guns a new sound
rolled and swelled. An eery, blood-curdling sound that chilled the
heart and caused the roots of her hair to prickle along the base of her
skull. It was the war-cry of the Yellow Knives as they fired, and ran,
and clambered up the ladders,

The sights and s