ounds were clean-cut, distinct, intensely
thrilling--but impersonal, like the shifting scenes of a photo-play.
She glanced about for MacNair. Her eyes travelled swiftly from face to
swarthy face of the men who charged out of the timber. She directed
her glance toward the wall, and there, not twenty feet away, she saw
him reach for the rungs of the ladder. And the next moment two forms
crashed backward into the snow. For an instant the girl closed her
eyes, and in that instant her brain awoke with a start. About her the
sounds leaped into terrible significance. She realized that she was
outside the walls of the stockade. That the sights and sounds about
her were intensely real.

The forces of MacNair and Lapierre had locked horns in the final
struggle, and her fate, and the fate of the whole North, hung in the
balance. All about her were the hideous sounds of battle. She was
surprised that she was unafraid; instead, the blood seemed coursing
through her veins with the heat of flame. Her heart seemed bursting
with a wild, fierce joy. Something of which she had always been dimly
conscious--some latent thing which she had always held in check--seemed
suddenly to burst within her. A flood of fancies crowded her brain.
The wicked crack of the rifles became the roar of cannon. Tall masts,
to which clung shot-torn shrouds, reared high above a fog of
powder-smoke, and beyond waved the tops of palm-trees. The spirit of
Tiger Elliston had burst its bounds!

With a cry like the scream of a beast, the girl leaped to her feet.
She tore the heavy mittens from her hands, and reached for the revolver
which lay in the snow at her side. She leaped toward MacNair who had
regained his feet, red with the life-blood of the Indian who lay upon
his back in the snow, staring upward wide-eyed, unseeing, throatless.
She called loudly, but her voice was lost in the mighty uproar, and
MacNair sprang up the ladder.

Like a flash Chloe followed, holding her heavy revolver as he had held
his. She glanced upward; MacNair had disappeared over the edge of the
stockade. The next instant she, too, had reached the top. She paused,
looking downward. MacNair was scrambling to his feet. Ten feet away a
man levelled a gun at him. He fired from his knee, and the man pitched
forward. Upon him, from behind, rushed two men swinging their rifles
high. They had almost reached him when Chloe fired straight down. The
nearest man dropped his ri