Indian attack on the cabin, the
horrors of that last struggle, the gleaming tomahawk descending on my
head to deal the death blow, the savage eyes of my assailant glaring
into mine, and that awful flash of red and yellow flame, swept across
my mind one by one with such intense vividness as to cause me to give
vent to a moan of agony.

I could see nothing, hear nothing. All about was impenetrable
blackness and the silence of the grave. I found myself unable to move
my body and when I desperately attempted to do so, even the slightest
motion brought pain. I became conscious also of a weight crushing down
upon me, and stifling my breath. One of my arms was free; I could move
it about within narrow limits, although it ached as from a serious
burn. By use of it I endeavored through the black darkness to learn
the nature of that heavy object lying across my chest, feeling at it
cautiously. My fingers touched cold, dead flesh, from contact with
which they shrank in horror, only to encounter a strand of coarse hair.
The first terror of this discovery was overwhelming, yet I persevered,
satisfying myself that it was the half-naked body of an Indian--a very
giant of a fellow--which lay stretched across me, an immovable weight.
Something else, perhaps another dead man, held my feet as though in a
vise, and when I ventured to extend my one free arm gropingly to one
side, the fingers encountered a moccasined foot. Scarcely daring to
breathe, I lay staring upward and, far above, looking out through what
might be a jagged, overhanging mass of timbers, although scarcely
discernible, my eyes caught the silver glimmer of a star.

I was alive--alive! Whatever had occurred in that fateful second to
deflect that murderous tomahawk, its keen edge had failed to reach me.
And what had occurred? What could account for my escape; for this
silence and darkness; for these dead bodies; for the flight of our
assailants? Indians always removed their dead, yet seemingly this
place was a perfect charnel house, heaped with slain. Surely there
could be but one answer--the occurrence of a disaster so complete, so
horrifying, that the few who were left alive had thought only of
instant flight. Then it was that the probable truth came to me--that
flash and roar; that last impression imprinted on my brain before utter
darkness descended upon me, must have meant an explosion, an upheaval
shattering the cabin, bringing the roof down upon the stru