the trails into
the mountains. It would mean safety for them. He would remain in the
cabin, and fight, until Stampede Smith and the herdsmen came.

The white face against his breast was cold and almost expressionless.
Something in it frightened him. He knew his argument had failed and that
Mary Standish would not go; yet she did not answer him, nor did her lips
move in the effort.

"Go--for _their_ sakes, if not for your own and mine," he insisted,
holding her away from him. "Good God, think what it will mean if beasts
like those out there get hold of Keok and Nawadlook! Graham is your
husband and will protect you for himself, but for them there will
be no hope, no salvation, nothing but a fate more terrible than
death. They will be like--like two beautiful lambs thrown among
wolves--broken--destroyed--"

Her eyes were burning with horror. Keok was sobbing, and a moan which
she bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.

"And _you!_" whispered Mary.

"I must remain here. It is the only way."

Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook. Keok
went through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last.
She did not touch him again. She made no movement toward him and said no
word, and all he remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom was
her eyes. In that last look she had given him her soul, and no whisper,
no farewell caress came with it.

"Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the
mountains," were his last words.

He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed
them.

He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing
that he must continue to deal death until he was killed. Only in that
way could he hold Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance
for their lives. Cautiously he looked out over his gun barrel. His cabin
was a furnace red with flame; streams of fire were licking out at the
windows and through the door, and as he sought vainly for a movement of
life, the crackling roar of it came to his ears, and so swiftly that his
breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became sheets of
conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch of fire
whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.

Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white
sheet at the end of a long pole. It advanced slowly, a little
hesitatingly at first, as if doubtf