s striking at faces that came
within the reach of her arm. And then, like a monster created suddenly
by an evil spirit, Graham was at her side. She had a moment's vision of
his cruel, exultant face, his eyes blazing with a passion that was
almost madness, his powerful body lunging upon her. Then his arms came
about her. She could feel herself crushing inside them, and fought
against their cruel pressure, then broke limply and hung a resistless
weight against him. She was not unconscious, but her strength was gone,
and if the arms had closed a little more they would have killed her.

And she could hear--clearly. She heard suddenly the shots that came
from up the kloof, scattered shots, then many of them, and after that
the strange, wild cries that only the Eskimo herdsmen make.

Graham's arms relaxed. His eyes swept the fairies' hiding-place with its
white sand floor, and fierce joy lit up his face.

"Martens, it couldn't happen in a better place," he said to a man who
stood near him. "Leave me five men. Take the others and help Schneider.
If you don't clean them out, retreat this way, and six rifles from this
ambuscade will do the business in a hurry."

Mary heard the names of the men called who were to stay. The others
hurried away. The firing in the kloof was steady now. But there were no
cries, no shouts--nothing but the ominous crack of the rifles.

Graham's arms closed about her again. Then he picked her up and carried
her back into the cavern, and in a place where the rock wall sagged
inward, making a pocket of gloom which was shut out from the light of
day, he laid her upon the carpet of sand.

Where the erosion of many centuries of dripping water had eaten its
first step in the making of the ragged fissure a fairy had begun to
climb down from the edge of the tundra. He was a swift and agile fairy,
very red in the face, breathing fast from hard running, but making not a
sound as he came like a gopher where it seemed no living thing could
find a hold. And the fairy was Stampede Smith.

From the lips of the kloof he had seen the last few seconds of the
tragedy below, and where death would have claimed him in a more
reasonable moment he came down in safety now. In his finger-ends was the
old tingling of years ago, and in his blood the thrill which he had
thought was long dead--the thrill of looking over leveled guns into the
eyes of other men. Time had rolled back, and he was the old Stampede
Smith. He saw un