row as it struck. Then, in a stumbling heap,
horse and rider fell, rolled over, as a sleet of arrows followed
through.

Jackson rolled to one side, rose to his knees. Molly Wingate chanced to
be near. Her scissors, carefully guarded always, because priceless, hung
at her neck. Swiftly she began to saw at the thong which held Jackson's
wrists, bedded almost to the bone and twisted with a stick. She severed
the cord somehow and the man staggered up. Then they saw the arrow
standing out at both sides of his shoulder, driven through the muscles
with the hasty snap of the painted bowman's shot.

"Cut it--break it!" he demanded of her; for all the men now were at the
edge, and there was no one else to aid. And staunch Molly Wingate, her
eyes staring again in horror, took the bloody stem and tried to break it
off, in her second case of like surgery that week. But the shaft was
flexible, tough and would not break.

"A knife--quick! Cut it off above the feather!"

He himself caught the front of the shaft and pushed it back, close to
the head. By chance she saw Jed's knife at his belt as he kneeled, and
drew it. Clumsily but steadily she slashed into the shaft, weakened it,
broke it, pushed the point forward. Jackson himself unhesitatingly
pulled it through, a gush of blood following on either side the
shoulder. There was no time to notice that. Crippled as he was, the man
only looked for weapons. A pistol lay on the ground and he caught it up.

But for the packs and bales that had been thrown against the wheels, the
inmates of the corral would all have fallen under the rain of arrows
that now slatted and thudded in. But they kept low, and the Indians were
so close against the wagons that they could not see under the bodies or
through the wheels. The chocks had not yet been taken out from under the
boxes, so that they stood high. Against such a barricade cavalry was
helpless. There was no warrior who wanted to follow Jackson's example of
getting inside.

For an instant there came no order to fire. The men were reaching into
the wagons to unsling their rifles from the riding loops fastened to the
bows. It all was a trample and a tumult and a whirl of dust under
thudding hoofs outside and in, a phase which could last no more than an
instant. Came the thin crack of a squirrel rifle from the far corner of
the wagon park. The Crow partisan sat his horse just a moment, the
expression on his face frozen there, his mouth slowly clo