leaped to follow her but my quick eye caught the short angle of
the Indian's advantage. I turned, white and anguish-stricken, toward my
companions. Then it was that I heard O'mie's low words:

"Bedad, Phil, an' that's how it is wid ye, is it? Then we've got to kill
that Injun, just for grandeur."

His voice set a mighty force tingling in every nerve. The thrill of that
moment is mine after all these years, for in that instant I was born
again. I believe no terror nor any torture could have stayed me then,
and death would have seemed sublime if only I could have flung myself
between the girl and this drink-crazed creature seeking in his
irresponsible madness to take her life. It was not alone that this was
Marjie, and there swept over me the full realization of what she meant
to me. Something greater than my own love and life leaped into being
within me. It was the swift, unworded comprehension of a woman's worth,
of the sacredness of her life, and her divine right to the protection of
her virtue; a comprehension of the beauty and blessing of the American
home, of the obedient daughter, the loving wife, the Madonna mother, of
all that these mean as the very foundation rock of our nation's strength
and honor. It swept my soul like a cleansing fire. The words for this
came later, but the force of it swayed my understanding in that
instant's crisis. Some boys grow into manhood as the years roll along,
and some leap into it at a single bound. It was a boy, Phil Baronet, who
went out after the cows that careless summer day so like all the other
summer days before it. It was a man, Philip Baronet, who followed them
home that dark night, fearing neither the roar of the angry storm cloud
that threshed in fury above us, nor any human being, though he were
filled with the rage of madness.

At O'mie's word I dashed after Marjie. Behind me came Bud Anderson and
Dave Mead, followed by every other boy and girl. O'mie rode beside me,
and not one of us thought of himself. It was all done in a flash, and I
marvel that I tell its mental processes as if they were a song sung in
long-metre time. But it is all so clear to me. I can see the fiery
radiance of that sky blotted by the two riders before me. I can hear the
crash of the ponies' feet, and I can even feel the sweep of wind out of
that storm-cloud turning the white under-side of the big cottonwood's
leaves uppermost and cutting cold now against the hot air. And then
there rises up