wheel your horses before we plug you!"

I could not see into the hollow beneath the wall because it was some
distance off and the snow whirled about it, but I could imagine the
Winchester barrel resting on the sods while a steady eye stared through
the sights, and knew that neither Ormond nor Harry carried weapons. So I
started at a flounder toward them, roaring as I went:

"Go back--for your life, go back!"

They evidently did not hear me, though we were afterwards to hear the
reason for an apparent act of madness. Harry was always reckless, and
Ormond coolly brave, while as I ran I saw the two horses flying at the
wall. A streak of red flame blazed out low down in the snow, a mounted man
passed me leading two horses, and I neither knew nor cared whether he
noticed me, for I felt suddenly dizzy, wondering whether the bullet had
gone home. Neither did I hear any report at all, for my whole attention
was concentrated on the black shapes of the riders breast high beyond the
wall. Then one beast rose into the air, and I saw Ormond swing a riding
crop round backward as though for the sword cut from behind the shoulder.
A soft thud followed, Harry's horse cleared the sods like a bird, and I
blazed off my rifle at a venture toward the hollow as they thundered neck
and neck past me. It was clear that empty-handed they had ridden either
over or through the foe.

After that events followed too rapidly to leave a clear impression. A pair
of half-seen figures which appeared at the other end of the hollow
scrambled for the empty saddles, and one seemed to help his companion.
Then they vanished into the whirling haze, and Colonel Carrington's
Winchester rapped as he emptied the magazine at the flying foe, while by
the time the new arrivals had mastered their excited beasts there was only
a narrow circle of prairie shut in by blinding snow.

"Very glad to find you safe, sir," said Ormond. "We met the Blackfoot who
peddles moccasins, and he told us he had seen four men he thought were
Stevens' gang heading for Carrington, so we pushed on as fast as we could.
Perhaps if we three went on with rifles we might overtake them."

Harry looked eager, and I was willing, but Colonel Carrington was wisest:

"You have done gallantly," he said, "but it would only be throwing lives
away. The snow is coming in earnest, and it strikes me they have gone to
their account unless they find shelter in a coulee."

Then they dismounted, and a hired