r breath came
shorter, she held me the tighter. Second by second they gained on
us, relentlessly. Were we near the fort? Hoarse shouts answered the
question, but they seemed distant--too distant. The savages were
gaining, and Polly Ann's breath quicker still. She staggered, but the
brave soul had no thought of faltering. I had a sight of a man on a
plough horse with dangling harness coming up from somewhere, of the man
leaping off, of ourselves being pitched on the animal's bony back
and clinging there at the gallop, the man running at the side. Shots
whistled over our heads, and here was the brown fort. Its big gates
swung together as we dashed through the narrowed opening. Then, as he
lifted us off, I knew that the man who had saved us was Tom himself. The
gates closed with a bang, and a patter of bullets beat against them like
rain.

Through the shouting and confusion came a cry in a voice I knew, now
pleading, now commanding.

"Open, open! For God's sake open!"

"It's Ray! Open for Ray! Ray's out!"

Some were seizing the bar to thrust it back when the heavy figure of
McGary crushed into the crowd beside it.

"By Job, I'll shoot the man that touches it!" he shouted, as he tore
them away. But the sturdiest of them went again to it, and cursed him.
And while they fought backward and forward, the lad's mother, Mrs. Ray,
cried out to them to open in tones to rend their hearts. But McGary had
gained the bar and swore (perhaps wisely) that he would not sacrifice
the station for one man. Where was Ray?

Where was Ray, indeed? It seemed as if no man might live in the hellish
storm that raged without the walls: as if the very impetus of hate and
fury would carry the ravages over the stockade to murder us. Into the
turmoil at the gate came Colonel Clark, sending the disputants this way
and that to defend the fort, McGary to command one quarter, Harrod and
Bowman another, and every man that could be found to a loophole, while
Mrs. Ray continued to run up and down, wringing her hands, now facing
one man, now another. Some of her words came to me, shrilly, above the
noise.

"He fed you--he fed you. Oh, my God, and you are grateful--grateful!
When you were starving he risked his life--"

Torn by anxiety for my friend, I dragged myself into the nearest cabin,
and a man was fighting there in the half-light at the port. The huge
figure I knew to be my friend Cowan's, and when he drew back to load I
seized his arm, shouting