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 under him lust and passion and murder, as in other days he had seen them, and between him and desire there was neither law nor conscience to bar the way, and his dream—­a last great fight—­was here to fill the final unwritten page of a life’s drama that was almost closed.  And what a fight, if he could make that carpet of soft, white sand unheard and unseen.  Six to one!  Six men with guns at their sides and rifles in their hands.  What a glorious end it would be, for a woman—­and Alan Holt!

He blessed the firing up the kloof which kept the men’s faces turned that way; he thanked God for the sound of combat, which made the scraping of rock and the rattle of stones under his feet unheard.  He was almost down when a larger rock broke loose, and fell to the ledge.  Two of the men turned, but in that same instant came a more thrilling interruption.  A cry, a shrill scream, a woman’s voice filled with madness and despair, came from the depth of the cavern, and the five men stared in the direction of its agony.  Close upon the cries came Mary Standish, with Graham behind her, reaching out his hands for her.  The girl’s hair was flying, her face the color of the white sand, and Graham’s eyes were the eyes of a demon forgetful of all else but her.  He caught her.  The slim body crumpled in his arms again while pitifully weak hands beat futilely in his face.