“A knockout,” were the first words, spoken slowly and thickly, but with a great gasp of relief.  “A splinter hit me on the jaw....  I’m all right....”

He sat up dizzily, with the Girl’s arm about him.  In the three or four minutes of forgetfulness neither had noticed that the firing had ceased.  Now there came a tremendous blow at the door.  It shook the cabin.  A second blow, a third—­and the decaying saplings were crashing inward!  David struggled to rise, fell back, and pointed to the revolver.

“Quick—­the revolver!”

Marge sprang to it.  The door crashed inward as she picked it up, and scarcely had she faced about when their enemies were rushing in, with Henry and Hauck in their lead, and Brokaw just behind them.  With a last effort David fought to gain his feet.  He heard a single shot from the revolver, and then, as he rose staggeringly, he saw Marge fighting in Brokaw’s arms.  Hauck came for him, the demon of murder in his face, and as they went down he heard scream after scream come from the Girl’s lips, and in that scream the agonizing call of “Tara!  Tara!  Tara!” Over him he heard a sudden roar, the rush of a great body—­and with that thunder of Tara’s rage and vengeance there mingled a hideous, wolfish snarl from Baree.  He could see nothing.  Hauck’s hands were at his throat.

But the screams continued, and above them came now the cries of men—­cries of horror, of agony, of death; and as Hauck’s fingers loosened at his neck he heard with the snarling and roaring and tumult the crushing of great jaws and the thud of bodies.  Hauck was rising, his face blanched with a strange terror.  He was half up when a gaunt, lithe body shot at him like a stone flung from a catapult and Baree’s inch-long fangs sank into his thick throat and tore his head half from his body in one savage, snarling snap of the jaws.  David raised himself and through the horror of what he saw the Girl ran to him—­unharmed—­and clasped her arms about him, her lips sobbing all the time—­“Tara—­Tara—­Tara....”  He turned her face to his breast, and held it there.  It was ghastly.  Henry was dead.  Hauck was dead.  And Brokaw was dead—­a thousand times dead—­with the grizzly tearing his huge body into pieces.

Through that pit of death David stumbled with the Girl.  The fresh air struck their faces.  The sun of day fell upon them.  The green grass and the flowers of the mountain were under their feet.  They looked down the slope, and saw, disappearing over the crest of the coulee, two men who were running for their lives.

CHAPTER XXVII