Her eyes were burning with horror.  Keok was sobbing, and a moan which she bravely tried to smother in her breast came from Nawadlook.

“And you!” whispered Mary.

“I must remain here.  It is the only way.”

Dumbly she allowed him to lead her back with Keok and Nawadlook.  Keok went through the opening first, then Nawadlook, and Mary Standish last.  She did not touch him again.  She made no movement toward him and said no word, and all he remembered of her when she was gone in the gloom was her eyes.  In that last look she had given him her soul, and no whisper, no farewell caress came with it.

“Go cautiously until you are out of the ravine, then hurry toward the mountains,” were his last words.

He saw their forms fade into dim shadows, and the gray mist swallowed them.

He hurried back, seized a loaded gun, and sprang to the window, knowing that he must continue to deal death until he was killed.  Only in that way could he hold Graham back and give those who had escaped a chance for their lives.  Cautiously he looked out over his gun barrel.  His cabin was a furnace red with flame; streams of fire were licking out at the windows and through the door, and as he sought vainly for a movement of life, the crackling roar of it came to his ears, and so swiftly that his breath choked him, the pitch-filled walls became sheets of conflagration, until the cabin was a seething, red-hot torch of fire whose illumination was more dazzling than the sun of day.

Out into this illumination suddenly stalked a figure waving a white sheet at the end of a long pole.  It advanced slowly, a little hesitatingly at first, as if doubtful of what might happen; and then it stopped, full in the light, an easy mark for a rifle aimed from Sokwenna’s cabin.  He saw who it was then, and drew in his rifle and watched the unexpected maneuver in amazement.  The man was Rossland.  In spite of the dramatic tenseness of the moment Alan could not repress the grim smile that came to his lips.  Rossland was a man of illogical resource, he meditated.  Only a short time ago he had fled ignominiously through fear of personal violence, while now, with a courage that could not fail to rouse admiration, he was exposing himself to a swift and sudden death, protected only by the symbol of truce over his head.  That he owed this symbol either regard or honor did not for an instant possess Alan.  A murderer held it, a man even more vile than a murderer if such a creature existed on earth, and for such a man death was a righteous end.  Only Rossland’s nerve, and what he might have to say, held back the vengeance within reach of Alan’s hand.

He waited, and Rossland again advanced and did not stop until he was within a hundred feet of the cabin.  A sudden disturbing thought flashed upon Alan as he heard his name called.  He had seen no other figures, no other shadows beyond Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly illumined the windows of Sokwenna’s place.  Was it conceivable that Rossland was merely a lure, and the instant he exposed himself in a parley a score of hidden rifles would reveal their treachery?  He shuddered and held himself below the opening of the window.  Graham and his men were more than capable of such a crime.