But the white men were not deceived by the trading-post salutation.

“He’s a liar!” called out the voice of Jackson.  “They’re not Sioux—­they’re Crows, an’ out for war!  Don’t let ’em in, boys!  For God’s sake, keep ’em out!”

It was a brave man’s deed.  The wonder was his words were not his last, for though the Crows did not understand all his speech, they knew well enough what he meant.  One brave near him struck him across the mouth with the heavy wooden stock of his Indian whip, so that his lips gushed blood.  A half dozen arrows turned toward him, trembling on the strings.  But the voice of their partisan rose in command.  He preferred a parley, hoping a chance might offer to get inside the wagon ring.  The loose stock he counted safe booty any time they liked.  He did not relish the look of the rifle muzzles at a range of twenty feet.  The riders were now piled in almost against the wheels.

“Swap!” exclaimed the Crow leader ingratiatingly, and held out his hand.  “How, cola!”

“Don’t believe him!  Don’t trust him, men!”

Again Jackson’s voice rose.  As the savages drew apart from him, to hold him in even better bow range, one young brave, hideously barred in vermilion and yellow, all the time with an arrow at the prisoner’s back, the men in the wagon corral now saw that Jackson’s hands were tied behind his back, so that he was helpless.  But still he sat his own horse, and still he had a chance left to take.

“Look out!” he called high and clear.  “Get away from the hole!  I’m comin’ in!”

Before anyone fully caught his meaning he swung his horse with his legs, lifted him with his heels and made one straight, desperate plunge for the gap, jostling aside the nearest two or three of his oppressors.

It was a desperate man’s one hope—­no hope at all, indeed, for the odds were fifty to one against him.  Swift as was his movement, and unprepared as his tormentors were for it, just as the horse rose to his leap over the wagon tongue, and as the rider flung himself low on his neck to escape what he knew would come, a bow twanged back of him.  They all heard the zhut! of the arrow as it struck.  Then, in a stumbling heap, horse and rider fell, rolled over, as a sleet of arrows followed through.

Jackson rolled to one side, rose to his knees.  Molly Wingate chanced to be near.  Her scissors, carefully guarded always, because priceless, hung at her neck.  Swiftly she began to saw at the thong which held Jackson’s wrists, bedded almost to the bone and twisted with a stick.  She severed the cord somehow and the man staggered up.  Then they saw the arrow standing out at both sides of his shoulder, driven through the muscles with the hasty snap of the painted bowman’s shot.

“Cut it—­break it!” he demanded of her; for all the men now were at the edge, and there was no one else to aid.  And staunch Molly Wingate, her eyes staring again in horror, took the bloody stem and tried to break it off, in her second case of like surgery that week.  But the shaft was flexible, tough and would not break.