“Because....” he began, and stopped.

Baree was growling.  David peered down the slope.

“They are coming!” he said.  “Marge, you must creep back to the cabin!”

“I am going to stay with you, Sakewawin.  See, I will flatten myself out like this—­with Baree.”

She snuggled herself down against the rock and again David peered from his ambush.  Their pursuers were well over the crest of the dip, and he counted nine.  They were advancing in a group and he saw that both Hauck and Brokaw were in the rear and that they were using staffs in their toil upward, and did not carry rifles.  The remaining seven were armed, and were headed by Langdon, who was fifteen or twenty yards in advance of his companions.  David made up his mind quickly to take Langdon first, and to follow up with others who carried rifles.  Hauck and Brokaw, unarmed with guns, were least dangerous just at present.  He would get Brokaw with his fifth shot—­the sixth if he made a miss with the fifth.

A thin strip of shale marked his 100-yard dead-line, and the instant Langdon set his foot on this David fired.  He was scarcely conscious of the yell of defiance that rang from his lips as Langdon whirled in his tracks and pitched down among the men behind him.  He rose up boldly from behind the rock and fired again.  In that huddled and astonished mass he could not miss.  A shriek came up to him.  He fired a third time, and he heard a joyous cry of triumph beside him as their enemies rushed for safety toward the dip from which they had just climbed.  A fourth shot, and he picked out Brokaw.  Twice he missed!  His gun was empty when Brokaw lunged out of view.  Langdon remained an inanimate blotch on the strip of shale.  A few steps below him was a second body.  A third man was dragging himself on hands and knees over the crest of the coulee.  Three—­with six shots!  And he had missed Brokaw!  Inwardly David groaned as he caught the Girl by the arm and hurried with her into the cabin, followed by Baree.

They were not a moment too soon.  From over the edge of the coulee came a fusillade of shots from the heavy-calibre weapons of the mountain men that sent out sparks of fire from the rock.

As he thrust the remaining five cartridges into the chamber of Nisikoos’ rifle, David looked about the cabin.  In one of the farther corners the huge grizzly sat on his quarters as motionless as if stuffed.  In the centre of the single room was an old box stove partly fallen to pieces.  That was all.  Marge had dropped the sapling bar across the door, and stood with her back against it.  There was no window, and the closing of the door had shut out most of the light.  He could see that she was breathing quickly, and the wonderful light that had come into her eyes behind the rock was still glowing at him in the half gloom.  It gave him fresh confidence to see her standing like that, looking at him in that way, telling him without words that a thing had come into her life which had lifted her above fear.  He went to her and took her in his arms again, and again he kissed her sweet mouth, and felt her heart beating against him, and the warm thrill of her arms clinging to him.