A splintering crash sent him reeling back into the centre of the cabin with Marge in his arms.  The crash had come simultaneously with the report of a rifle, and both saw where the bullet had passed through the door six inches above David’s head, carrying a splinter as large as his arm with it.  He had not thought of the door.  It was the cabin’s vulnerable point, and he sprang out of line with it as a second bullet crashed through and buried itself in the log wall at their backs.  Baree growled.  A low rumble rose in Tara’s throat, but he did not move.

In each of the four log walls were the open chinks which Marge had told him about, and he sprang to one of these apertures that was wide enough to let the barrel of his rifle through and looked in the direction from which the two shots had come.  He was in time to catch a movement among the rocks on the side of the mountain about two hundred yards away, and a third shot tore its way through the door, glanced from the steel top of the stove, and struck like a club two feet over Tara’s back.  There were two men up there among the rocks, and their first shots were followed by a steady bombardment that fairly riddled the door.  David could see their heads and shoulders and the gleam and faint puffs of their rifles, but he held his fire.  Where were the other four, he wondered?  Without doubt Hauck and Brokaw were now armed with the rifles of the men who had fallen, so he had six to deal with.  Cautiously he thrust the muzzle of his rifle through the crack, and watched his chance, aiming a foot and a half above the spot where a pair of shoulders and a head would appear in a moment.  His chance came, and he fired.  The head and shoulders disappeared, and exultantly he swung his rifle a little to the right and sent another shot as the second man exposed himself.  He, too, disappeared, and David’s heart was thumping wildly in the thought that his bullets had reached their marks when both heads appeared again and a hail of lead spattered against the cabin.  The men among the rocks were no longer aiming at the door, but at the spot from which he had fired, and a bullet ripped through so close that a splinter stung his face, and he felt the quick warm flow of blood down his cheek.  When the Girl saw it her face went as white as death.

“I can’t get them with this rifle, Marge,” he groaned.  “It’s wild—­wild as a hawk!  Good God!...”

A crash of fire had come from behind the cabin, and another bullet, finding one of the gaping cracks, passed between them with a sound like the buzz of a monster bee.  With a sudden cry he caught her in his arms and held her tight, as if in his embrace he would shield her.

“Is it possible—­they would kill you to get me?”

He loosed his hold of her, sprang to the broken stove, and began dragging it out of the line of fire that came through the door.  The Girl saw his peril and sprang to help him.  He had no time to urge her back.  In ten seconds he had the stove close to the wall, and almost forcibly he made her crouch down behind it.