“If you expose yourself for one second I swear to Heaven I’ll stand up there against the door until I’m shot!” he threatened.  “I will, so help me God!”

His brain was afire.  He was no longer cool or self-possessed.  He was blind with a wild rage, with a mad desire to reach in some way, with his vengeance, the human beasts who were bent on his death even if it was to be gained at the sacrifice of the Girl.  He rushed to the side of the cabin from which the fresh attack had come, and glared through one of the embrasures between the logs.  He was close to Tara, and he heard the low, steady thunder that came out of the grizzly’s chest.  His enemies were near on this side.  Their fire came from the rocks not more than a hundred yards away, and all at once, in the heat of the great passion that possessed him now, he became suddenly aware that they knew the only weapon he possessed was Nisikoos’ little rifle—­and Hauck’s revolver.  Probably they knew also how limited his ammunition was.  And they were exposing themselves.  Why should he save his last three shots?  When they were gone and he no longer answered their fire they would rush the cabin, beat in the door, and then—­the revolver!  With that he would tear out their hearts as they entered.  He saw Hauck, fired and missed.  A man stood up within seventy yards of the cabin a moment later, firing as fast as he could pump the lever of his gun, and David drove one of Nisikoos’ partridge-killers straight into his chest.  He fired a second time at Hauck—­another miss!  Then he flung the useless rifle to the floor as he sprang back to Marge.

“Got one.  Five left.  Now—­damn ’em—­let then come!”

He drew Hauck’s revolver.  A bullet flew through one of the cracks, and they heard the soft thud of it as it struck Tara.  The growl in the grizzly’s throat burst forth in a roar of thunder.  The terrible sound shook the cabin, but Tara still made no movement, except now to swing his head with open, drooling jaws.  In response to that cry of animal rage and pain a snarl had come from Baree.  He had slunk close to Tara.

“Didn’t hurt him much,” said David, with the fingers of his free hand crumpling the Girl’s hair.  “They’ll stop shooting in a minute or two, and then....”

Straight into his eyes from that farther wall a splinter hurled itself at him with a hissing sound like the plunge of hot iron into water.  He had a lightning impression of seeing the bullet as it tore through the clay between two of the logs; he knew that he was struck, and yet he felt no pain.  His mind was acutely alive, yet he could not speak.  His words had been cut off, his tongue was powerless—­it was like a shock that had paralyzed him.  Even the Girl did not know for a moment or two that he was hit.  The thud of his revolver on the floor filled her eyes with the first horror of understanding, and she sprang to his side as he swayed like a drunken man toward Tara.  He sank down on the floor a few feet from the grizzly, and he heard the Girl moaning over him and calling him by name.  The numbness left him, slowly he raised a hand to his chin, filled with a terrible fear.  It was there—­his jaw, hard, unsmashed, but wet with blood.  He thought the bullet had struck him there.