Presently a bright light flared up outside of the inclosure.  One of the tents had caught fire.  The Indians yelled triumphantly.  Neale and his companions crouched back in the shadow.  The burning tent set fire to the tent adjoining.  They blazed up like paper, lighting the camp and slopes.  But not an Indian was visible.  They stopped yelling.  Then Neale heard the thudding of arrows.  Almost at once the roof of the engineers’ quarters, which was merely strips of canvas over a wooden frame, burst into flames.  In a single moment the roof of the cabin was blazing.  More tents ignited, flared up, and the scene became almost as light as day.  Rifles again began to crack.  The crafty Indians poured a hail of bullets into the inclosure and the walls of the buildings.  Still not an Indian was visible for the defenders to shoot at.

Anderson, Neale, and Baxter were in grim consultation.  They agreed on the scout’s dictum:  “Reckon the game’s up.  Hustle the women out.”

Neale crawled along the inclosure to the opening.  On that side of the buildings there was dark shadow.  But it was lifting.  He ran along the wall, and he heard the whistle of bullets.  Back of the cabin the Indians appeared to have gathered in force.  Neale got to the corner and peered round.  The blazing tents lighted up this end.  He saw the graders break and run, some on his side of the cabin.  He clambered in.  A door of this room was open, and through it Neale saw the roof of the engineers’ quarters blazing.  He heard the women screaming.  Evidently they too were running out to the in-closure.  Neale hurried into the room where he had left Allie.  He called.  There was no answer, but a growing roar outside apparently drowned his voice.  It was dark in this room.  He felt along the wall, the fireplace, the corner.  Allie was not there.  The room was empty.  His hands groping low along the floor came in contact with the bag he had left in Allie’s charge.  It contained the papers he had taken the precaution to save.  Probably in her flight to escape from the burning cabin she had dropped it.  But that was not like Allie:  she would have clung to the bag while strength and sense were hers.  Perhaps she had not gotten out of the cabin.  Neale searched again, growing more and more aware of the strife outside.  He heard the crackling of wood over his head.  Evidently the cabin was burning like tinder.  There were men in the back room, fighting, yelling, crowding.  Neale could see only dim, burly forms and the flashes of guns.  Smoke floated thickly there.  Some one, on the inside or outside, was beating out the door with an axe.

He decided quickly that whatever Allie might have done she would not have gone into that room.  He retraced his steps, groping, feeling everywhere in the dark.

Suddenly the crackling, the shots, the yells ceased, or were drowned in a volume of greater sound.  Neale ran to the window.  The flare from the burning tents was dying down.  But into the edge of the circle of light he saw loom a line of horsemen.