“Of course,” she sighed.
The Sioux charged, shrieking, hammering, lashing, all of one purpose: that, us; she, I; my life, her body; and quickly kneeling beside her (I was cool and firm and collected) I felt her hand guide the revolver barrel. But I did not look. She had forbidden, and I kept my eyes upon them, until they were half-way, and in exultation I pulled the trigger, my hand already tensed to snatch and cock and deliver myself under their very grasp. That was a sweetness.
The hammer clicked. There had been no jar, no report. The hammer had only clicked, I tell you, shocking me to the core. A missed cartridge? An empty chamber? Which? No matter. I should achieve for her, first; then, myself. I heard her gasp, they were very near, how they shouted, how the bullets and arrows spatted and hissed, and I had convulsively cocked the gun, she had clutched it—when 310 looking through them, agonized and blinded as I was—looking through them as if they were phantasms I sensed another sound and with sight sharpened I saw.
Then I wrested the revolver from her. I fired pointblank, I fired again (the Colt’s did not fail); they swept by, hooting, jostling; they thudded on; and rising I screeched and waved, as bizarre, no doubt, as any animated scarecrow.
It had been a trumpet note, and a cavalry guidon and a rank of bobbing figures had come galloping, galloping over an imperceptible swell.
She cried to me, from my feet.
“You didn’t do it! You didn’t do it!”
“We’re saved,” I blatted. “Hurrah! We’re saved! The soldiers are here.”
Again the trumpet pealed, lilting silvery. She tottered up, clinging to me. She stared. She released me, and to my gladly questing gaze her face was very white, her eyes struggling for comprehension, like those of one awakened from a dream.
“I must go back to Benton,” she faltered. “I shall never get away from Benton.”