Kate screamed in agony, clasping her hand over her eyes.
"They are friends! Do not strike!"
But it was too late. The streak of steel cut the air. A sickening thud, a gurgling howl, and the assailant fell, his head half severed from his body. An instant later the big Englishman was in his saddle. A second slash and an Indian at his side went down beneath the ancestral blade!
The two horses plunged forward as a brawny redskin grasped her arm and she felt herself being dragged to the ground. Then a hand clasped her other arm, a big form leaned over behind her, far across the back of her horse. She heard the hiss of something cutting the air, the crash as of splitting wood, a scream, of agony and the Indian's ruthless grasp was loosened. Her horse stumbled and seemed to totter beneath her, but again that arm from aloft exerted itself and it seemed as if she were being lifted to the tree tops. Almost before she could realise it she was upon another horse, clasped in the arm of its rider, and they were off like the wind.
Suddenly she felt the form of the man who held her so closely drop forward with a groan and then straighten again slowly. Exultant yells came from behind them, several arrows whizzed past, and then naught was heard but the thunder of the horse's hoofs upon the frozen road. As her eyes opened involuntarily, terror possessing them, they fell upon the scene far behind. Two hundred yards away her own horse lay struggling in the road, two human forms stretched near it, another dragging itself to the roadside. Three feathered Indians were some fifty yards nearer, gesticulating wildly. Her brain whirred and buzzed, and—consciousness was lost!
When she regained her senses she was lying upon the ground. With feeble eyes she glanced wonderingly about. To a tree near by a horse was hitched, beneath her body were the blankets from the horse and certain garments from the back of man. All was as a dream; she could account for nothing. Studdiford was leaning against the big oak, coatless and as pale as a ghost. Deep lines stretched across his brow and down his mouth; his eyes were closed, as if in pain.
An involuntary moan escaped her lips, and the Captain was at her side almost before it had died away. She was crying.
"Oh, what have I done! What have I done!"
"Calm, yourself, dearest! You are safe—entirely so. See, we are alone, far from those devils. It is but a mile to Jamestown. Be brave and we will soon be at home," he murmured hoarsely, kneeling at her side and lifting her to a sitting posture.
"Home! I can never go home! Oh, God, you do not know—you do not know!"