"The fort is ours," cried Drusie joyfully. "Run, Helen, and get the flag before Hal can release himself."
Helen dashed off to do as she was told, but as she was flying across the clearing she was suddenly brought up by a perfect hailstorm of bullets, which played round her in all directions, and caused her to fly back to the camp with the astounding information that it was not Hal who had been defending the fort, but somebody else.
"If you had not behaved like a set of duffers who had all lost their heads, I could have told you that myself," said Hal crushingly. "But instead of letting me explain, you all flung yourselves upon me as if I were your greatest enemy."
"Well, of course, we thought that you were," said Drusie. "We thought that you had sallied out from the fort to take us all prisoners. But if it is not you who have been in the fort all this time, who is it?"
But that was just what none knew; and Hal was as much in the dark as the rest. He had awaked a quarter of an hour ago, feeling all right again. "And so, I thought," he added, "that I had been rather a pig about this birthday, and that, if you would have me, I'd come out and defend the fort."
"Have you?" cried Drusie joyfully. "Of course, we will—won't we, Jim?"
"Rather," Jim said; and that word of assent was heartily echoed by both Helen and Tommy. "But I say, Drusie, if it is not Hal in the fort, who on earth can it be?"
"I know," Drusie said, after a moment of puzzled silence; "it must be our friend—Jumbo's boy."
When Hal heard of the lassos he cried out that it was no less a person than Dodds.
"I know it is he," he cried excitedly, "for he is awfully keen about lassos. He has been reading about the cowboys in Texas, and the other day he was practising on the lawn."