Scarce realizing the fact, Crawford scrambled back across the barrier and stood to wipe the blood from his face. Then he went staggering under the knife-thrust of an Assiniboine who struck him from behind, following the blow with a leap. Crawford met the leap with his knife, dashed the warrior aside, and stood reeling. The last Dacotah was down, still struggling under a heap of bodies, while Frontin and Black Kettle fought their way toward the crooked tree at the point of the cliff.
Black Kettle gave his death-yell to the crashing impact of a war-club, and vanished. Then Crawford, forgotten, picked up a fallen club and rushed into the thick of the mêlée. He reached Frontin, struck aside a leaping warrior, and together they reached the crooked tree beside the little shelter where the Star Woman lay. There against the twisted pine they stood back to back, while the Stone Men surged in upon them and drew away again, awed by the dark man who laughed as he wielded crimsoned knife, and the other man with blazing eyes and the great star shimmering at his throat as the club swung. Awed for a moment only—then they closed in.
Knife bit delicately, with the deadly precision of a rapier; club thudded and crashed; men died and lay broken, ringing in the pair who fought. The flood surged in again and again, only to be beaten back, shattered, hurled aside from that ring of dead. In again it came, relentless and maddened. Frontin, staggering under a smashing blow, went to his knees, reeled back gasping against the tree-bole. Crawford swung his weapon, but blood was on his hand and it slipped away. He dragged at his knife, drove out with it again and again at the rimming circle of faces—and for the last time that flood drew back. Frontin staggered up.
“Can ye see Phelim Burke now?” he croaked, with a ghastly laugh.
A vibrant note made answer and Frontin lay back against the crooked tree, pinned to it by a shaft whose feathered end stood out of his breast. A stone axe hurtled in air, and Crawford staggered. He threw out his hands and fell forward, and lay across the little arbour of the Star Woman, who caught him in her arms as he fell.
Then the sun rose, and Metaminens came.
CHAPTER IX
WHEN A STAR FALLS, A SOUL HAS PASSED
Sieur Nicholas Perrot came along, making his way among the strewn bodies, to the crooked tree; he wavered a little as he came, for weakness was still heavy upon him. No other was in sight, but from the depths of the forest around came the stabbing reports of guns, the yells of men, the fierce war-cry of the Dacotah warriors, rolling afar in a gradually lessening rout of receding slaughter. None of the Stone Men would return to their own villages from the lake of many stars, and from this day forward the enmity between Dacotah and Assiniboine would never die down. So the dream of Sieur Perrot had ended, after all, in failure.
Perrot came to a sudden halt, aghast at what he beheld and heard. Of the Star Woman he could see nothing, for she lay unconscious beneath Crawford’s body. But there in the morning sunlight stood Frontin, bleeding from a dozen wounds; having torn himself from the shaft that pinned him to the tree, Frontin leaned on a broken musket, laughing horribly at Perrot. Now, lowering an almost useless hand, Frontin stooped and picked up an object that lay beside the silent figure of Crawford. It was the Star of Dreams.
“Dead!” said Frontin thinly. “Dead!”