MacNair threw back his head, and loud and clear on the frosty air blared the call of the wolf. The whole line of the forest spit flame. The crash and roar of a hundred guns was in the air as the men from behind the barricade replied. Lithe forms carrying ladders dashed across the open space. Many pitched forward before the wall and lay doubled grotesquely upon the white strip of snow, while eager hands carried the ladders on.
Suddenly, above the crash of the guns sounded the war-cry of the Yellow Knives. The whole clearing sprang alive with men, yelling like fiends and firing as they ran. Dark forms swarmed up the ladders and over the walls. MacNair grabbed the rungs of a ladder and drew himself up. Above him climbed the Indian who had carried the ladder. He had no gun, but the grey blade of a long knife flashed wickedly between his teeth.
The Indian crashed backward, carrying MacNair with him into the snow. MacNair struggled to his feet. The Indian lay almost at the foot of the ladder, and, gurgling horribly, rose to his knees. MacNair glanced into his face. The man's eyes were rolled backward until only the whites showed. His lips moved, and he clung to the rungs of the ladder. Blood splashed down his front and reddened the trampled snow, then he fell heavily backward, and MacNair saw that his whole throat had been shot away by the close fired charge of a shotgun.
With a roar, MacNair scrambled up the ladder, automatic in hand. On the firing ledge's narrow rim a riverman snapped together the breech of his shotgun, and looked up—his face close to the face of MacNair. And as he looked his jaw sagged in terror. MacNair jammed the barrel of the automatic into the open mouth and fired.
CHAPTER XXV
THE GUN-BRAND
Chloe Elliston lay in the snow, partially stunned by her fall from the top of the stockade. She was not unconscious—her hearing and vision were unimpaired, but her numbed brain did not grasp the significance of the sights and sounds which her senses recorded. She wondered vaguely how it happened she was lying there in the snow when she distinctly remembered that she was standing upon the narrow firing ledge urging MacNair to fight. There was MacNair now! She could see him distinctly. Even as she looked the man drew his pistol and fired. Something struck the snow almost within reach of her hand. It was a revolver. Chloe glanced upward, but saw only the log wall of the stockade which seemed to tower upward until it touched the sky.
A blood-curdling cry rang out upon the air—a sound she had heard of nights echoing among rock-rimmed ridges—the pack-cry of the wolf-breed. She shuddered at the nearness of the sound and turned, expecting to encounter the red throat and slavering jaws of the fang-bared leader of the pack, and instead she saw only MacNair.
Then along the wall of the forest came thin grey puffs of smoke, and her ears rang with the crash of the rifle-volley. She heard the wicked spit and thud of the bullets as they ripped at the logs above her, and tiny slivers of bark made black spots upon the snow. A piece fell upon her face, she brushed it away with her hand. The sounds of the shots increased ten fold. Answering spurts of grey smoke jutted from the walls above her. The loop-holes bristled with rifle-barrels!