"Where is—the Girl?" he demanded.
Brokaw's face revealed his hatred now, the taunting triumph of his power over this man who was a spy. He bared his yellow teeth in an exultant grin.
"Tricked her," he snarled. "Tricked her—like you tricked me! Got the Indian woman to steal her clothes, an' she's up there in her room—alone—an' naked! An' she won't have any clothes until I say so, for she's mine—body and soul...."
David's clenched hand shot out, and in his blow was not alone the cumulated force of all his years of training but also of the one great impulse he had ever had to kill. In that instant he wanted to strike a man dead—a red-visaged monster, a fiend; and his blow sent Brokaw's huge body reeling backward, his head twisted as if his neck had been broken. He had not time to see what happened after that blow. He did not see Brokaw fall. A piercing interruption—a scream that startled every drop of blood in his body—turned him toward the cage. Ten paces from him, standing at the inner edge of that circle of astounded and petrified men, was the Girl! At first he thought she was standing naked there—naked under the staring eyes of the fiends about him. Her white arms gleamed bare, her shoulders and breast were bare, her slim, satiny body was naked to the waist, about which she had drawn tightly—as if in a wild panic of haste—an old and ragged skirt! It was the Indian woman's skirt. He caught the glitter of beads on it, and for a moment he stared with the others, unable to move or cry out her name. And then a breath of wind flung back her hair and he saw her face the colour of marble. She was like a piece of glistening statuary, without a quiver of life that his eyes could see, without a movement, without a breath. Only her hair moved, stirred by the air, flooded by the sun, floating about her shoulders and down her bare back in a lucent cloud of red and gold fires—and out of this she was staring at the cage, stunned into that lifeless and unbreathing posture of horror by what she saw. David did not follow her eyes. He heard the growl and roar and clashing jaws of the fighting beasts; they were down again; one of the 6-inch trees that formed the bars of the cage snapped like a walking stick as their great bodies lurched against it; the earth shook, the very air seemed to tremble with the terrific force of the struggle—and only the Girl was looking at that struggle. Every eye was on her now, and David sprang suddenly forth from the circle of men, calling her name.
Ten paces separated them; half that distance lay between the Girl and the cage. With the swiftness of an arrow sprung from the bow she had leaped into life and crossed that space. In a tenth part of a second David would have been at her side. He was that tenth of a second too late. A gleaming shaft, she had passed between the bars and a tumult of horrified voices rose above the roar of battle as the girl sprang at the beasts with her naked hands.
Her voice came to David in a scream.
"Tara—Tara—Tara——"
His brain reeled when he saw her down—down!—with her little fists pummelling at a great, shaggy head; and in him there was the sickening weakness of a drunken man as he squeezed through that 18-inch aperture and almost fell at her side. He did not know that he had drawn his automatic; he scarcely realized that as fast as his fingers could press the trigger he was firing shot after shot, with the muzzle of his pistol so close to the head of Tara's enemy that the reports of the weapon were deadened as if muffled under a thick blanket. It was a heavy weapon. A stream of lead burned its way into the grizzly's brain. There were eleven shots and he fired them all in that wild, blood-red frenzy; and when he stood up he had the girl close in his arms, her naked breast throbbing pantingly against him. The clasp of his hands against her warm flesh cleared his head, and while Tara was rending at the throat of his dying foe, David drew her swiftly out of the cage and flung about her the light jacket he had worn.
"Go to your room," he said. "Tara is safe. I will see that no harm comes to him now."
The cordon of men separated for them as he led her through. The crowd was so silent that they could hear Tara's low throat-growling. And then, breaking that silence in a savage cry, came Brokaw's voice.