"Steven! Steven Knox—alive! Oh, my God; you have answered my prayer!"
She found me, heedless of all the horror in between, as though guided by some instinct, and dropped on her knees beside me. I felt a tear fall on my cheek, and then the warm, eager pressure of her lips to mine, I could not speak; I could only hold her close with my one hand. The flames beyond leaped up, widening their gleam of light, revealing more clearly the dear face and the joy with which she gazed down upon me.
"You are suffering," she cried. "What can I do? Is it this Indian's body?"
"Yes," I breathed, the effort of speaking an agony. "He lies directly across my chest, a dead weight."
It taxed her strength to the utmost, but, oh, the immediate relief! With the drawing of a full breath I felt a return of manhood, a revival of life. Another body pinned my limbs to the floor, but this was more easily disposed of. Then I managed to lift myself, but with the first attempt her arm was about my shoulders.
"No; not alone—let me help you. Do you really think you can stand! Why, you are hurt, dear; this is a knife wound in your side. It looks ugly, but is not deep and bleeds no longer. Are there other injuries?"
"My head rings, and this left arm appears paralyzed, from blows, no doubt, and there are spots on my body which feel like burns. No, I am not in bad shape. Now let me stand alone; that's better. Good God, what a scene!"
The fire, by this time blazing brightly, gave us a full view of the entire dismantled interior. The cabin was a complete wreck, the roof practically all gone and the upper logs of the side walls either fallen within or dangling in threat. Above clung jagged sections, trembling with their own weight; the lower walls were blackened by powder and stained with blood; the floor was strewn with dead bodies, disfigured and distorted, lying exactly as they fell, while littered all about were weapons, dropped by stricken hands. Clearly enough it had been the sudden plunge of heavy timbers and the dislodgment of those upper logs, which accounted for this havoc of death. There were dead there pierced by bullets and brained by rifle stocks, but the many had met their fate under the avalanche of logs, and amid the burning glare of exploding powder.
Only between arched timbers and sections of fallen roof could we move at all, and beneath the network of this entanglement the majority of the bodies lay, crushed and mangled. I saw Kirby, free from his bonds, but dead beneath a heavy beam. His face was toward us and the flicker of flame revealed a dark spot on his forehead—his life had never been crushed out by that plunging timber which pinned him there; it had been ended by a bullet. My eyes sought hers, in swift memory of my last order, and she must have read my thought.
"No," she said, "not that, Steven. It was the boy who shot him. Oh, please, can we not go? There is light already in the sky overhead—see. Take me away from here—anywhere, outside."