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That in the lust and passion of his designs and the arrogance of his power John Graham was not afraid to overstep all law and order, and that he believed Holt would shelter Mary Standish from injury and death, there could no longer be a doubt after the first few swift moments following Sokwenna's rifle-shots from the attic window.
In the "big room" of Sokwenna's cabin, which was patterned after his own, he sat down amid the color and delicate fragrance of masses of flowers, and the girl seated herself near him and waited for him to speak. "You love flowers," he said lamely. "I want to thank you for the flowers you placed in my cabin. And the other things."
Then, suddenly, he saw her under the Chinese lanterns in front of his cabin. Sokwenna, so old that he hobbled double and looked like a witch, stood beside her. In a moment Sokwenna's head disappeared, and there came the booming of a tom-tom. As quickly as the crowd had gathered about him, it fell away. The beaters squatted themselves in their semicircle again. Fireworks began to go off.
A sudden disturbing thought flashed upon Alan as he heard his name called. He had seen no other figures, no other shadows beyond Rossland, and the burning cabin now clearly illumined the windows of Sokwenna's place. Was it conceivable that Rossland was merely a lure, and the instant he exposed himself in a parley a score of hidden rifles would reveal their treachery?
And then, slowly and with difficulty, he pressed the trigger, and Sokwenna's last shot sped on its mission. At the sound of the shot Alan looked through the window. For a moment Rossland stood motionless. Then the pole in his hands wavered, drooped, and fell to the earth, and Rossland sank down after it making no sound, and lay a dark and huddled blot on the ground.
"If you don't stay there, I'll open the door and go outside to fight! Do you understand? Stay there!" His clenched fist was in their faces, his voice almost a shout. He saw another white spurt of dust; the bullet crashed in tinware, and following the crash came a shriek from Keok in the attic. In that upper gloom Sokwenna's gun had fallen with a clatter.
The ridge beyond the coulée out of which Mary Standish had come with wild flowers soon closed like a door between him and Sokwenna's cabin, and the straight trail to the mountains lay ahead, and over this Alan set the pace, with Tautuk and Amuk Toolik and a caravan of seven pack-deer behind him, bearing supplies for the herdsmen. Alan had scarcely spoken to the two men.
The blazing cabin illumined the open on each side of Sokwenna's place, but deepened the shadows in the ravine, and a few seconds later they stood hand in hand in the blanket of fog that hid the coulée. Suddenly the shots grew scattering above them, then ceased entirely. This was not what Alan had hoped for.
The savage roar of guns answered Sokwenna's fusillade, and a hail of bullets crashed against the log walls. Two of them found their way through the windows like hissing serpents, and with a single movement Alan was at Mary's side and had crumpled her down on the floor beside Keok and Nawadlook. His face was white, his brain a furnace of sudden, consuming fire.
I'm glad of that, for if they were pursued and overtaken by men like Graham and Rossland " "Death would be better," finished Mary Standish, and her hand clung more tightly to his arm. "Yes, I think so. But that can not happen now. Out in the open they had us at a disadvantage. But we can hold Sokwenna's place until Stampede and the herdsmen come.
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