Swift as was the draw, McElroy was swifter.
With an upward stroke he flung up the hand that held it. There was a
shot, ringing down the Assiniboine and echoing in the woods, and little
Francette by the stockade wall screamed. With the first flash of metal
Maren Le Moyne had gripped her hands until the nails cut raw, standing
where she had sprung at the stranger's kiss.
She could no more move than the bastioned wall behind her.
For a moment there was deathly silence after that shot. Then
pandemonium broke loose as Negansahima, chief of the Nakonkirhirinons,
flung up his arms, the dull metal bands with their inset stones
catching the crimson light, and fell into the outstretched arms of
Edmonton Ridgar.
A long cry broke from his lips, the death-cry of a warrior.
CHAPTER XIII "A SKIN FOR A SKIN"
For a moment the whole evening scene, red with the late light, was set
in the mould of immobility. The two fighting men at sound of that cry
following hard upon the shot stopped rigidly, still clasped in the grip
of rage, the women staring wide-eyed from the wall, the Bois-Brules,
the leaning eager faces of the wild Nakonkirhirinons, the figure of the
girl in the foreground, all, all were stricken into stillness by that
dirge-like cry.
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