For only the fraction of a second it held, that tense
waiting.
Then from nine hundred throats there shot up to the sky, turquoise and
pink and calm, such a sound as all the northland knew,--the wild blood-
cry of the savage.
It filled the arching aisles of the shouldering forest, rolled down the
breast of the river, and echoed in the cabins of the post, and with it
there broke loose the leashed wildness of the Indians. There was one
vast surging around the lodge where Ridgar knelt with the figure of the
chief in his arms, another where a tumbling horde fought to get to the
factor and De Courtenay.
At the stockade gate Prix Laroux, swift of foot and strong as twenty
men in the exigency of the moment, swept the women into his arms and
rushed them within the post. Above the hideous turmoil his voice rose
in carrying command,
"Into the post! Into the post,--every man inside! Man the rampart!"
It fell on ears startled into apathy by the suddenness of the tragic
happening, and there was a wild confusion of white people pulling out
of the mass like threads, all headed for the open gate. Swift as light
those guards of the guns on the rampart sprang to place, the watcher of
the portal swung the great studded gate ready for the clanging close,
and, in a twinkling, so alert to peril do they become who pierce the
wilderness, there were without only that howling mass of savages, De
Courtenay, McElroy, and Edmonton Ridgar gazing with dimmed vision into
the fast glazing eyes of the dying chief.
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