I heard shots not far away; but we were all too closely jammed to do more than fight in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle with club and knife.
The saddle is a poor place from which to swing a rifle, yet I stood high in my wooden stirrups and struck madly at every Indian head I saw, battering their faces till from the very horror of it they gave slowly back.

I won a yard--two yards--three,--my horse biting viciously at their naked flesh, and lashing out with both fore-feet like a fiend, while I swept my gun-stock in a widening circle of death.

For the moment, I dreamed we might drive them back; but then those devils blocked me, clinging to my horse's legs in their death agony, and laughing back into my face as I struck them down.
Once I heard De Croix swearing in French beside me, and glanced around through the mad turmoil to see him cutting and hacking with broken blade, pushing into the midst of the melee as if he had real joy in the encounter.

While I thus had him in view, a knife whistled through the air, there was a quick dazzle in the sunlight, and he reeled backward off his horse and disappeared in the ruck below.
Never in a life of fighting have I battled as I did then, feeling that I alone might hope to reach her side and beat back these foul fiends till help should come to us.

The stock of my rifle shattered like glass; but I swung the iron barrel with what seemed to me the strength of twenty men, striking, thrusting, stabbing, my teeth set, my eyes blurring with a mist of blood, caring for nothing except to hit and kill.