At last some savage cast from farther back amid the mass of howling contestants; I failed to see the upraised hand that grasped the weapon, but caught its sudden gleam as it sped onward, and De Croix was pinned helpless, the steel blade wedging his long hair deep into the wood.
A dozen screaming squaws now hustled forward the materials for a fire; I saw branches, roots, and leaves, piled high about his knees, and marked with a shudder the film of blue smoke as it soared upward ere the flame caught the green wood.

Then suddenly some one kicked the pile over, hurling it into the faces of those who stooped beside it; and the fierce clamor ceased as if by magic.
I staggered to my knees, wondering what it could mean,--this strange silence after all the uproar.

Then I saw.

Out from the shadows, as if she herself were one, the strange girl who had been my companion glided forward into the red radius of the flame, and faced them, her back to De Croix.
Never shall I fail to recall her as she then appeared,--a veritable goddess of light fronting the fiends of darkness.

With cheeks so white as to seem touched with death, her dark eyes glowed in consciousness of power, while her long, sweeping tresses rippled below her waist, gleaming in a wild red beauty almost supernatural.