It infuriated Steve. The blood of fighting ancestors of the sea rose in his brain and suffused his eyes, so that literally he saw red in the night’s blackness. Fingers gouged his eyeballs. It was agony. With a howl of rage he lifted his big-boned young body and lunged down with one hundred and seventy pounds, his knees landing in the other’s stomach. The clutching hands relaxed, the figure went limp. Steven got to his feet, stumbling backward over the fallen rifle. He recovered the weapon and faced about to charge the darkness and any other attacks it harbored. A flash of lightning showed the figure of an almost nude Indian lying before him, face turned to the sky, eyes open. Steven felt overcome by weakness; his legs were turned to water. He struggled back toward where the wagons must be, missed them completely, had a sense of being utterly alone in a limitless space of storm and prairie. Blindly and a trifle wildly he headed in the opposite direction; then a brilliant flash showed him the wagons lying to his left. A few moments later he bumped into the captain for the night, pacing his rounds about the wagons. A sudden lull of the thunder and winds had come and the rain had lessened to a mild, steady downpour. “Indians,” Steven gasped to the captain. He pointed toward the bush where he had taken his station. “Guess I killed him!” He sank dazedly upon a bale of cargo, his eyeballs still tortured. Half a dozen men had already spread in a cordon in some deep matted grass beyond the corral. A dozen more came running; the camp was alert. There was firing, muffled and sounding far away. Steve pulled himself together and hurried toward the sound. The _mayordomo_ rose up out of the grass. “On guard!” he barked. “At the gate!” and without any inquiry into Steven’s condition slunk on all fours round to the other side of the wagons. The wind stopped, and the lightning. The rain descended in a warm, steady stream. Curiously warm, thought Steven, as he wiped his dripping face. Repressing an involuntary shudder that shook him, he tried to pierce the darkness, watching this side and that, his rifle presented, nerves tense. The rain stopped. Hours passed, hours during which Steven grew rather faint, with a strange nausea at the pit of the stomach. He longed to lie down, to sleep, and fought the shameful stupor that crept over him, and was conquered, only to settle again. He would be disgraced, and the penalty unnamable, were he to sleep at his post. He had a vague feeling of remorse that he had not said good-by to his father and mother before he left New Orleans--so long ago, so far away. He must not go to sleep.