"If they'd only show themselves!" thought he, his leaden eyes closing in an overmastering lassitude, a vast swooning weakness of blood-loss and exhaustion. Not even his parched thirst, a veritable torture now, could keep his thoughts from wandering. "If they'd tackle again, I could score with--with lead--what's _that_ I'm thinking? I'm not delirious, am I?" For a moment he brought himself back with a start, back to a full realization of the place. But again the drowsiness gained on him. "We've got guns now; guns and ammunition," thought he. "We--could pick them off--from the windows. Pick them--off--pick--them--off--" He slept. Thus, often, wounded soldiers sleep, with troubled dreams, on the verge of renewed battle which may mean their death, their long and wakeless slumber. He slept. And the girl, laying his gashed head gently back upon the pile of furs, bent over him with infinite compassion. For a long minute, hardly breathing, she watched him there. More quickly came her breath. A strange new light shone in her eyes. "Only for me, those wounds!" she whispered slowly. "Only for me!" Taking his head in both her hands, she kissed him as he lay unconscious. Kissed him twice, and then a third time. Then she arose. Quickly, as though with some definite plan, she chose from among their store of utensils a large copper kettle, one which he had brought her the week before from the little Broadway shop. She took a long rawhide rope, braided by Stern during their long evenings together. This she knotted firmly to the bale of the kettle. The revolvers, fully reloaded, she examined with care. One of them she laid beside the sleeper. The other she slid into her full, warm bosom, where the clinging tiger-skin held it ready for her hand. Then she walked noiselessly to the door leading into the hallway. Here for a moment she stood, looking back at the wounded man. Tears dimmed her eyes, yet they were very glad. "For your sake, now, everything!" she said. "Everything--all! Oh, Allan, if you only knew! And now--good-by!" Then she was gone. And in the silent room, their home, which out of wreck and chaos they had made, the fevered man lay very still, his pulses throbbing in his throat. Outside, very far, very faint in the forests, a muffled drum began to beat again. And the slow shadows, lengthening across the floor, told that evening was drawing nigh. CHAPTER XXVII TO WORK! The engineer awoke with a start--awoke to find daylight gone, to find that dusk had settled, had shrouded the whole place in gloom. Confused, he started up. He was about to call out, when prudence muted his voice. For the moment he could not recollect just what had happened or where he was; but a vast impending consciousness of evil and of danger weighed upon him. It warned him to keep still, to make no outcry. A burning thirst quickened his memory.