Yet now that Williston’s head was clear, he realized, with strengthening confidence in the impregnability of their position, that two trusty rifles behind barred doors are not so bad a defence after all, especially when one took into consideration that, with the exception of the sheds overlooking which he had chosen his position as the point of greatest menace, and a small clump of half-grown cottonwoods by the spring which Mary commanded from her window, there were no hiding places to be utilized for this Indian mode of warfare. He could not know how many desperadoes there were, but he reasoned well when he confided in his belief that they would not readily trust themselves to the too dangerous odds of the open space between. An open attack was not probable. Vigilance, then, a never-lapsing vigilance that they be not surprised, was the price of their salvation. What human power could do, he would do, and trust Mary to do the same. She was a good girl and true. She would do well. She had not yet shot. Surely, they would make use of that good vantage ground of the cottonwood clump. Probably they were even now making a detour to reach it. “Watch, child, watch!” he said again, without in the least shifting his tense position. “Surely!” responded Mary, quite steadily. Now was her time come. Dark, sinister figures flitted from tree to tree. At first, she could not be sure, it was so heartlessly dark, but there was movement—it was different from that terrible blank quiet which she had hitherto been gazing upon till her eyes burned and pricked as with needle points, and visionary things swam before them. She winked rapidly to dispel the unreal and floating things, opened wide her longlashed lids, fixed them, and—fired. Then Williston knew that his “little girl,” his one ewe lamb, all that was left to him of a full and gracious past, must go through what he had gone through, all that nameless horror and expectant dread, and his heart cried out at the unholy injustice of it all. He dared not go to her, dared not desert his post for an instant. If one got within the shadow of the walls, all was lost. Mary’s challenge was met with a rather hot return fire. It was probably given to inspire the besieged with a due respect for the attackers’ numbers. Bullets pattered around the outside walls like hailstones, one even whizzed through the window perilously near the girl’s intent young face. Silence came back to the night. There was no more movement. Yet down there at the spring, something, maybe one of those dark, gaunt cottonwoods, held death—death for her and death for her father. A stream of icy coldness struck across her heart. She found herself calculating in deliberation which tree it was that held this thing—death. The biggest one, shadowing the spring, helping to keep the pool sweet and cool where Paul Langford had galloped his horse that day when—ah! if Paul Langford would only come now!