To Alice, in that forest nightmare of terror, the last hope seemed gone. The great hounds were creeping toward her, strangely wolfine in their stealth, and it seemed to her that their muscles were gathering to leap. She alone stood in the way of the gratification of their lust. Was not the death-feast waiting, with only her frail body and her pistol, oddly silent, to stand between? Besides, their madness was at its height. “Hold firm,” a voice kept pleading in her ears. It was the voice of her own being, an inner knowledge that she must still look straight into those lurid eyes. She must not yield herself to terror. To turn, to waver but an instant meant that those white fangs would flash toward her throat. And now the last little vestige of her dominance over them was spent. She couldn’t hold them at bay any more. Ever they were escaping her, they were crouching lower, their fangs were bared and gleaming. And she had thrown away the last, grim chance that her pistol had afforded. No shot remained to put her forever beyond the ravening circle’s power to harm. The last gate of mercy was irremediably closed. She was no longer aware of her own screams—scream after scream that soared and throbbed and died in the silence. They carried far, and they wakened strange conjectures in the dark minds of the coyotes, skulking on a distant trail. The prey was at bay, then, the coyotes knew,—the dog pack was at the kill, and, they trembled and shivered themselves with passion. Hugh heard the sounds, and they were like strangling cords about his throat. The sounds seemed only to further madden the dogs. There was nothing for them to fear—the pistol was silent, the tall, erect form among the sheep had not the strength of the least of them. She stood so slight, so appalled, no more to be feared than one of the ewes that now lay so silent, its whiteness so streaked and stained with red, in the pine needles. Her fate could be the same as that of the lamb, thrown by Fargo to their kennels. The moment of silence and waiting was almost at an end. In an instant dreadful activity would return to those tense figures, just as when they had attacked the sheep. One little breath remained. Her faltering hands clasped at her breast, as if to shield it. And then her dull, terror-dimmed eyes saw a strange thing. At first there was only disbelief, then amazement, then a rapturous flood of hope. For the fierce eyes of the dogs were no longer upon her. It was as if they had forgotten her existence, but rather that their attentions had been fixed and held by something beyond the wall of thickets. They were gazing beyond her, and all of them were growling, uneasily, deep in their throats. And at last, in the little interludes between her screams, she heard the wild hoofbeats of the approaching horse.