No answer greeted his listening ears, and determined to ascertain the situation and condition of the woman for whom he had risked so much, he left his station and darted back into the smoky gloom. He turned the angle when his foot struck the object he sought, and his hand touched Effie’s face. The lips were cold, the white hand in the same condition; but he had no time to investigate further, for a series of yell told him that the bloodthirsty band was at the mouth of the little cave. With the cry of “dead!” he dropped Effie’s lifeless hand, and turned to sell his life with the price demanded by the tigress when brought to bay. He found no smoke in the main part of the cave, for a gust had blown it from the fissure, which was now filled with a mass of dark forms. In an instant his pistol spoke and a light gleamed beyond the opening thus made, at the cost of two lives. But the ranks were soon closed, and again the remaining barrels of the weapon sent down two more braves. Then the desperate Briton, with his keen knife between his clenched teeth, threw himself forward, and he disputed the entrance with the strength and courage of the lion. “You will not get me alive, though I know you will gain the day in the end,” he hissed into the teeth of the foe, whom he now drove back and who in turn now forced him from the entrance, bleeding as he was, from many a desperate wound. “The girl is dead. Oh, if I had her body, I’d drive you to hell with it!” At this juncture several rifles from beyond the cave lent their voices to the roar of the conflict, in which one struggled against twenty, and three Indians staggered from the fissure, and fell headlong to the bottom of the ravine. This unexpected attack in the rear caused the band to turn, and as they did so another rifle caused a fourth to join his silent companions. Mitre St. Pierre glanced in the direction of the fatal shots, and beheld four figures reloading rifles with a dispatch that astonished him. They stood on the top of the bank at a densely wooded spot, diagonally opposite the attacked cave, and three of his new foes he recognized as Mark Morgan, Kenowatha and the Girl Avenger! The fourth was no doubt another of Wayne’s spies, perhaps the very one in quest of whom he had reached the present spot! “Curse the white dogs!” grated the Frenchman as he surveyed his new enemies. “Had they not come we should have caught the red-coated hound; but now we must fly. Oh, I want to meet them when white meets white and red! Braves, fly! fly! they load!” he cried to his braves, who needed no such command, for while he spoke they were flying down the ravine, and darting into fissures from which they knew that the ingenuity of no pale-face could dislodge them. Before the quartette on the bank could prime their deadly weapons the fiendish trader followed the example of his band, and just as he darted into a cavernous opening the Girl Avenger’s rifle cracked, and his arm fell at his side!