"One bone's gone," he said presently in a low tone to Clayton. "I broke it when I fell that time." A curious moment of doubt and indecision was at hand. The men, captors and captives, looked blankly at one another. It was the mind of a woman which first rose to this occasion. In an instant Josephine, with a sudden exclamation, flung aside indecision. "Jeanne' Sally!" she called. "Show these gentlemen to their rooms," naming Clayton and Jones. "Sir," she said to Dunwody, whose injury she did not guess to be so severe, "you must lie down. Gentlemen, pass into the other room, there, if you please." She motioned to the two prisoners, and stepped to Dunwody's side. "I can't have this," he broke out suddenly. "You're hurt, yourself. Go to your room. I tell you, it's nothing." "Be quiet," she said, close at his ear. "I'm not afraid of you now." CHAPTER XVIII ON PAROLE In this strange house party, a truce was tacitly agreed. It seemed sufficient that the future for the time should take care of itself. Dunwody's injury left Clayton practically leader of the Missourians. His party gravitated toward him, while opposite sat the two prisoners, Carlisle and Kammerer, composed and silent, now and then exchanging a glance with each other, but making no spoken comment. Dunwody, in his own room, was looking into the seriousness of his injury, with the old trapper Eleazar, once more summoned as readiest physician. Eleazar shook his head when he had stripped off the first bloody bandages from the limb. "She'll been broke," was his dictum. "She'll been bad broke. We mus' have docteur soon." For half an hour the old man did the best he could, cleansing and rebandaging. "We _mus_' have _docteur_!" complained he, mindful of Jamieson, far away, busy with cases as bad as this. For half an hour or so Josephine remained in her own room above, having done all she could to establish some sort of order. All at once to her strained senses there seemed to flash some apprehension of a coming danger. She rose, tiptoed to her door, looked down. A moment later she turned, and caught up an old pistol which hung on the wall near the door in the narrow hallway. Silently and swiftly she stepped forward to the head of the stair. What she saw now was this: Carlisle and Kammerer, themselves now armed with weapons carelessly left in the lower hall, had passed unnoticed from the dining-room, and now were tiptoeing down the hall toward the door of Dunwody's apartment. Clayton and his men, dulled with loss of sleep, had allowed them to leave the main room, and these two, soldiers by training, had resolved to turn the tables and take possession of the place. Their plans were at the point of success. They had almost reached the door of Dunwody's room, weapons in hand, when from above they heard a sharp command. "Halt, there!" a woman cried to them.