Crawford waited. Already the arrows were singing in from the trees, and presently he saw that which he had feared. The Stone Men were taking advantage of the ravine at either side the clearing; sheltered there, they began to pour in a steady fire upon the barricade, in the centre of which remained Frontin and Black Kettle. As the muskets began to crash out their message, Crawford withdrew to the trees of the sacred grove, an arrow burning his arm ere he reached the cover. He passed in among the trees. Then, ahead of him, he saw the Dacotah grouped, saw them open out as he approached. Amid them, half hidden by the hanging limbs of a cedar, he saw something fair and yellow. An oath dashed from his lips, and he leaped forward to kneel beside the Star Woman. From the centre of that star of silver and turquoise which hung against her breast protruded the feathered shaft of an arrow. Crawford looked up at Standing Bull. “Carry her back there, beneath the crooked pine; the turquoise star has deflected the arrow--she may live. I will come to her. Set your men to work felling trees. Hurry!” The Dacotah obeyed in dark silence. CHAPTER VIII SOMETIMES SUNRISE CAN COME TOO LATE Noon passed into afternoon, and still the outer barricade remained untaken, for Black Kettle and Frontin held it. They were excellent shots, and with two Dacotah to keep the muskets loaded, they twice checked half-hearted charges and searched the farther trees and the lips of the ravine with deadly bullets. Maclish could not prod his men to face that barricade again, after the fearful loss of the first attack. Having fired away their last powder and exhausted their initial ardour, the Stone Men kept up a sullen discharge of arrows and would do no more. The Star Woman, who had lost much blood but was in no danger, lay at the verge of the cliff under the crooked tree, near the sleeping-place of her mother; and she, too, slept in an exhausted slumber. Crawford, who had tended her wound, was glad enough to have it so, for his hands were full. He laboured with the Dacotah, though in grim certainty of the end; the Star Woman’s wound from a chance shaft had filled them all with deadly fury. Standing Bull sent up repeated signal smokes, hoping that Perrot’s war-party would see them, but as the afternoon drew on, no response came from those leagues of silent green forest outspread beyond the lake of many stars. And, now and again, to the musketry of Frontin and Black Kettle rang out the death-yells of the Stone Men. Where the sacred grove thinned out toward the sacred tree, Crawford laid his second breastwork, enclosing the tip of the craggy triangle. Tree after tree crashed down and was laid in position, wide boughs projecting. When this had been done, the warriors fell to work collecting old shafts or making new ones, inserting sharp flints into the ball of each war-club or _casse-tête_, stoically preparing for the last fight here at the crooked tree.