headquarters were dark, but in the kitchen a dozen tall men were waiting.



CHAPTER XVII

THE SACRIFICE

So far as the world knew, the Chief of the Long Knives slept peacefully
in his house. And such was his sense of power that not even a sentry
paced the street without. For by these things is the Indian mind
impressed. In the tiny kitchen a dozen men and a boy tried to hush their
breathing, and sweltered. For it was very hot, and the pent-up odor of
past cookings was stifling to men used to the open. In a corner, hooded
under a box, was a lighted lantern, and Tom McChesney stood ready to
seize it at the first alarm. On such occasions the current of time runs
sluggish. Thrice our muscles were startled into tenseness by the baying
of a hound, and once a cock crew out of all season. For the night was
cloudy and pitchy black, and the dawn as far away as eternity.

Suddenly I knew that every man in the room was on the alert, for the
skilled frontiersman, when watchful, has a sixth sense. None of them
might have told you what he had heard. The next sound was the faint
creaking of Colonel Clark's door as it opened. Wrapping a blanket around
the lantern, Tom led the way, and we massed ourselves behind the front
door. Another breathing space, and then the war-cry of the Puans broke
hideously on the night, and children woke, crying, from their sleep. In
two bounds our little detachment was in the street, the fire spouting red
from the Deckards, faint, shadowy forms fading along the line of trees.
After that an uproar of awakening, cries here and there, a drum beating