yells behind him were louder, nearer, but there were no more shots, and in an instant he understood why.
In front of him and to his right a naked warrior came leaping straight toward him, a long-shafted steel tomahawk in his lifted right hand, a rifle in his left. His high headdress of eagle feathers, the elaborate pattern of his black and vermilion paint proclaimed his exalted rank. At twenty paces he hurled the tomahawk. It whirled through the air, a streak of bluish light, so swiftly that the eye could not see the revolving handle.
Yet it was no swifter than Falcon's rapier thrusts had been; and O'Sullivan was ready for it. He felt the wind of it as the steel hatchet blade cleft the air where his head had been a fraction of a second before. He was down on his hands and knees when the tomahawk passed over him. He had scarcely regained his feet when the tall Indian, leaping onward at full speed, spitted himself upon O'Sullivan's sword.
The Chicasaw pony still stood where he had been standing, ears back, tail switching, fidgeting a little on his feet, but too well trained to bolt. O'Sullivan was an indifferent horseman but agile as a cat. With yells and whoops ringing in his ears, with bullets and arrows singing past him, his foot fumbled at the stirrup; yet somehow he got himself on the horse's back, and by some miracle no missile touched him as the pony raced away up the Path.
It had been quick work. Since their dash for the
