Delvina’s husband’s attack on Lizzy at Fort Marcy turns a brief errand into a life-threatening encounter, while the unseen intervention that ends it leaves the rescue itself unresolved. The scene binds Delvina’s flight from abuse to Lizzy’s own danger and makes the abandoned fort a place of both menace and uncertain protection.

The Errand at Fort Marcy

Lizzy rides Ben through town on a cold day, carrying a note for Jesse James in her apron pocket. She doubts the note can reach him: as she understands it, Jesse James exists in Mrs. Lacey’s imagination, not as someone likely to be found loitering around Fort Marcy. She is less certain about Lozen, whom she wonders may have delivered Delvina’s baby. These doubts accompany a practical task: Mrs. Lacey has asked her to light the lantern beside Robert’s grave, and Lizzy cannot refuse. The ride also gives her an hour or so away from school.

At the old fort, the crumbled buildings seem especially stark in the cold, and the wind whistles around them. Lizzy dismounts, places the note beneath a rock so it will not blow away, and kneels to put a fresh candle in the lantern. The ordinary sequence of actions—securing the note, taking out matches and candle, tending the grave—leaves her occupied and vulnerable when a figure suddenly rushes toward her.

The Attack and Its Interruption

The stranger demands to know where his wife and baby have been taken. His question makes the danger plain: Lizzy recognizes him as the man Delvina had fled, and later understands why Delvina chose refuge at the fort rather than remain with him. He grips Lizzy by the shoulders, shakes and drags her, and insists that she and Mrs. Lacey know where his family is. The smell of liquor on his breath and the force of his hold turn his demand into a threat against anyone who might withhold the information.

Lizzy fights back, kicking, screaming, and trying to wrench herself free. The man releases one shoulder, but only to draw a knife from his belt; he threatens to kill her unless she answers. In that instant, a gunshot sounds. Lizzy initially thinks she has been shot, but sees the man’s hand fall away and then loses consciousness as she hits the ground. The shot interrupts the assault, yet the narration does not identify who fired it or explain what happened to the attacker.

When Lizzy wakes, Ben is nudging her face. Her head and shoulders hurt, and the man has disappeared. Blood marks stones nearby, while scuffle marks cross the sand as though something—or someone—has been dragged away. The lantern has been righted at Robert Lacey’s grave, its new candle lit, and the matches have been left beside it. That carefully restored scene contrasts with the violence: the errand has somehow been completed while Lizzy lay unconscious, but its unknown helper has left no explanation.

The Unidentified Rescuer

The aftermath offers evidence of intervention but no identity: the note Lizzy had left beneath a rock is gone, and she concludes that someone came to her aid, though nobody stayed to be thanked. Ben remains beside her, nuzzling her while she gathers herself; when she rises, she leans against him and reassures him, then sees that he is still agitated, with his ears back and a restless whinny. The deserted fort feels unsettling, but Lizzy refuses to be driven away by fear. Suspecting she may still be watched, she kneels beside Robert’s grave as if praying, takes time to gather her cloak, and rides slowly down the hill. The rescue therefore closes the immediate danger without resolving its mystery: the lit lantern and missing note suggest a presence that has acted in the scene, while the absence of any explanation leaves Lizzy—and the reader—to wonder who was there.

Narrative Significance

The scene’s suspense depends on a gap between what Lizzy can establish and what she cannot remember. Her account moves from the rush of the attacker to the gunshot and then to waking on the ground; the abrupt break leaves the decisive action outside her view. Afterward, blood and drag marks make intervention materially plausible, while the restored lantern and missing note deepen rather than settle the mystery. Earlier, Lizzy had already entertained uncertainty about Lozen and wondered who had delivered Delvina’s baby, so the unknown rescuer enters a story in which extraordinary explanations remain possible but unconfirmed. The episode thus turns Lizzy’s brief freedom from school into an ordeal, then denies both her and the reader the comfort of a named protector: she survives, but must leave the fort without knowing who acted or why.