"Poleon!" she cried, looking up with startled eyes. "Not to-morrow, but Sunday—we will go together."

He shook his head. "To-morrow, Necia! An' I go alone."

"Then you won't—marry me?" she asked, in a hushed and frightened voice.

"No! Dere's wan t'ing I can't do even for you, Necia, dere's wan t'ing I can't geeve, dat's all—jus' wan on all de worl'. I can't kill de li'l' god wit' de bow an' arrer. He's all dat mak' de sun shine, de birds sing, an' de leaves w'isper to me; he's de wan li'l' feller w'at mak' my life wort' livin' an' keep music in my soul. If I keel 'im dere ain' no more lef lak' it, an' I'm never goin' fin' my lan' of content, nor sing nor laugh no more. I'm t'inkin' I would rader sing songs to 'im all alone onderneat' de stars beside my campfire, an' talk wit' 'im in my bark canoe, dan go livin' wit' you in fine house an' let 'im get col' an' die."

"But I told him I'd marry you—that I had always intended to. He'll believe I was lying," she moaned, in distress.

"Dat's too bad—but dis t'ing ain' no doin's wit' me. Dere's wan t'ing in dis worl' mus' live forever, an' dat's love—if we kill 'im den it's purty poor place for stoppin' in. I'm cut off my han' for help you, Necia, but I can't be husban' to no woman in fun."

"Your foolish head is full of romance," she burst out. "You think you're doing me a favor, but you're not. Why, there's Runnion—he wants me so much that he'd 'even marry me'!" Her wild laughter stabbed the man. "Was ever a girl in such a fix! I've been made love to ever since I was half a woman, but at thought of a priest men seem to turn pale and run like whipped dogs. I'm only good enough for a bad man and a gambler, I suppose." She sank to a seat, flung out her arms hopelessly, and, bowing her head, began to weep uncontrollably. "If—if—I only had a woman to talk to—but they are all men—all men."

Poleon waited patiently until her paroxysm of sobbing had passed, then gently raised her and led her out through the back door into the summer day, which an hour ago had been so bright and promising and was now so gray and dismal. He followed her with his eyes until she disappeared inside the log-house.

"An' dat's de end of it all," he mused. "Five year I've wait—an' jus' for dis."

Meade Burrell never knew how he gained his quarters, but when he had done so he locked his door behind him, then loosed his hold on things material. He raged about the room like a wild animal, and vented his spite on every inanimate thing that lay within reach. His voice was strange in his own ears, as was the destructive frenzy that possessed him. In time he grew quieter, as the physical energy of this brutal impulse spent itself; but there came no surcease of his mental disquiet. As yet his mind grasped but dully the fact that she was to marry another, but gradually this thought in turn took possession of him. She would be a wife in two days. That great, roistering, brown man would fold her to himself—she would yield to him every inch of her palpitant, passionate body. The thought drove the lover frantic, and he felt that madness lay that way if he dwelt on such fancies for long. Of a sudden he realized all that she meant to him, and cursed himself anew. While he had the power to possess her he had dallied and hesitated, but now that he had no voice in it, now that she was irretrievably beyond his reach, he vowed to snatch her and hold her against the world.

As he grew calmer his reason began to dissect the scene that had taken place in the store, and he wondered whether she had been lying to him, after all. No doubt she had been engaged to the Frenchman, and had always planned to wed Poleon, for that was not out of reason; she might even have set out mischievously to amuse herself with him, but at the recollection of those rapturous hours they had spent together, he declared aloud that she had loved him, and him only. Every instinct in him shouted that she loved him, in spite of her cruel protestations.

All that afternoon he stayed locked in his room, and during those solitary hours he came to know his own soul. He saw what life meant: what part love plays in it, how dwarfed and withered all things are when pitted against it.

A man came with his supper, but he called to him to be gone. The night settled slowly, and with the darkness came such a feeling of despair and lonesomeness that Burrell lighted every lamp and candle in the place to dispel, in some measure, the gloom that had fallen upon him. There are those who believe that in passing from daylight to darkness a subtle transition occurs akin to the change from positive to negative in an electrical current, and that this intangible, untraceable atmospheric influence exerts a definite, psychical effect upon men and their modes of thought. Be this as it may, it is certain that as the night grew darker the Lieutenant's mood changed. He lost his fierce anger at the girl, and reasoned that he owed it to her to set himself right in her eyes; that in all justice to her he ought to prove his own sincerity, and assure her that whatever her own state of mind had been, she wronged him when she said he had made sport of her for his own pleasure. She might then dismiss him and proceed with her marriage, but first she must know this much of the truth at least. So he argued, insensible to the sophistry of his reasoning, which was in reality impelled by the hunger to see her and hear her voice again. He snatched his hat and bolted out, almost running in his eagerness.

An up-river steamboat was just landing as he neared the trading-post—a freighter, as he noted by her lights. In the glare at the river-bank he saw Poleon and the trader, who had evidently returned from Lee's Creek, and without accosting them he hurried on to the store. Peering in from the darkness, he saw Alluna; no doubt Necia was alone in the house behind. So he stumbled around to the back to find the window of her room aglow behind its curtain, and, receiving no answer to his knock, he entered, for it was customary at Gale's to waive ceremony. Inside the big room he paused, then stepped swiftly across and rapped at her door, falling back a pace as she came out.

Instead of speaking at once, as he had planned, to prevent her escaping, he was struck speechless, for the vision that met his eyes was that which he had seen one blithe spring morning three months before; but to-night there was no shawl to conceal her sweetly rounded neck and shoulders, whose whiteness was startling against the black of the ball-room gown. The slim gold chain hung around her neck and her hair was piled high, as before. He noted every smallest detail as she stood there waiting for him to speak, forgetful of everything else.

She had put on the gown again to see if, perchance, there might be some mark of her blood or breed that had escaped her previous scrutiny, and, as there was no one to observe her, she had attired herself slowly, absorbed in her whimsy. Her wistful beauty dazed the young man and robbed him of the words he had rehearsed; but as she made to flee from him, with a pitiful gesture, towards her room, the fear of losing her aroused him and spurred his wit.

"Don't go away! I have something I must tell you. I've thought it over, and you've got to listen, Necia."

"I am listening," she answered, very quietly.

"Understand me, I'm not whining, and I'm willing to take my medicine. I couldn't talk or think very straight this afternoon, but you were wrong."

"Yes, I know now, I was wrong. It was most unlady-like, wasn't it? But you see, I am only a little savage."

"I don't mean that; I mean you were wrong when you said I had played with you. In the sight of God, I swear you were mistaken. You have made me love you, Necia. Can't you see?"

She made no sign.

"If you can't, I owe it to you and to myself to set you right. I am not ashamed to acknowledge my love, and even when you are married to Poleon I want you to know that I shall love you always."

Even yet she made no sign. Was he not merely repeating the same empty words with which he had so often beguiled her? There was no word of marriage: he still considered her unworthy, beneath him. The pain of it caused the girl to wince suddenly, and her sensitive face flinched, seeing which he broke out:

"You do love me, Necia—you do; I see it in your eyes!" And he started towards her with open arms, but she shrank away from him.

"No, no! Don't touch me!" she almost screamed.

"My dear one," he breathed, "you must listen to me. You have nothing to fear, for I love you—love you—love you! You were made for me! You'll be my wife. Yes; you'll be married on Sunday, but to me, not to Poleon or any other man!"

Did she hear aright? Was he, her soldier lover, asking her, the Indian girl—?

"You do love me, don't you?" he pleaded. But still she could not speak, and he tried to read the answer in her swimming eyes.

"You mean—you want to—marry me?" she murmured, at last, hesitating shyly at the word that had come to play so momentous a part in her little world.

"Indeed I do!" he declared, with emphasis. "In spite of everything, anything. Nothing else matters."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing! I'll quit the army. I'll give up the Service, and my people, too. I'll put everything back of me, and we'll start out anew—just you and I."

"Wait a moment," she said, retreating a little from his eager, out-stretched arms. "Why do you need to do all that?"

"Never mind why; it's as good as done. You wouldn't understand—"

"But I think I do understand now. Do I really mean all that to you?"

"Yes, and more!"

"Listen to me," said the girl, quietly. "I want you to talk slowly so I may not misunderstand. If you—marry me, must you forego all those great things you speak of—your profession, your family, your future?"

"Don't let's talk about it, Necia; I've got you, and—"

"Please answer me," she urged. "I thought I understood, but I'm afraid I don't. I thought it was my being a breed that stood in the way—"

"There's nothing in the way—"

"—that I wasn't good enough. I knew I could overcome that; I knew I could make myself grow to your level, but I didn't think my blood would fetter you and make this difference. I suppose I am putting it awkwardly, because I'm not sure that I quite understand it myself yet. Things seem different now, somehow, than they did before."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the soldier. "If they don't bother me, Necia, why should you worry?"

"Would you really have to give up your family—your sister? Would those people you are so proud of and who are so proud of you—would they cut you off?"

"There is no question of cutting off. I have no inheritance coming; I don't want any. I don't want anything except you, dear."

"Won't you tell me?" she persisted. "You see, I am dull at these things."

"Well, what if they do?" he conceded. "You more than make it up to me—you outweigh a thousand families."

"And would your marriage to a—a—to me destroy your army career?"

"Well, it will really be much easier for both of us if I resign from the Service," he finally admitted. "In fact, I've decided to do so at once."

"No, no! You mustn't do that. To-night you think I am worth the price, but a day will come—"

He leaned forward and caught her hands in his.

"—Meade, I can't let you do it."

"I'd like to see you help yourself," he said, banteringly.

"I can and I will. You must not marry me, Meade—it's not right—it can't be." She suddenly realized what this renunciation would mean, and began to shiver. To think of losing him now, after he had come to her freely—it would be very hard! But to her, too, there had come the revelation that love means sacrifice, and she knew now that she loved her soldier too well to let her shadow darken his bright future, too well to ruin him.

"It will be over before you know it," she heard him saying, in a lame attempt at levity. "Father Barnum is an expert, and the operation won't occupy him ten minutes."

"Meade, you must listen to me now," she said, so earnestly that it sobered him. "Do you think a girl could be happy if she knew a good man had spoiled his life for her? I would rather die now than let you do such a thing. I couldn't bear to see myself a drag on you. Oh, I know it would be wonderful, this happiness of ours, for a time, and then—" She was finding it more and more difficult to continue. "A prisoner grows to hate the chains that bind him; when that day came for you, I should hate myself. No, no! Believe me, it can't be. You're not of my people, and I'm not of yours."

At that moment they heard the voices of the trader and his squaw outside, approaching the house. The girl's breath caught in her throat, she flung herself recklessly upon her lover's breast and threw her arms around his neck in an agony of farewell.

"Meade! Meade! my soldier!" she sobbed, "kiss me good-bye for the last time!"

"No," he said roughly.

But she dragged his face down to her burning lips.

"Now you must go," she said, tearing herself away, "and, for my sake, don't see me again."

"I will! I will! I'll ask your father for you to-night."

"No, no! Don't; please don't! Wait till—till to-morrow—till I say the word! Promise me! On your love, promise!"

Her eyes held such a painful entreaty that he nodded acquiescence as the door opened and her father and Alluna entered.



CHAPTER XIII

STARK TAKES A HAND IN THE GAME

The old man greeted the Lieutenant affably, but as his glance fell on his daughter he stopped stock-still on the threshold.

"I told you never to wear that dress again," he said, in a dry, harsh voice.

The girl made no answer, for her heart was breaking, but turned and went into her room. Burrell had an irresistible desire to tell Gale that he wanted his daughter for his wife; it would be an unwonted pleasure to startle this iron-gray old man and the shawled and shambling mummy of red, with the unwinking eyes that always reminded him of two ox-heart cherries; but he had given Necia his promise. So he descended to the exchange of ordinary topics, and inquired for news of the creek.

"Necia's ground is getting better every hour," the trader said. "Yesterday they found a sixty-dollar pan."

"Have you struck pay on yours?"

"No; Poleon and I seem to hold bad hands. Some of his laymen are quitting work. They've cross-cut in half a dozen places and can't find a color."

"But surely they haven't fully prospected his claims yet; there must be plenty of room for a pay-streak somewhere, mustn't there?"

"It looks like he had drawn three blanks," said Gale, "although we can't tell for sure. They're breaking most as bad for me, too; but I've got a new hunch, and I'm running up a dreen to catch bed-rock along the left rim. I've got twenty men at work, and I'll know before long. You heard about Runnion, of course?"

"Yes; the usual story—the bad men get the good mines, and the good ones get the hungry spots. Well, I might have been one of the unfortunates if I had staked for myself; but I hardly think so, I'm pretty lucky." He laughingly bade them good-night, content with himself and at peace with the world.

Gale went to Necia's door and called her, but when she appeared he was unprepared for the tragic face with which she greeted him.

"Daughter," he said, "don't feel bad over what I said; I didn't mean to be cross with you, but—I don't like that dress."

"Were you cross with me, daddy?" she said, dully. "I didn't hear. What did you say?"

He looked at her in amazement. "Necia, little girl, what is the trouble?"

She was staring past him, and her fingers were fumbling helplessly with the lace of her gown, but she began to show signs of collapse.

"I sent him away—I—gave him up, when he wanted me—wanted me—Oh, daddy! he wants to marry me—and I sent him away."

Alluna uttered a short, satisfied exclamation, and, looking at Gale meaningly, said:

"It is good. It is good. He is a stranger."

But the man disregarded her interruption.

"He asked you to marry him in—in—in spite of who you are and what I am?"

"Yes; he is ready to give up his ambition, his army, his future, his family, everything, for me—to sacrifice it all; and so, of course, I couldn't let him." She spoke simply, as if her father would surely understand and approve her action, while in her voice was a note of inevitable resignation. "You see, I never understood what my blood would mean to him until to-night. I've been selfish and thoughtless, I guess. I just wanted him, and wanted him to take me; but now that he is mine, I love him more than I thought. He is so dear to me that I can't drag him down—I can't—I can't!" She went to the open door and stood leaning against the casing, facing the cool outer darkness, her face hidden from them, her form sagging wearily, as if the struggle had sapped her whole strength.

Alluna crept to the trader and looked up at him eagerly, whispering:

"This will end in a little while, John. She is young. She can go back to the Mission to-morrow. She will soon forget."

"Forget! Do you think she can forget?"

"Any woman can forget. Only men remember."

"It is the red blood in you—lying. You know you lie."

"It is to save your life," she said.

"I know; but it's no use." To Necia he said; "You needn't worry, little daughter." But her ears were deaf. "You needn't give him up, I say—this will end all right."

Seeing that she gave no sign of heeding, he stepped closer, and swung her about till she faced him.

"Can't you trust me this one time? You always have before, Necia. I say he'll marry you, and it will all come out right."

She raised her hopeless eyes and strove gamely to meet his, then, failing, broke away, and turned back to the door. "I knew you couldn't understand. I—I—oh, God, I love him so!" With a cry like that of a wounded animal she fled out into the night, where she could give vent to her anguish unseen; for she had never wept before her father, but always crept away and hid herself until her grief was spent. Gale would have started after her, but Alluna dragged him back fiercely.

"No, no! It means your life, John. Let the secret die, and she will forget. She is so young. Time will cure her—time cures everything. Don't tell her—don't tell any one—and, above all, don't tell that soldier! He would not believe, nor would she. Even I have doubted!"

"You?"

"Yes, John. And if I don't believe, what is a stranger to say? No man knowing you would believe the tale—without proof. Suppose she doubted—have you ever thought of that? Would you not rather have her die still loving you than live and disbelieve?"

"Yes, yes! Of course, I—I've thought of that, but—Woman, you're worse than a rattlesnake!"

"Even if he knew, he might not marry her. You at least are clean, and that other man was a devil. A brave man's life is too great a price to pay for a grief that will die in a year." Alluna was speaking swiftly in her own language, her body tense, her face ablaze, and no man seeing her could ever again have called her people stolid.

"You think time will cure a love like that?" he said.

"Yes, yes!"

"That's all you know about it. Time may act that way perhaps in cities and such places, but out in the hills it is different. When you've got the breath of the forest in you, I say it is different. Time—why, I've lived fifteen years in the open with a living memory. Every night I've dreamed it over, every day I've lived it through; in every camp-fire I see a face, and every wind from the south brings a voice to me. Every stormy night a girl with eyes like Necia's calls to me, and I have to follow. Every patch of moonlight shows her smiling at me, just beyond, just in the shadow's edge. Love! Time! Why, Alluna, love is the only thing in the world that never dies, and time only makes it the more enduring."

He took up the white slouch hat he had thrown down when he came in, and stepped to the door.

"Where are you going?" inquired the squaw, fearfully.

"To the barracks to give myself up!"

She flung herself at him with a great cry, and seized him about the waist.

"You never loved me, John, but I have been a good woman to you, although I knew you were always thinking of her—and had no thought of me. I have loved this girl because you loved her. I have hated your enemies because you hated them, and now I remember while you forget."

"Forget! What do you mean?"

"Stark!"

The man paused. "I did almost forget him—and after fifteen years!"

"Let us kill him to-night; then we will go to the soldier together, side by side—I am your woman. Necia will look after the little ones."

Gale stared at her, and as he gazed the red pigment underneath her skin, the straight-hanging, mane-like hair, the gaudy shawl she never went without, the shapeless, skin-shod feet, the slovenly, ill-fitting garb of a mis-cast woman vanished, and he saw her as she was on a day long past, a slim, shy, silent creature, with great, watchful, trusting eyes and a soul unspoiled. No woman had ever been so loyal, so uncomplaining. He had robbed her of her people and her gods. He had shifted hither and yon at the call of his uncertain fortune, or at a sign of that lurking fear that always dogged him, and she had never left his side, never questioned, never doubted, but always served him like a slave, without asking for a part in that other love, without sharing in the caresses he had consecrated to a woman she had never seen.

"By Heaven! You're game, Alluna, but there's a limit even to what I can take from you," he said, at last. "I don't ever seem to have noticed it before, but there is. No! I've got to do this thing alone to-night, all of it, for you have no place in it, and I can't let the little girl go on like this. The sooner that soldier knows the better." He leaned down and touched her brown mouth with his grizzled lips. "Thank you, Alluna, for making a man of me when I'd nearly forgotten. Now you stay here." He knew he could count on her obedience, and so he left her. When he had gone she drew the shawl up over her face and crouched in the doorway, straining her eyes after him through the dark. In time she began to rock and sway, and then to chant, until the night moaned with the death-song of her people.

Necia had no idea whither she went; her only thought was to flee from her kin, who could not understand, to hide under cover in some solitary place, to let the darkness swallow her up, so that she might give way to her grief and be just a poor, weak woman. So, with a dull and aching heart, she wandered, bareheaded, bare-necked, half-demented, and wholly oblivious to her surroundings, without sense of her incongruous attire or of the water that squeezed up through the soggy moss at her tread and soaked her frail slippers. On she stumbled blindly through the murk like some fair creature of light cast out and banished.

The night was cloudy and a wind came sighing from the north, tossing the girl's hair and tugging at the careless folds of her dress, but she heard nothing save the devil's tattoo that rang in her head, and felt nothing beyond the pain at throat and breast, which in time became so bitter that the tears were wrung from her dry eyes, and she began to weep in a pitiful woman fashion, as if her heart would burst. The first drops cleared a way for others, and soon she was sobbing freely, alone and without solace, lost in the night.

She had not succeeded in thoroughly isolating herself, however, for a man who was steering his course by the sense of feel and the wind's direction heard her and paused. His steps were muffled in the soft footing, so that she had no warning of his presence until he was near enough to distinguish her dimly where she leaned against the log wall of a half-completed cabin.

To his question, "What's the trouble here?" she made no answer, but moved away, whereupon he detained her. "There's something wrong. Who are you, anyhow?"

"It's only Necia, Mr. Stark," said the girl, at which he advanced and took her by the arm.

"What ails you, child? What in the world are you doing here? Come! It's only a step to my cabin; you must come in and rest awhile, and you'll soon be all right. Why, you'll break your neck in this darkness."

She hung back, but he compelled her to go with him in spite of her unwillingness.

"Now, now," he admonished, with unusual kindliness for him; "you know you're my little friend, and I can't let you go on this way; it's scandalous. I won't stand for it. I like you too much."

In truth he had done things during these last few weeks to make her think so, having never missed an opportunity to stop and pass a word with her, at the same time showing her a queer courtesy and consideration quite foreign to his saturnine habits. She had never mentioned the fact to her father or the others, for she had developed a sort of sympathy for the man, and felt that she understood him better than they did.

He led her inside his cabin, and closed the door in the face of the night wind before he struck a light.

"I can't stand to see you cry," he repeated, as he adjusted the wick. "Now, as soon as—" He stopped in astonishment, for he had turned to behold, instead of the little half-breed girl, this slender, sorrowful stranger in her amazingly wonderful raiment.

"By—" He checked himself insensibly, and stood motionless for a long time, while she wiped her eyes and, woman-like, straightened out her gown and smoothed her hair with little feminine touches.

"I—I—hope you'll excuse me for acting this way," she smiled at him, piteously; then, observing his strange features, "Why, what is the matter, Mr. Stark; are you angry?"

His hawklike face was strained and colorless, his black eyes fierce and eager, his body bent as if to pounce upon a victim. In truth he was now the predatory animal.

"No," he replied, as if her question carried no meaning; then, coming to himself, "No—no! of course not, but—you gave me a start. You reminded me of some one. How do you come to be dressed like that? I never knew you had such clothes?"

"Poleon brought them from Dawson; they are the first I ever had."

He shook his head in a slow, puzzled fashion.

"You look just like a white girl—I mean—I don't know what I mean." This time he roused himself fully, the effort being more like a shudder.

"So I have always thought," she said, and her eyes filled again.

"Your skin is like milk beneath your tan, and—I don't mean any disrespect, but—Well, I'm just so damned surprised! Come over here and sit down while I mix you something to put the heart back into you."

He shoved forward a big chair with a wolf-skin flung over it, into which she sank dejectedly, while he stepped to the shelves beside the Yukon stove and took down a bottle and some glasses. She glanced about with faint curiosity, but the interior of the cabin showed nothing out of the ordinary, consisting as it did of one room with a cot in the corner, upon which were tumbled blankets, and above which was a row of pegs. Opposite was a sheet-iron box-stove supported knee-high on a tin-capped framework of wood, and in the centre a table with oil-cloth cover. Around the walls were some cooking utensils, a few cases of canned goods, and clothes hanging in a row.

"I'm not fixed up very well yet," he apologized; "I've been too busy at the saloon to waste time on living quarters. But it's comfortable enough for an old roadster like me, for I've bruised around the frontier so long that I've learned there's only three things necessary to a man's comfort—warm clothes, a full stomach, and a dry place to sleep. All the rest that goes to make a man content he has inside him, and I'm not the kind to be satisfied, no matter where I am or what I have. I never was that kind, so I just don't make the attempt."

He was talking to give her leeway, and when he had concocted a weak toddy, insisted that she must drink it, which she did listlessly, while he rambled on.

"I've noticed a few things in my life, Miss Necia, and one of them is that it often does a heap of good to let out and talk things over; not that a fellow gains any real advantage from disseminating his troubles, but it serves to sort of ease his mind. Folks don't often come to me for advice or sympathy. I don't have it to give, but maybe it will help you to tell me what caused this night-marauding expedition of yours." Seeing that she hesitated, he went on: "I suppose there's a lot of reasons why you shouldn't confide in me—I don't like that old man of yours, nor any of your friends; but maybe that's why I'm interested. If any of them has upset you, I'll take particular pleasure in helping you get even."

"I don't want to get even, and there is nothing to tell," said Necia, "except a girl's troubles, and I can't talk about them." She smiled a painful, crooked smile at him.

"Your old man has been rough to you?"

"No, no! Nothing of that sort."

"Then it's that soldier?" he quizzed, shrewdly. "I knew you cared a heap for him. Don't he love you?"

"Yes! That's the trouble; and he wants to many me; he swears he will in spite of everything."

"See here! I don't quite follow. I thought you liked him—he's the kind most women go daffy over."

"Like him!" The girl trembled with emotion. "Like him! Why—why, I would do anything to make him happy."

"I guess I must be kind of dull," Stark said, perplexedly.

"Don't you see? I've got to give him up—I'm a squaw."

"Squaw hell! With those shoulders?"

Stark checked himself, for he found he was rejoicing in his enemy's defeat, and was in danger of betraying himself to the girl. In every encounter the young man had bested him, and these petty defeats had crystallized his antipathy to Burrell into a hatred so strong that he had begun to lie awake nights planning a systematic quarrel. For he was the kind of man who throve upon contentions: so warped in soul that when no man offered him offence he brooded over fancied wrongs and conjured up a cause for enmity, goading himself into that sour, sullen habit of mind that made him a dread and a menace to all who lacked his favor. His path was strewn from the border North with the husks of fierce brawls, and he bore the ineradicable mark of the killer, carrying always in his brain those scars that hate had seared. In his eyes forever slumbered a flame waiting to be blown to life, and when embroiled in feuds or bickerings a custom had grown upon him to fight these fights in secret many times, until of nights he would lie in solitary darkness writhing in spirit as he hounded his man to desperation, or forced him into a corner where he might slake his thirsty vengeance. After such black, sleepless hours he dragged himself from his battle-grounds of fancy, worn and weary, and the daylight discovered him more saturnine and moody, more menacing than ever.

He had brooded over his quarrel with Gale and the Lieutenant ever since their first clash, for in this place they furnished the only objects upon which his mania could work—and it was a mania, the derangement of a diseased, distorted mind. His regard for Necia was a careless whim, a rather aimless, satisfying hobby, not at all serious, entirely extraneous to his every-day life, and interesting only from its aimlessness, being as near to an unselfish and decent motive as the man had ever come. But it was not of sufficient consequence to stand out against or swerve the course of a quarrel; wherefore, he was gladdened by the news of Burrell's discomfiture.

"So you like him too much to stand in his way," he said, meditatively. "How does your father look at it?"

"He wants the Lieutenant to marry me. He says he will fix it up all right; but he doesn't understand. How could he?"

"You are doing just right," concurred the man, hypocritically, "and you'll live to be glad you stood out." Now that both his enemies desired this thing, he was set on preventing it, regardless of the girl. "How did the Lieutenant take it when you refused him?"

"He wouldn't take it at all. He only laughed and declared he would marry me, anyhow." The very thought thrilled her.

"Does he knew you love him?"

The tender, sobbing laugh she gave was ample answer.

"Well, what's your plan?"

"I—I—I don't know. I am so torn and twisted with it all that I can't plan, but I have thought I—ought—to go—away."

"Good!" he said, quickly, but his acquiescence, instead of soothing her, had the contrary effect, and she burst out impulsively:

"Oh—I can't—I can't! I can't go away and never see him! I can't do it! I want to stay where he is!" She had been holding herself in stubbornly, but at last gave way with reckless abandon. "Why wasn't I born white like other girls? I've never felt like an Indian. I've always dreamed and fancied I was different, and I am, in my soul—I know I am! The white is so strong in me that it has killed the red, and I'm one of father's people. I'm not like the other two; they are brown and silent, and as cold as little toads; but I'm white and full of life, all over. They never see the men and women that I see in my dreams. They never have my visions of the beautiful snow-white mother, with the tender mouth and the sad eyes that always smile at me."

"You have visions of such things, eh?"

"Yes, but I came a generation late, that's all, and I've got that other woman's soul. I'm not a half-breed—I'm not me at all. I'm Merridy—Merridy! That's who I am."

Her face was turned away from him, so that she did not notice the frightful effect her words had upon Stark.

"Where did you get—that name?" His voice was pitched in a different key now. Then, after a moment, he added, "From the story I told you at the mine that night, I suppose?"

"Oh no," she answered. "I've always had it, though they call me Necia. Merridy was my father's mother. I guess I'm like her in many ways, for I often imagine she is a part of me, that her spirit is mine. It's the only way I can account for the sights I see."

"Your father's mother?" he said, mechanically. "That's queer." He seemed to be trying to shake himself free from something. "It's heredity, I suppose. You have visions of a white woman, a woman named Merridy, eh?" Suddenly his manner changed, and he spoke so roughly that she looked at him in vague alarm.

"How do you know? How do you know she was his mother?"

"He told me so—"

Stark snarled. "He lied!"

"I can show you her wedding-ring—I've always worn it." She fumbled for the chain about her neck, but it eluded her trembling fingers. "It has her name in it—'From Dan to Merridy.'"

Stark's hand darted forward and tore the thing from her shoulders, then he thrust it under the lamp and glared at the inscription, while his fingers shook so that he could barely distinguish the words. His eyes were blazing and his face livid.

Necia cried out, but he dropped the ornament and seized her fiercely, lifting her from the chair to her feet; then, with one swift, downward clutch, he laid hold of her dress at the left shoulder and ripped it half to her waist. A hoarse sound came from his throat, a cry half of amazement, half of triumph.

"Let me go! Let me go!" She struggled to free herself, but he held her in a viselike grip, while he peered closely at a blemish well down upon her back. Then he let her slip from his grasp, and, seized with terror, she staggered away from him. He was leaning heavily with both hands upon the table, his face working, his head drawn down between his shoulders, his thin lips grinning, his whole manner so terrifying that she shrank back till she brought up against the bark walls. She turned and made for the door, whereupon he straightened up and said, in a queer, commanding voice:

"Wait—don't go! I—I—you—" He licked his lips as if they were dust dry, passed an uncertain hand across his beaded brow, and, raising the water-pail beside the door to his mouth, drank heavily in great, noisy gulps.

"Let me out of here!" the girl demanded, imperiously.

"Don't be scared," he said, more quietly now. "You must excuse me. You—you gave me an awful fright. Yes—that was it. Don't worry. I didn't mean any harm."

"You hurt my shoulder," she said, almost ready to cry. "And you tore my dress," she added, angrily—"my fine dress. Are you crazy?"

"You see, it's like this, that name of Merridy and that ring—well, the whole thing was so startling, I—I went off my head. It came sudden, and I thought—I thought—it don't matter what I thought, but I'm sorry. I'll apologize—and I'll get you a new dress, a whole lot of dresses, if you like." This seemed to amuse him, and he began to laugh silently.

His first impulse had been to tell her everything, but his amazement had rendered him speechless, and now he was thankful for it. Following his discovery of her identity, he had been stricken dumb, staring at her like one demented; then, as he was about to explain, his mind suddenly grasped the significance of this revelation and the advantage it gave him over his enemies; a plan began to unfold, vague at first, its details not worked out, but a plan whereby he could by keeping silent use this knowledge to serve his vengeful ends. In an instant his vision cleared and his brain became active and alert, like that of a man brought suddenly under the stimulus of strong liquor. Care must be exercised—she must not learn too much—for if she suspected the truth she would go to her soldier lover at once, and no power on earth could hold her back. That would block the vengeance that he saw shaping in the dank recesses of his distorted brain.

First, and above all, he must get the girl away from Flambeau.

"I went clear off my head," he heard himself saying, "at that name of Merridy, that ring, and all. Why—why, I thought you might be the missing girl I told you of—you remember, that day up on Lee's Creek—so I had to see; but, dear me, I should have been more considerate—I should have explained. The trouble is I'm a nervous man, and I get impulsive streaks on me sometimes that I can't control. I'm sorry I spoiled your dress, but I'll get you another—you bet I will."

This explanation of his strange behavior seemed plausible enough to banish all personal fears from Necia's mind. Indeed, Stark had now become so gentle and apologetic in his demeanor that her woman's curiosity overcame her instinct to flee, and she ventured the question:

"So you really thought I was that other girl?"

"I did for a minute. The mother was a—a—friend of mine, and so—I lost my head. But I'm all right now, and if you'll overlook my roughness we'll go back to your troubles."

These last few moments had driven her own worries from her mind, but he was bent on recalling them, and so continued, cautiously:

"You were saying that you thought you'd go away. I think that's a good plan, and you'd be wise to do it for more reasons than one. It will give you time to think it all over and know your own mind—"

"I know my mind now, and yet—I don't want to go away."

"—and it will give Burrell a chance to prove himself. He'll either show that he has got to have you at any cost, or that you are right in your decision. If the first should happen, you can come back to him; if the last—why, it will be better for you, anyhow. As long as you stay here neither one of you can see clearly."

She was touched by his interest, and realized the force of his argument, which, strange to say, seemed to second her own thoughts; yet she hesitated.

"I want to help you—I'm going to help you—because I've got an interest in you like you were mine." Again he betrayed that strange, mirthless amusement.

"There is no place for me to go," said Necia, blankly, "except the Mission, and I have no way of getting there."

"Don't you worry. I'll furnish the means, and you'd better go to-night"—she flinched—"yes, to-night; there's no use prolonging your agony. I'll get a boat ready and send a trusty man with you. The current is swift, and if he rows well you can make it by to-morrow evening. That's only one night out, and I'll put some blankets aboard so you can wrap up and have a sleep."

"I feel as if I'd never sleep again," she sighed.

"Now, now, this will come out all right yet. I'd take you down there myself, but I've got to stay here. I've got work to do. Yes, I've sure got work of importance ahead of me."

"I must go back and get some clothes," she said, At which he would have demurred had he not seen that she could not travel in her present condition.

"Very well. But don't let anybody see you."

"Of course not."

"It's getting late, and your folks will be abed." He looked at his watch. "Midnight! Be here in an hour, and I'll have the skiff ready."

The light of sacrifice was in Necia's eyes, and her cheeks were blanched with the pallor of a great resolution. She did not stop to reason why or how she had been led to this disposal of her future, but clutched desperately at Stark's plan of rescue from her agonizing predicament.

"I'll be here in an hour," she said, simply.

He let her out, closed the door after her, and locked it; then, drawing a deep breath, he raised his clenched hands above his head, and gave a great sigh of exultation. Next he took out his six-shooter and examined it carefully. The shells did not suit him, so he filled the gun with new ones, loosened the three lower buttons of his vest, and slid the weapon inside his trousers band; then, facing the direction of Gale's trading-post, he spoke aloud.

"I was a long time coming, Gaylord, but I'm here, and I've got you where I've wanted you these fifteen years—yes, and I've got you, too, Burrell! By God, this is my night!"

His lithe body became panther-like in poise, his bearing that of the meat-eating animal, and his face set in a fierce, exultant cruelty as he blew out his light and left the cabin.



CHAPTER XIV

A MYSTERY IS UNRAVELLED

Lieutenant Burrell was considerably taken aback when, a quarter of an hour after the young lover's ecstatic return to his quarters, Gale knocked at his door, for the trader's visit, coupled with the late hour and his sombre countenance, forecast new complications.

"He's here to object, but it won't go," thought the Lieutenant, as he made his visitor welcome.

It was the trader's first glimpse of the officer's quarters, and he cast a roving eye over the room, as if measuring the owner's character by his surroundings.

"I've got to have a long talk with you, Burrell," he began, with an effort. "It's liable to take me an hour or two."

"Then take this chair and be comfortable."

Meade swung his big reading-chair out beneath the hanging-lamp, and, going to the sideboard, brought back a bottle, some glasses, and a pouch of tobacco. Noting the old man's sigh of fatigue as he sat himself down heavily, he remarked, sympathetically:

"Mr. Gale, you've made a long trip to-day, and you must be tired. If this talk is to be as lengthy as you say, why not have a drink with me now, and postpone it until to-morrow?"

"I've been tired for eighteen years," the other replied; "to-night I hope to get rested." He lapsed into silence, watching his host pour out two glasses of liquor, fill his pipe, and then stretch himself out contentedly, his feet resting on another chair—a picture of youthful strength, vitality, and determination. Beneath the Lieutenant's flannel shirt the long, slim muscles showed free and full, and the firm set of jaw and lip denoted a mind at rest and confident of itself. Gale found himself for a moment jealously regarding the youth and his enviable state of contentment and decision.

"Well, let's get at it," the younger man finally said.

"I suppose you'll want to interrupt and question me a heap, but I'll ask you to let me tell this story the way it comes to me, till I get it out, then we can go back and take up the queer stuff. It runs back eighteen or twenty years, and, being as it's part of a hidden life, it isn't easy to tell. You'll be the first one to hear it, and I reckon you're enough like other men to disbelieve—you're not old enough, and you haven't knocked around enough to learn that nothing is impossible, that nothing is strange enough to be unreasonable. Likewise, you'll want to know what, all this has to do with you and Necia—yes, she told me about you and her, and that's why I'm here." He paused. "You really think you love her, do you?"

Burrell removed his pipe and gazed at its coal impersonally.

"I love her so well, Mr. Gale, that nothing you can say will affect me. I—I hesitated at first about asking her to be my wife, because—you'll appreciate the unusual—well, her unusual history. You see, I come from a country where mixed blood is about the only thing that can't be lived down or overlooked, and I've been raised with notions of family honor and pride of race and birth, and so forth, that might seem preposterous and absurd to you. But a heap of conceits like that have been bred into me from generations back; they run in the blood of every old family in my country, and so, I'm ashamed to say, I hesitated and tried to reason myself into giving her up, but I've had my eyes opened, and I see how little those things amount to, after all. I'm going to marry Necia, Mr. Gale. I'd like to do it the day after to-morrow, Sunday, but she isn't of age yet, and if you object, we'll have to wait until November, when she turns eighteen. We'd both like your consent, of course; I'd be sorry to marry her without it; but if you refuse, we'll be forced to displease you." He looked up and met the father's gaze steadily. "Now, I'll be glad to listen as long as you care to talk, but I don't think it will do any good."

The other man's lips framed a faint smile.

"We'll see. I wish to God I'd had your decision when I was your age, this story would be different, and easier to tell." He waited a moment, then settled to his self-appointed task. "I was mining at the time up in the Mother Lode country of California, which was the frontier then, pretty much as this is now, only we had better things to eat. I came from the East, or my people did, but I was ranch-raised, and loved the hills and woods and places where you don't talk much, so I went to prospecting because it took me out where the sun was bright and I could see the wild things at play. I was one of the first men into a camp named Chandon—helped to build it, in fact, and got hold of some ground that looked real good. It was hard mining, however, and, being poor, I was still gripping my drill and hammer after the town had grown up.

"A woman came out from the East—Vermont, it was—and school-teaching was her line of business, only she hadn't been raised to it, and this was her first clatter at the game; but things had broke bad for her people, and ended in her pulling stakes and coming West all alone. Her folks died and left her up against it, I gathered from what little she told me—sort of an old story, I guess, and usual too, only for her. She was plumb unusual."

He seemed to ponder this a moment, and then resumed:

"It don't make any difference to you how I first saw her, and how I began to forget that anything else in the world was worth having but her. I'd lived in the woods all my life, as I said, and knew more about birds and bugs and bees than I did about women; I hadn't been broke proper, and didn't know how to act with them; but I laid out to get this girl, and I did fairly well. There's something wild in every woman that needs to be tamed, and it isn't like the wildness that runs in wood critters; you can win that over by gentleness, but you have to take it away from a woman. Every live thing that couldn't talk was my friend; but I made the mistake of courting my own kind the same way, not knowing that when two of any species mate the male must rule. I was too gentle. Even so, I reckon I'd have won out only for another man. Dan Bennett was his name—the kind that dumb animals hate, and—well, that takes his measure. His range adjoined mine, and, though I'd never seen him, I heard stories now and then—the sort of tales you can't tell to a good woman; so it worried me when I heard of his attentions to this girl. Still, I thought she'd surely find him out and recognize the kind of fellow he was; but, Lord! a woman, can't tell a man from a dog, and there wasn't any one to warn her. There were plenty of women who knew him, but they were the ones who flew by night, while she lived in the sunshine; and women of that kind don't make complaint, anyhow.

"This Bennett came from the town below, where he ran a saloon and a brace game or two; but being as he rode into our camp and out again in the night, and as I didn't drink nor listen to the music of the little rolling ball, why, we never met, even after he began coming to Chandon. Understand, I wasn't too good for those amusements; I just didn't happen to hanker after them, for I was living with the image of the little school-ma'am in my mind, and that destroyed what bad habits I'd formed.

"It was along in the early spring that she began to see I had notions about her, but my damned backwardness wouldn't let me speak, and, in addition, I was getting closer to ore every shot at the mine, and was holding off until I could lay both myself and my goldmine at her feet, and ask her to take the two of us, so if one didn't pan out the other might. But it seemed like I'd never get into pay. The closer I got the harder I worked, and, of course, the less I saw of her, likewise the oftener Bennett came. I reckon no man ever worked like I did—two shifts a day, eighteen hours, with six to sleep. The skin came off of my hands, and I staggered when I came out into the daylight, for the rock was hard, and I had no money to hire a helper; but I was young and strong, and the hope of her was like drink and food and sleep to me. At last I struck it, and still I waited awhile longer till I could be sure. Then I went down to my little shack and put on my other clothes. I remember I'd gone so thin that they hung loose, and my palms were so raw I had hard work handling the buttons, and got my shirt all bloody, for I'd been in the drift forty hours, without sleep and breathing powder smoke, till my knees buckled and wobbled under me. To this day the smell of stale powder smoke makes a woman of me; but that morning I sang, for I was going for my bride, and the world was brighter than it has ever been for eighteen years. The little school-house was closed, at which I remembered that the term was over. I'd been living underground for weeks and lost track of the days, so that I had to count them up on my fingers. It took me a long time, for I was pretty tired in my head; but when I'd figured it out I went on to where she was boarding.

"The woman of the place came to the door, a Scotch-woman. She had a mole on her chin, I remember, a brownish-black mole with three hairs in it. She wore an apron, too, that was kind of checkered, and three buttons were open at the neck of her dress. I recall a lot more of little things about her, though the rest of what happened is rather dreamy.

"I asked for Merridy, and she told me she'd gone away—gone with Bennett, the night before, while I was coughing blood from the powder smoke; that they were married in the front room, and that the bride looked beautiful. She had cried a bit on leaving Chandon, and—and—that was about all. I counted the buttons on the Scotchwoman's waist eight or ten times, and by-and-by she asked if I was sick. But I wasn't. She was a kind-hearted woman, and I'd been to her house a good deal, so she asked me to come in and rest. I wasn't tired, so I went away, and climbed back up to the little shack and the mine that I hated now."

The trader paused, and, reaching for the bottle, poured himself out a glass of brandy, which he spilled into his throat raw, then continued:

"I turned into a kind of hermit after that, and I wasn't good to associate with. Men got so they shunned me, and I knew they told strange stories, because I heard them whisper when I went to the stores for grub once a month. I changed all over, till even my squirrels and partridges and other friends quit me; once in awhile I got out a ton or two of rock and sold it, but I never worked the mine or opened it up—I couldn't bear to go inside the drift. I tried it time and again, but the smell of its darkness drove me out; every foot of its ragged walls had left its mark on me, and my heart was torn and gouged and shivered worse than its seams and ledges. I could have sold it, but there was no place for me to go, and what did I want with money? I was shy of the world, like a crippled child that dreads the daylight, and I shrank from going out where people might see my scars; so I stayed there by myself nursing the hurt that never got any better. You see, I'd been raised among the hills and rocks, and I was like them in a way; I couldn't grow and alter and heal up.

"From time to time I heard of her, but the news, instead of gladdening me, as it would have gladdened some men, wrung out what bits of suffering were left in me, and I fairly ached for her. Nobody comes to see clearer than a woman deceived, so it didn't take her long to find out the kind of man Bennett was. He wasn't like her at all, and the reason he had courted her so hotly was just that he had had everything that rightly belongs to a man like him, and had sickened of it, so he wanted her because she was clean and pure and different; and realizing that he couldn't get her any other way, he had married her. But she was a treasure no bad man could appreciate, and so he tired quickly, even before the little one came.

"When I heard that she had borne him a daughter I wrote her a letter, which took me a month to compose, and which I tore up. One day a story came to me that made me saddle my horse to ride down and kill him—and, mind you, I was a man who made pets of little wild, trusting things. But I knew she would surely send for me when her pain became too great, so I uncinched my gear and hung it up, and waited and waited and waited. Three long, endless years I waited, almost within sound of her voice, without a word from her, without a glimpse of her, and every hour of that time went by as slowly as if I had held my breath. Then she called to me, and I went.

"I tell you, I was thankful that day for the fortune that had made me take good care of my horse, for I rode like Death on a wind-storm. It grew moonlight as I raced down the valley, and the foam from the animal's muzzle lodged on my clothes, and made me laugh and swear that the morning sun would show Dan Bennett's blood in its place. I rode through the streets of Mesa, where they lived, and past the lights of his big saloon, where I heard the sound of devil's revelry and a shrill-voiced woman singing—a woman the like of which he had tried to make my Merridy. I never skulked or sneaked in those days, and no man ever made me take back roads, so I came up to his house from the front and tied my horse to his gate-post. She heard me on the steps and opened the door.

"'You sent for me,' said I. 'Where is he?' But he had gone away to a neighboring camp, and wouldn't be back until morning, at which I felt the way a thief must feel, for I'd hoped to meet him in his own house, and I wasn't the kind to go calling when the husband was out. I couldn't think very clearly, however, because of the change in her. She was so thin and worn and sad, sadder than any woman I'd ever seen, and she wasn't the girl I'd known three years before. I guess I'd changed a heap myself; anyhow, that was the first thing she spoke about, and the tears came into her eyes as she breathed:

"'Poor boy! poor boy! You took it very hard, didn't you?'"

"'You sent for me,' said I. 'Which road did he take?'"

"'There's nothing you can do to him,' she answered back. 'I sent for you to make sure that you still love me."

"'Did you ever doubt it?' said I, at which she began to cry, sobbing like a woman who has worn out all emotion.

"'Can you feel the same after what I've made you suffer?' she said, and I reckon she must have read the answer in my eyes; for I never was much good at talking, and the sight of her, so changed, had taken the speech out of me, leaving nothing but aches and pains and ashes in its place. When she saw what she wished to know, she told me the story, the whole miserable story, that I'd heard enough of to suspect. Why she'd married the other man she couldn't explain herself, except that it was a woman's whim—I had stayed away and he had come the oftener—part pique and part the man's dare-devil fascination, I reckon; but a month had shown her how she really stood, and had shown him, too. Likewise, she saw the sort of man he was and the kind of life he lived. At last he got rough and cruel to her, trying every way to break her spirit; and even the baby didn't stop him—it made him worse, if anything—till he swore he'd make them both the kind he was, for her goodness seemed to rile and goad him; and, having lived with the kind of woman you have to beat, he tried it on her. Then she knew her fight was hopeless, and she sent for me."

"'He's a fiend,' she told me. 'I've stood all I can. He'll make a bad woman of me as sure as he will of the little one, if I stay on here, so I have decided to go and take her with me.'"

"'Where?' said I."

"'Wherever you say,' she answered; and yet I did not understand, not till I saw the look in her eyes. Then, as it dawned on me, she broke down, for it was a terrible thing for a good woman to offer."

'"It's all for the little girl!' she cried. 'More than her life depends upon it. We must get her away from him.'"

"She saw it was her only course, and went where her heart was calling."

The Lieutenant met the look of appeal in the trader's eyes, and nodded to imply his complete understanding and approval.

"We love some women for their goodness, others we love for their frailness, but there never was one who combined the two like her, and, now that I knew she loved me, I began to believe again there was a God somewhere. I'd never seen the youngster, so she led me in where it was sleeping, and I remember my boots made such a devil of a thumping on the floor that she laid her slim white finger on her lips and smiled at me. All the fingers in the world began to choke at my throat, and all the blood in me commenced to pound at my heart, when I looked on that little sleeping kiddie. The tears began to roll out of my eyes, and, because they had been dry for four years, they scalded like melted metal. That was the only time I ever wept—the sight of her baby did it.

"'I love her already,' I whispered, 'and I'll spend my life making her happy and making a lady of her,' which clinched what wavering doubt the mother had, and she began to plan quickly, the fear coming on her of a sudden that our scheme might fail. I was for riding away with both of them that night, back through the streets of Mesa and up into the hills, where I'd have held them single-handed against man or God or devil, but she wouldn't hear of it.

"'We must go away,' she said, 'a long way from here, where the world won't find us and the little one can grow to womanhood without knowing. She must never learn who her father was or what her mother did. We will start all over, you and I and the baby, and forget. Do you love me well enough to do it?'

"I uttered a cry and took her in my arms, the arms that had ached for her all those years. Then I kissed her for the first time."

The old man tried to light his pipe, which had gone out, but his fingers shook so that he dropped the match; whereupon, without speaking, Burrell struck another and held it for him. The trader drew a noisy puff or two in silence and shot his host a grateful glance.

"Her plan was for me to take the youngster away that night, and for her to join us later, because pursuit was certain, and three could be traced where one might disappear; she would follow when the opportunity offered. I saw that he had instilled a terror into her, and that she feared him like death; but, as I thought it over, her scheme seemed feasible, so I agreed. I was to ride west that hour with the sleeping babe, and conceal myself at a place we selected, while she would say that the little one had wandered away and been lost in the canon, or anything else to throw Bennett off. After a time she would join us. Well—the little girl never waked when I took her in my arms, nor when the mother broke down again and talked to me like a crazy woman. Her collapse showed the terrible strain she had been living under, and the ragged edge where her reason stood. She had been brave enough to plan coolly till the hour for giving up her baby, but when that came she was seized with a thousand dreads, and made me swear by my love for her, which was and is the holiest thing in all my life, that if anything happened I would live for the other Merridy. I begged her again to come with me, but her fears held her back. She vowed, however, that Bennett should never touch her again, and I made her swear by her love for the babe that she would die before he ever laid hands on her. It woke a savage joy in me to think I had bested him, after all.

"I never thought of what I was giving up, of the clean name I was soiling, of the mine back there that meant a fortune anytime I cared to take it, for things like that don't count when a man's blood is hot, so I rode away in the yellow moonlight with a sleeping baby on my breast, where no child or woman had ever lain except for that minute before I left. She stood out from beneath the porch shadow and smiled her good-bye—the last I ever saw of her....

"I travelled hard that night and swapped horses at daylight; then, leaving the wild country behind, I came into a region I didn't know, and found a Mexican woman who tended the child for me, for I was close by the place where Merridy was to come. Every night I went into the village in hopes that some word had arrived, and I waited patiently for a week. Then I got the blow. I heard it from the loafers around the little post-office first, but it dazed me so I wouldn't believe it till I borrowed the paper and read the whole story, with the type dancing and leaping before me. It took some hours for it to seep in, even after that, and for years I recalled every word of the damned lie as if it had been branded on me with hot irons. They called it a shocking crime, the most brutal murder California had ever known, and in the head-lines was my name in letters that struck me between the eyes like a hammer. Mrs. Dan Bennett had been foully murdered by me, in a fit of sudden jealousy, and I had disappeared with the baby! The husband had returned unexpectedly to find her dying, so he said, but too far gone to call for help, and with barely sufficient strength to tell him who did it and how! Then the paper went on with the tale of my courting her, and her turning me down for Bennett. It told how I had gone off alone up into the hills, turning into a bear that nobody, man or child, could approach. It said I had brooded there all this time till the mania got uppermost, and so came down to wreak my vengeance. They never even did me the credit of calling me crazy; I was a fiend incarnate, a beast without soul, and a lot of things like that; and, remember, I had never harmed a living thing in all my life. However, that wasn't what hurt. What turned me into a dull, dead, suffering thing was the knowledge that she was gone. For hours I couldn't get beyond that fact. Then came the realization that Bennett had done it, for I reasoned that he had dragged a hint of the truth from her by very force of the fear he held her in—and slain her. God!—the awful rage that came over me! But there was nothing to do; I had sworn to guard the little one, so I couldn't take vengeance on him. I couldn't go back and prove my innocence, for that would give the child to him. What a night I spent! The next day I saw I had been indicted by the grand jury and was a wanted man. From a distance I watched myself become an outlaw; watched the county put a price upon my head, which Bennett doubled; watched public opinion rise to such a heat that posses began to scour the mountains. What I noted in particular was a statement in the paper that 'The sorrowing husband takes his bereavement with the quiet courage which marks a brave man'! That roused me more than the knowledge that he had made me a wolf and set my friends on my track, which I hadn't covered very well, having ridden boldly. It happened that the Mexican woman couldn't read and talked little; still, I knew they'd find me soon—it couldn't be otherwise—so I made another run for it, swearing an oath, however, before I left that I'd come back and have that gambler's heart.

"It was lucky I went, for they uncovered my sign the next day, and the country where I'd hidden blazed like a field of dry grass. They were close on my heels, and they closed in from every quarter, but, pshaw! I knew the woods like an Indian, and the wild things were my friends again, which would have made it play if I'd been alone, but a girl child of three was harder to manage. So I cowered and skulked day after day like a thief or the murderer they thought me, working always farther into the hidden places, travelling by night with the little one asleep on my bosom, by day playing with her in some leafy glen, with my pursuers so close behind that for weeks I never slept; and my love for the child increased daily till it became almost an insanity.

"She was the only woman thing I had ever possessed, and it seemed like my love for the mother came back and settled on her. And she loved me, too, and trusted me. Every little smile, every clasp of her tiny, dimpled fingers showed it, and tied her to me with another knot till the fear of losing her became greater than I could bear, till it kept the chill of death in my bones and filled my veins with glacier water. I became an animal, a cowardly, quailing coyote, all through the love of a child.

"We had close squeezes many times, but I finally won, in spite of the fact that they tracked us clear to the edge of the desert, for I had hit for the state line, knowing that Nevada was a wilderness, and feeling that I'd surely lose them there. And I did. But in doing it I nearly lost Merridy. You see, the constant travel and hardship was too much for a prattling baby, and she fell sick from the heat and the dust and the thirst. I'd been going and going till I was a riding skeleton, till my arms were crooked and dead from holding her, but this new thing frightened me like those men and dogs had never done. Here was a thing I couldn't hide from nor outride, so I doubled back and came boldly into the watered country again, expecting they would take me, of course, for a runaway man with a babe in his arms isn't hard to identify, but I didn't care. I was bound for the nearest ranch or mining-camp where a woman could be found; but, as luck would have it, I went through without trying. I had gone farther from men and things, however, than I thought, and this return pursuit was a million times worse than the other, for I couldn't go fast enough to shake Death, who ran with his hand on my cantle or rode on my horse's rump. It was then I found Alluna. She was with a hunting-party of Pah-Utes, who knew nothing of me nor of the white man's affairs, and cared less; and when I saw the little squaw I rode my horse up beside her, laid the sick child in her arms, then tumbled out of the saddle. They had a harder job to pull me through than they did to save Merridy, for I'd given the baby all the water and hadn't slept or rested for many years, so it seemed.

"The little one was playing around several days before I got back my reason. Meanwhile the party had moved North, taking us with them, and, as it happened, just missing a posse who were returning from the desert.

"When I was able to get about I told Alluna that I must be going, but as I told her I watched her face, and saw the sign I wanted—the white girl had clutched at her like she had at me, and she couldn't give her up, so I made a dicker with her old man. It took all the money I had to buy that squaw, but I knew the kiddie must have a woman's care; and the three of us started out soon after, alone, and broke, and aimless—and we've been going ever since.

"That's the heart of the story, Lieutenant, and that's how I started to drift. Since then we three have never rested. I left them once in Idaho and went back to Mesa, riding all the way, mostly by night, but Bennett was gone. He'd run down mighty fast after Merridy died, so I heard, growing sullen and uglier day by day—and I reckon I was the only one who knew why—till he had a killing in his place. It was unprovoked, and instead of stopping to face it out the yellow in him rose to the surface and he left before sunup, as I had left, making a clean getaway, too, for there was no such hullabaloo raised about killing a man as there was about—the other. So my trip was all for nothing.

"I was used to disappointment by now, so I took it quiet and went back to Alluna and the little one, knowing that some day we two men would meet. You see, I figured that God had framed a cold hand for me, but He would surely give me a pair before the game closed. Of course, never having seen Bennett, I was handicapped, and, added to that, he changed his name, so the search was mighty slow and blind, but I knew the day would come. And it would have come only for—this.

"There isn't much more to tell. I did what most men would have done, I reckon, because I was just average in every way. I took Alluna, and together we drifted North, along the frontier, until we landed here. Every year the little girl got more beautiful and more like her mother, and every year we two loved her more. We changed her name, of course, for I've always had the dread of the law back of me, and then the other two kiddies came along; but we were living pretty easy, the woman contented and me waiting for Bennett, till you stepped in and Necia fell in love. That's another thing I never counted on. It seems like I've always overlooked the plainest kind of facts. I've held off telling you the last few weeks, hoping you two wouldn't make it necessary, for I reckon I'm sort of a coward; but she informed me to-night that she couldn't marry you, being what she thinks she is, and knowing the blood she has in her I knew she wouldn't. I figured it wouldn't be right to either of you to let you go it blind, and so I came in to tell you this whole thing and to give myself up."

Gale stopped, then poured himself another drink.

"To give yourself up?" echoed Burrell, vaguely. "How do you mean?" He had sat like one in a trance during the long recital, only his eyes alive.

"I'm under indictment for murder," said the trader. "I have been for fifteen years, and there's no chance in the world for me to prove my innocence."

"Have you told Necia?" the young man inquired.

"No, you'll have to do that—I never could—she might—disbelieve. What's more, you mustn't tell her yet. Wait till I give the word. It won't be long, perhaps a day. I want to go free a little while yet, for I've got some work to do."

Burrell rose to his feet and stamped the cramps from his muscles. He was deeply agitated, and his mind was groping darkly for light to lay hold of this new thing that confronted him.

"Why, yes, yes—of course—don't come until you're ready," he muttered, mechanically, as if unaware of the meaning of his words. "To be sure, I'm a policeman, am I not? I had forgotten I was a jailer, and—and all that." He said it sneeringly, and with a measure of contempt for his office; then he turned suddenly to the trader, and his voice was rich and deep-pitched with feeling.

"John Gale," he said, "you're the bravest man I ever knew, and the best." He choked a bit. "You sacrificed all that life meant when this girl was a baby, and now when she has come into womanhood you give up your blood for her. By God! You are a man! I want your hand!"

In spite of himself he could not restrain the moisture that dimmed his eyes as he gripped the toil-worn palm of this great, gray hulk of a man, so aged and bent beneath the burden of his life-long, fadeless love, who, in turn, was powerfully affected by the young man's impulsive outburst of feeling and his unexpected words of praise. The old man looked up a trifle shyly.

"Then you don't doubt no part of it?"

"Certainly not."

"Somehow, I always figured nobody would believe me if ever I told the whole thing."

The soldier gazed unseeingly into the flame of his lamp, and said:

"I wonder if my love for the daughter is as great and as holy as your love for the mother. I wonder if I could give what you have given, if I had nothing but a memory to live with me." Then he inquired, irrelevantly; "But what about Bennett, Mr. Gale? You say you never found him?"

The trader answered, after a moment's hesitation, "He's still at large." At which his companion exclaimed, "I'd love to meet him in your stead!"

Gale seemed seized with a desire to speak, but, even while he hesitated, out of the silent night there came the sound of quick footsteps approaching briskly, as if the owner were in haste and knew whither he was bound. Up the steps they came lightly; then the room and the whole silence round about rang and echoed with a peremptory signal. Evidently this man rapped on the board door to awaken and alarm, for instead of his knuckles he used some hard and heavy thing like a gun-butt.

"Lieutenant Burrell! Lieutenant Burrell!" a gruff voice cried.

"Who's there?" called the young man.

"Let me in! Quick! I've got work for you to do! Open up, I say! This is Ben Stark!"



CHAPTER XV

AND A KNOT TIGHTENED

A day of shattered hopes is a desolate thing, but the night of such a day is desolate indeed. In all his life Poleon Doret had never sunk to such depths of despondency, for his optimistic philosophy and his buoyant faith in the goodness of life forbade it. Therefore, when darkness came it blotted out what little brightness and light and hope were left to him after Necia's stormy interview with the Lieutenant. The arrival of the freight steamer afforded him some distraction, but there was only a small consignment for the store, and that was quickly disposed of; so, leaving the other citizens of Flambeau to wrangle over their private merchandise, he went back to his solitary vigil, which finally became so unbearable that he sought to escape his thoughts, or at least to drown them for a while, amid the lights and life and laughter of Stark's saloon. Being but a child by nature, his means of distraction were primal and elementary, and he began to gamble, as usual with hard luck, for the cards had ever been unkind to him. He did not think of winnings or losings, however—he merely craved the occupation; and it was this that induced him to sit at a game in which Runnion played, although ordinarily he would not have tolerated even tacitly such a truce to his dislikes. As it was, he crouched in a corner, his hat pulled down over his brow, his swarthy face a darker hue beneath the shadow, losing steadily, only now and then showing a flash of white teeth as he saw his money go. What mattered loss to him? He had no more need of money now than Necia had of his love. He would spend the dollars he had eked and scraped and saved for her as she had spent the treasures of his heart, and now that the one had brought him no return he wished to be rid of the other, for he was shortly to go again in search of his "New Country," where no man needs gold half so much as a clean heart. It would be a long journey, far to the West and North—a journey that none of his kind had ever fared back from, and he wished to go light, as all good adventurers go.

Runnion annoyed him with his volubility, for the news of his good-fortune had fired the man with a reckless disregard for money, and he turned to gaming as the one natural recourse of his ilk. As the irony of fate would have it, he won what the Canadian lost, together with the stakes of various others who played for a time with him and then gave up, wagging their heads or swearing softly at the cards.

It was shortly after midnight that Stark came into the place. Poleon was not too absorbed in his own fortunes to fail to notice the extraordinary ferocity and exhilaration of the saloon-keeper, nor that his face was keener, his nostrils thinner, his walk more nervous, and his voice more cutting than usual when he spoke to Runnion.

"Come here."

"I'll be with you when I finish this hand," said the player, over his shoulder.

"Come here!" Stark snapped his command, and Runnion threw down his cards.

"I'm right in the middle of a winning streak. You'll break my luck, Ben."

But the other only frowned impatiently, and, drawing the reluctant gambler aside, began to talk rapidly to him, almost within ear-shot of Poleon, who watched them, idly wondering what Stark had to say that could make Runnion start and act so queerly. Well, it was their affair. They made a bad pair to draw to. He knew that Runnion was the saloon-keeper's lieutenant and obeyed implicitly his senior's commands. He could distinguish nothing they said, nor was he at all curious until a knot of noisy men crowded up to the bar, and, forcing the two back nearer to the table where he sat, his sharp ears caught these words from Runnion's lips:

"Not with me! She'd never go with me!" and Stark's reply:

"She'll go where I send her, and with anybody I tell her to."

The Frenchman lost what followed, for a newly dealt hand required study. He scanned his cards, and tossed them face up before the dealer; then he overheard Runnion say:

"It's the only one in camp. He might sell it if you offered him enough." At this Stark called one of the men at the bar aside, and the three began to dicker.

"Not a cent less," the third man announced, loudly. "There ain't another Peterborough in town."

It was Poleon's deal now, and when he had finished both Stark and Runnion had disappeared, also the man they had accosted, which pleased the Canadian, for now that Runnion was eliminated from the game he might win a little. A steady, unvarying run of bad hands is uninteresting, and does not occupy one's mind as well as an occasional change of luck.

Outside Runnion was saying again to Stark:

"She won't go with me, Ben; she don't like me. You see, I made love to her, and she got mad and wanted me killed."

"She'll never know who you are until it's too late to turn back," said the other, "and you are the only man I can trust to take her through. I can trust you—you owe me too much to be crooked."

"Oh, I'll act square with you! But look here, what's all this about, anyhow? Why do you want that girl? You said you didn't care for her that way; you told me so yourself. Been having a change of heart, or is it your second childhood?" He laughed disagreeably.

"It's none of your business," said the gambler. "I want her, and that's enough. All you have to do is to take her to St. Michael's and keep her there till you hear from me. She thinks she is going to the Mission, and you needn't tell her otherwise until you get her aboard a steamer; then take her, no matter what kind of a fight she puts up. You've got a light-rowing skiff, and you'd better keep going till you're overtaken by a down-river boat. I want her as far away from here as possible. There's going to be some hell in this camp. Now, hike, and get yourself ready."

"All right! But I ain't the safest kind of a chaperon for a good-looking girl."

Stark laid a cold hand on Runnion's shoulder, close up to his neck.

"Get that out of your mind. She belongs to me."

"You said just now—"

"Never mind what I said. She's mine, and you've got to promise to be straight with her. I've trusted you before, and if you're not on the level now, say so. It will save you a lot of trouble."

"Oh! All right!" exclaimed Runnion, testily. "Only it looks mighty queer."

He melted into the darkness and Stark returned to his cabin, where he paced back and forth impatiently, smiling evilly now and then, consulting his watch at frequent intervals. A black look had begun to settle on his face, but it vanished when Necia came, and he met her with a smile.

"I was afraid you had weakened," he said. "Everything is ready and waiting. I've got the only canoe in the place, a Peterborough, and hired a good oarsman to put you through, instructing him to make as fast time as he can, and to board the first steamer that overtakes you. Too bad this freighter that just got in isn't going the other way. However, there's liable to be another any hour, and if one doesn't come along you'll find enough blankets and food in the skiff, so you needn't go ashore. You'll be there before you know it."

"You are very kind," said the girl. "I can't thank you enough." She was clothed in her simple everyday dress, and looked again the sun-colored half-breed girl with the wide, dark eyes and the twin braids of crow-black hair.

"You didn't run into anybody, eh?"

She shook her head. Then he led her out into the darkness, and they stumbled down to the river's-bank, descending to the gravelly water's edge, where rows of clumsy hand-sawed boats and poling-skiffs were chafing at their painters. The up-river steamer was just clearing.

Stark's low whistle was answered a hundred yards below, and they searched out a darker blot that proved to be a man's figure.

"Is everything ready?" he inquired, at which the shadow grunted unintelligibly. So, holding Necia by the arm, Stark helped her back to a seat in the stern.

"This man will take you through," he said. "You can trust him, all right."

The oarsman clambered in and adjusted his sweeps, then Stark laid a hand on the prow and shoved the light boat out into the current, calling softly:

"Good-bye, and good-luck."

"Good-bye, Mr. Stark. Thank you ever so much," the girl replied, too numb and worn out to say much, or to notice or care whither she was bound or who was her boatman. She had been swept along too swiftly to reason or fear for herself any more.

Half an hour later the scattered lights of the little camp winked and twinkled for the last time. Turning, she set her face forward, and, adjusting the cushions to her comfort, strained her tired eyes towards the rising and falling shadow of her boatman. She seemed borne along on a mystic river of gloom that hissed and gurgled about her, invisible but all-pervading, irresistible, monstrous, only the ceaseless, monotonous creak of the rowlocks breaking the silence.

Stark did not return to his cabin, but went back instead to his saloon, where he saw Poleon Doret still sprawling with elbows on the table, his hat pulled low above his sullen face. The owner of the place passed behind the bar and poured himself a full glass of whiskey, which he tossed off, then, without a look to right or left, went out and down towards the barracks. A light behind the drawn curtains of the officer's house told that his man was not abed, but he waited a long moment after his summons before the door was opened, during which he heard the occupant moving about and another door close in the rear. When he was allowed entrance at last he found the young man alone in a smoke-filled room with a bottle and two empty glasses on the table.

For at the sound of his voice Gale had whispered to Burrell, "Keep him out!" and the Lieutenant had decided to refuse his late visitor admittance when he lighted on the expedient of concealing the trader in the bedroom at the rear. It was only natural, he reasoned, that Gale should dislike to face a man like Stark before he had regained his composure.

"Go in there and wait till I see what he wants," he had said, and, shutting the old man in, he had gone forth to admit Stark, resenting his ill-timed intrusion and inquiring brusquely the cause of it.

Before answering, Stark entered and closed the door behind him.

"I've got some work for you, Lieutenant."

"I guess it can wait till morning," said Meade.

"No, it can't; it's got to be done to-night, right now! You represent the law, or at least you've taken every occasion to so declare yourself, and to mix in with little things that don't cut much figure; so now I've come to you with something big. It's a serious affair, and being as I'm a peaceful man I want to go by the law." His eyes mocked the words he uttered. "You're mighty prompt and determined when it comes to regulating such affairs. You seem to carry the weight of this whole community on your shoulders, so I'm here to give you some information."

Burrell ignored the taunt, and said, quietly: "It's a little late for polite conversation. Come to the point."

"I've got a criminal for you."

"What kind?"

"Murderer."

"You've had a killing in your place, eh?"

"No, I've just made a discovery. I found it all out by accident, too—pure accident. By Heaven! You can't tell me there isn't a beneficent Providence overlooking our affairs. Why, this felon has lived here among us all this time, and only for the merest chance I never would have recognized him."

"Well, well! Go on!" snapped Burrell, impatiently.

"He's a friend of yours, and a highly respected party. He's a glorious example to this whole river."

The officer started. Could it be? he wondered. Could knowledge of this affair have reached this man? He was uncomfortably aware of that presence in the back room, but he had to know the truth.

"Who is the man?"

"He's your friend. He's—" Stark paused, gloating over his enemy's suspense.

"Go on." "He's everybody's friend. He's the shining mark of this whole country. He's the benevolent renegade, Squaw-man Gale."

"John Gale?"

"Gaylord is his name, and I was a fool not to know it sooner."

"How did you discover this?" inquired Burrell, lamely. "What proof have you?"

The disclosure had not affected the soldier as Stark expected, and his anger began to lift itself.

"That's neither here nor there; the man's a murderer; he's wanted in California, where I came from; he's been indicted, and there's a price on his head. He's hidden for fifteen years, but he'll hang as sure as I stand here."

Disclosures of a complex nature had so crowded on Burrell in the last few hours that he saw himself the centre of a most unfortunate and amazing tangle. Things were difficult enough as it was, but to have this man appear and cry for justice—this man above all others!—it was a complication quite unlocked for—a hideous mockery. He must gain time for thought. One false step might ruin all. He could not face this on the spur of the moment, so, shrugging his shoulders with an air of polite scepticism, he assumed a tone of good-natured raillery.

"Fifteen years? Murder? John Gale a murderer? Why, that's almost—pardon me if I smile—I'm getting sleepy. What proof have you?"

"Proof!" blazed the gambler. "Proof! Ask Gaylord! Proof! Why, the woman he murdered was my wife!"

It was Burrell's turn now to fall incoherent, and not only did his speech forsake him, but his thoughts went madly veering off into a wilderness where there was no trail, no light, no hope. What kind of a coil was this? What frightful bones were these he bared? This man was Bennett! This was Necia's father! This man he hated, this man who was bad, whose name was a curse throughout the length and breadth of the West, was the father of the girl he loved! His head began to whirl, then the story of the trader came back to him, and he remembered who and what the bearer of these later tidings was. He raised a pair of eyes that had become furious and bloodshot, and suddenly realized that the man before him, who persisted in saddling upon Gale this heinous crime, was the slayer of Necia's mother; for he did not doubt Gale's story for an instant. He found his fingers writhing to feel the creature's throat.

"Proof!" Stark was growling. "How much proof do you need? I've followed him for fifteen years. I've tracked him with men and dogs through woods and deserts and mining-camps. I've slept on his trail for five thousand miles, and now do you think I'm mistaken? He killed my wife, I say, and robbed me of my little girl! That's her in his house. That's her he calls Necia. She's my girl—MY GIRL, do you understand?—and I'll have his life."

It was hate that animated him, and nothing more. He had no joy in the finding of his offspring, no uplifted thought of justice. The thirst for revenge, personal, violent, utter, was all that prompted this man; but Burrell had no inkling yet of the father's well-shaped plans, nor how far-reaching they were, and could barely stammer:

"So! You—you know?"

"Yes! She wears the evidence around her neck, and if that isn't enough I can furnish more—evidence enough to smother you. My name isn't Stark at all; I changed it years ago for certain reasons. I've changed it more than once, but that's my privilege and my own affair. Her name is Merridy Bennett."

"I don't suppose you know I'm going to marry her," said the Kentuckian, irrelevantly.

"No," replied the other, "I wasn't aware of the fact."

"Well, I am. I'll be your son-in-law." He said this as if it were the statement of an astonishing truth, whereat Stark grinned, a mirthless, disquieting sort of grimace, and said:

"There's a lot of things for you and me to settle up first. For one thing, I want those mines of hers."

"Why?"

"Well, I'm her father, and she's not of age."

"I'll think it over."

"I'll take them, anyway, as her next of kin."

Burrell did not follow up this statement, for its truth was incontrovertible, and showed that the father's ill-will was too tangible a thing to be concealed; so he continued:

"We'll adjust that after Gale is attended to; but, meanwhile, what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to arrest the man who killed my wife. If you don't take him the miners will. I've got a following in this camp, and I'll raise a crowd in fifteen minutes—enough to hang this squaw-man, or batter down your barracks to get him. But I don't want to do that; I want to go by the law you've talked so much about; I want you to do the trick."

At last Burrell saw the gambler's deviltry. He knew Stark's reputation too well to think that he feared a meeting with Gale, for the man had lived in hope of that these fifteen years, and had shaped his life around such a meeting; but this indirect method—the Kentuckian felt a flash of reluctant admiration for a man who could mould a vengeance with such cruel hands, and, even though he came from a land of feuds, where hate is a precious thing, the cunning strength of this man's enmity dwarfed any he had ever known. Stark had planned his settlement coldly and with deliberate malice; moreover he was strong enough to stand aside and let another take his place, and thus deny to Gale the final recourse of a hunted beast, the desperate satisfaction that the trader craved. He tied his enemy's hands and delivered him up with his thirst unsatisfied—to whom? He thrust a weapon into the hand of his other enemy, and bade this other enemy use it; worse than that, forced him to strike the man he honored—the man he loved. Burrell never doubted that Stark had carefully weighed the effect of this upon Necia, and had reasoned that a girl like her could not understand a soldier's duty if it meant the blood of a parent. If he refused to act, the gambler could break him, while every effort he made to protect Gale would but increase the other's satisfaction. There was no chance of the trader's escape. Stark held him in his hand. His followers would do his bidding. It was a desperate affair. Was it impossible, the Lieutenant wondered, to move this man from his purpose?

"Have you thought of Necia? She loves Gale. What effect will this have on her?"

"Damn her! She's more his brat than mine. I want John Gaylord!"

At this a vicious frenzy overtook Burrell, and he thought of the man behind yonder door, whom he had forgotten until these words woke something savage in him. Well! Why not? These two men had stalked each other clear into the farthest places, driven by forces that were older than the hills. Who was he to stand between such passions? This was ordained, it was the course of nature, the clash of elements, and this was a fair battle-ground, so why should he undertake to stop a thing decreed?

The gambler's words rang in his ears—"I want John Gaylord"—and before he knew what he was doing he had answered: "Very well. I'll give him to you," and crossed quickly to the door of his bedroom and flung it open. On the threshold he paused stock-still. The place was empty; a draught sucked through the open window, flirting with the curtain and telling the story of the trader's exit.

"If you're looking for your coat, it's here," he heard Stark say. "Get into it, and we'll go for him."

The Lieutenant's mind was working fast enough now, in all conscience, and he saw with clear and fateful eyes whither he was being led, at which a sudden reckless disregard for consequences seized him. He felt a blind fury at being pulled and hauled and driven by this creature, and also an unreasoning anger at Gale's defection. But it was the thought of Necia and the horrible net of evil in which this man had ensnared them both that galled him most. It was all a terrible tangle, in which the truth was hopelessly hidden, and nothing but harm could come from attempting to unravel it. There was but one solution, and that, though fundamental and effective, was not to be expected from an officer of the law. Nevertheless, he chose it, for Ben Stark was too potent a force for evil to be at large, and needed extermination as truly as if he were some dangerous beast. He determined to finish this thing here and now.

Meade went to his bureau, took his revolver from the belt where he had hung it, and came out into the other room. Stark, seeing the weapon, exclaimed:

"You don't need that; he won't resist you."

"I've decided not to take him," said Burrell.

"Decided not to take him?" shouted the other. "Have you weakened? Don't you intend to arrest that man?"

"No!" cried the soldier. "I've listened to your lies long enough; now I'm going to stop them, once for all. You're too dangerous to have around."

They faced each other silently a moment; then Stark spoke in a very quiet voice, though his eyes were glittering:

"What's the meaning of this? Are you crazy?"

"Gale was here just before you came, and told me who killed your wife. I know."

"You do?"

"I do."

"Well?"

"It's pretty late. This place is lonely. This is the simplest way."

The gambler fell to studying his antagonist, and when he did not speak Burrell continued:

"Come, brace up! I'm giving you a chance."

But Stark shook his head.

"Don't be afraid," insisted the Lieutenant. "There are no witnesses. If you get me, nobody will know, and your word is good. If not—it's much simpler than the other." Then, when the gambler still made no move, he insisted, "You wouldn't have me kill you like a rattlesnake?"

"You couldn't," said the older man. "You're not that kind—and I'm not the kind to be cheated, either. Listen! I've lived over forty years, and I never took less than was coming to me. I won't begin to-night."

"You'll get your share—"

"Bah! You don't know what I mean. I don't want you; it's him I'm after, and when I'm done with him I'll take care of you; but I won't run any risk right now. I won't take a chance on losing what I've risked so much to gain, what I've lived these fifteen years to get. You might put me away—there's the possibility—and I won't let you or any other man—or woman either, not even my girl—cheat me out of Gale. Put up your gun."

The soldier hesitated, then did as he was bidden, for this man knew him better than he knew himself.