At first the papers had it that John Harper Drennen had absconded with fifty thousand dollars of the Eastern Mines Company's money. With rapid investigation came ready amplification of the first meagre details. Drennen's affairs were looked into and it was found that through unwise speculations the man had been skirting on thin ice the pool of financial ruin for a year. The deficit of fifty thousand grew under the microscope of investigation to sixty thousand, eventually to seventy-five thousand.

When at last David Drennen got the back numbers of the papers and locked himself up in his father's library to work his way laboriously through the columns of fact and surmise he was not the same David Drennen who had struck a man in the face for suggesting to him that his father was a thief. Here was the first sign of a weakening of faith; here the first fear which strove wildly to prove itself a shadow. But from shadow emerged certainty. He looked his spectre in the face and it did not dissolve into thin air. When he had done he put his face upon his arms and sobbed. The tardy but crushing sense of his hero's guilt had stricken him; the thought that his father had in no way confided in him, had left him without a word, perhaps without a thought, broke his heart. He was never to be quite the same David Drennen again.

He remained at his father's home through the weary months during which the miserably sordid horror dragged on. One morning he packed into a suitcase the few little articles which he felt were his own. He went out of the house before the others came in; he had no desire to see the home go, as everything else had gone, to pour its handful of golden sand into the great hole which John Harper's ruin had left behind him. It had been almost a year since the first news; and upon the day on which David Drennen set his back to all he knew and his face toward what might come to him, a paper brought the last word. He read it calmly upon the train, wondering at himself that there was such a thing as calm left to him. A man, looking over his shoulder, commented on the news lightly. Drennen didn't answer. He was visualising the final episode dully; the great, masterful body of his own father in the Paris morgue, the ignominious grave, even the cowardly death, self-dealt.

"And he never wrote me," he muttered to himself.

There he was wrong, though he could not know it until months later when the brief letter, forwarded to him by the Chief, reached him. His face had been hard, because his heart was hard, when he read the note which at last John Harper Drennen had written and which, sodden and blurred, was found upon the dead body drawn from the Seine.

"Dear Davy," it had said. "Some day maybe you'll come to forgive me. God dealt me a hard hand to play, boy. Be a man, Davy; for your mother's sake if not for your dad's."

Drennen a year ago would have dropped his face into his hands and would have wept over this letter; now he laughed at it. And the laugh, this first one, was the laugh men came to know as Dave Drennen's laugh. It was like a sneer and a curse and a slap in the face.

The hardest blow the fates could deal him had been delivered mercilessly. But other relentless blows were to come after, and under their implacable, relentless smiting the soul of the man was hardened and altered and made over as is the bit of iron under the blacksmith's hammer. Those characteristics which had been the essentials of the spiritual man of last year were worked over; the fine steel springs of buoyancy were beaten into thin knives of malignancy. That the work might be done thoroughly there was left in him one spark which glowed later on and grew into friendship for a man whom he met far in the north where the Yukon country called to such men as Drennen. The friendship fanned into life a lingering spark of the old generous spirit. Drennen, gambling his life lightly, had won as careless gamblers are prone to do. He made a strike; he trusted his new friend; and his friend tricked, betrayed and robbed him. This blow and others came with the gaunt years. At the end of them David Drennen was the man who sought to quarrel with Kootanie George; he was a man like a lone wolf, hunting alone, eating alone, making his lair alone, his heart filled with hatred and bitterness and distrust. He came to expect the savagery of the world which smote and smote and smote again at him, and he struck back and snarled back, each day finding him a bitterer man than the preceding day had left him. Long before he had turned back from the Yukon to the North Woods, empty handed, empty hearted, men had come to call him "No-luck" Drennen. And as though his ill fortune were some ugly, contagious disease, they shunned him even as invariably as he avoided them.

Men knew him in Wild Cat, two weeks hard going over an invisible trail from MacLeod's; they knew him at Moosejaw, two hundred and fifty miles westward of the Settlement; wherever there was news of gold found he was known, generally coming silently with the first handful of venturesome, restive spirits. But while his coming and his going were marked and while eyes followed him interestedly men had given over offering their hands in companionship. Now and then he moved among them as a man must, but always was he aloof, standing stubbornly apart, offering no man his aid in time of difficulty, flaring into blazing wrath the few times on record when men showed sympathy and desire to befriend him.

Superstition, abashed-eyed step daughter in the house of civilisation, lifts her head defiantly in the wilderness. She is born of the solitudes, a true daughter of the silent places. Here, where men were few and scattered broadcast by the great hand of adventure across the broken miles of all but impassable mountains, superstition is no longer merely an incident but an essential factor in human life and destiny. And here men long ago had come to frown when their questing eyes found the great, gaunt form of David Drennen in the van of some mad rush to new fields: He was unlucky; men who rubbed shoulders with him were foredoomed to share his misfortune; the gold, glittering into their eyes from a gash in the earth, would vanish when his shadow fell across it.

In many things he had grown to be more like a wild beast than a man. He had hunted with the human pack and he had found selfishness and jealousy and treachery on every hand. He came to look upon these as the essential characteristics of the human race. Even now that he was wounded he saw but one sordid motive of greed under the hesitant offers of help; even now he had been less like a wounded man than a stricken wolf. The wolf would have withdrawn to his hidden lair; he would have contented himself with scant food; he would have licked his wound clean and have waited for it to heal; he would have snapped and snarled at any intrusion, knowing the way of his fellows when they fall upon a wounded brother. So Drennen.



CHAPTER IX

"TO THE GIRL I AM GOING TO KISS TO-NIGHT!"

An odd mood was upon him this afternoon. Perhaps since moods are contagious, his was caught from the girl, Ygerne. With a sort of jeering laughter in his heart he surrendered to his inclination. The world had gone stale in his mouth; a black depression beat at him with its stiffling [Transcriber's note: stifling?] wings; an hour with the girl might offer other amusement than the mere angering of Lemarc and Sefton. He wanted only one thing in the world; to be whole of body so that he might fare out on the trail again, a fresh trail now that gold lay at the end of it. But since he might not have the greater wish he contented himself with the lesser.

He shaved himself, grimly conscious of the contempt looking out at him from the haggard eyes in the mirror. Those eyes mocked him like another man's. Then he went to Pere Marquette's store, paying scant attention to the three or four men he found there. He made known his wants and tossed his gold pieces to the counter, taking no stock of curious gazes. He saw that Kootanie George was there and that Kootanie's big boots were gummed with the red mud of the upper trail. He took no trouble to hide his sneer; Kootanie George, too, had been out in search of his gold and had returned empty handed.

To each question of Pere Marquette his answer was the same:

"The best you've got; damn the price."

Marquette had but the one white silk shirt in the house and Drennen took it, paying the ten dollars without a word. There were many pairs of boots to fit him; one pair alone took his fancy, though he knew the rich black leather and the shapely high heels would cause him to hurl them away to-morrow as things unfit for the foot of man. He selected corduroy breeches and a soft black hat and returned to his dugout, leaving fifty dollars upon the counter. And when he had dressed and had laughed at himself he went back up the muddy road for Ygerne. But first he stopped at Joe's.

"I want the private room," he said, and Joe nodded eagerly as he saw Drennen's hand emerge from his pocket. "And I want the best dinner for two you can put on. Trimmings and all."

Joe, slipping the first of Drennen's money into his pocket and cherishing high hopes of more, set himself and his boy to work, seeing his way of arriving at the second gold piece with no great loss of time.

The long northern twilight was an hour old when Drennen called for Ygerne. She came out of her room at Marquette's ready for him. She had told him she must "dress" for the occasion. He had thought her joking. In spite of him he stared at her wonderingly a moment. And, despite her own gathering of will, a flush crept into her cheeks under his look while her own eyes widened to the alterations a little effort had made in the man. And the thing each noted swiftly of the other was scarcely less swiftly noted by all men and women in the Settlement before they had gone down to Joe's: he had suddenly become as handsome as a devil from hell; she as radiant as an angel.

"Are we just going to step into a ballroom for the masquerade?" she half whispered with a queer little intake of breath as she found his arm with a white gloved hand. "And is all this," waving at the Settlement itself, the river snaking its way through the narrow valley, the frowning fronts of Ironhead and Indian Peak against the saffron sky, "just so much painted canvas for the proper background?"

He laughed and brought his eyes away from the white throat and shoulders, letting them sweep upward to the mystery of her eyes, the dusky hair half seen, half guessed under the sheen of her scarf, wondering the while at the strange femininity of her in bringing such dainty articles of dress to such a land. Then, his eyes finding the prettily slippered and stockinged feet, he moved with her to the side of the road where the ground was harder.

Joe had seen with amazing rapidity that the "trimmings" were not wanting. With old knowledge born of many years of restaurant work, he knew that any day some prospector might find that which all prospectors endlessly sought and that then he would grind his bare grubstake contemptuously under his heel and demand to eat. Upon such occasions there would be no questions asked as to price if Joe but tickled the tingling palate. Joe had unlocked the padlock of the cellar trapdoor; he had gone down and had unlocked another padlock upon a great box. And all that which he had brought out, beginning with a white tablecloth and ending with nuts and raisins, had been a revelation to his boy assistant. There was potted chicken, there were tinned tomatoes and peaches, there were many things which David Drennen had not looked upon for the matter of years.

The "private room" into which Joe, even his apron changed for the occasion, showed them was simply the far end of the long lunch room, half shut off from the rest of the house by a flimsy partition having no door, but a wide, high arch let into it through which a man at the lunch counter might see the little table and both of the diners.

Drennen, stepping in front of Joe, took Ygerne's scarf, drew out her chair for her, and having seen her seated, took his own place with the table between them. He nodded approvingly as he noted that Joe had not been without taste; for the restaurant keeper had even thought of flowers and the best that the Settlement could provide, a flaming red snowplant, stood in the centre of the table in a glass bowl of clean white snow.

Joe brought the wine, a bucket at which the boy had scrubbed for ten minutes, holding the bottle as the glass bowl held the snow-plant, in a bed of snow. When he offered it a trifle uncertainly to Drennen's gaze and Drennen looked at it and away, nodding carelessly, Joe allowed himself to smile contentedly. Champagne here was like so much molten gold; it was assured that Drennen was "going the limit."

Drennen lifted his glass. His glance, busied a moment reminiscently with the bubbling amber fluid, travelled across the table. Ygerne Bellaire had raised her glass with him. Her eyes were sparkling, a little eager, a little excited, perhaps a little triumphant.

"Isn't it fun?" she said gaily.

He looked back gravely into her laughing eyes.

"May I drink your health?" he demanded. "And success to whatever venture has brought you so far from the beaten trail."

She set down her glass, making a little moue of pretended disappointment at him with her red mouth.

"And I was thinking that I was to have the honour of drawing something gallant, at least flattering, something befitting the occasion, from you!" she said. "Why don't you say, 'Here's lookin' at you,' and be done with it?"

He laughed.

"Then I'll say what I was thinking. May I drink this to the one woman I have ever seen whom I'd fall in love with . . . if I were a fool like other men?"

He drank his wine slowly, draining the glass, his eyes full upon hers. She laughed and when he had done said lightly,

"At least that's better." She sipped her own wine and set it aside again. "Why didn't you say that in the first place? Why must you think one thing and say another?"

"That way lies wisdom," he told her coolly.

"Or stupidity, which?" she retorted.

"Shall a man say all of the foolish things which flash into his brain?"

"Why not?" She shrugged, twisting her glass in slow fingers. "If all of the nonsense were taken out of life what would be left, I wonder?"

"I have the honour to entertain the high-born Lady Ygerne Bellaire at dinner," he said in mock deference. "Her request is my command. Shall I voice my second idiotic thought?"

She nodded, making her mouth smile at him while her eyes were gravely speculative.

"Then," and his bow was in accord with the mockery of his tone, "I was thinking that for the reason best known to the King of Fools I'd like to kiss that red mouth of yours, Ygerne!"

"You'd be the first man who had ever done so," she told him steadily.

"Quite sure of that?" he sneered.

"Yes."

"Tempting me further?" he laughed at her.

"I don't think you'd dare, with all of your presumption, Mr. Drennen."

"Because there are a couple of men out there to see, I suppose?"

"No. I don't think that that would stop you. Because of this."

A hand, dropped to her lap, came up to the level of the table top and in its palm he saw the shining barrel of a small automatic pistol. Again he laughed at her.

"It seems the latest fad for women to carry such playthings," he ridiculed her. "I wonder how frightened you'd have to be before you could pull the trigger?"

"Just merely angered," she smiled back at him, as the weapon went back into her lap, and out of sight.

"It's just a trifling episode, this shooting a man," he suggested. "I suppose you've done that sort of thing before?"

"If I hadn't perhaps I shouldn't be here now," she informed him as quietly as he had spoken.

It flashed upon Drennen, looking straight into her unfaltering eyes, that the girl was telling him the truth. Well, why not? There was Southern blood in her; her name suggested it and her appearance proclaimed it. And Southern blood is hot blood. His instinct was telling him that she was some new type of adventuress; her words seemed to assure him of the fact.

"Since I cannot be about my business these days," he said slowly, "I am fortunate in finding so entertaining a lady to share my idleness."

"And I in finding so gallant a host," she smiled back at him.

Joe served the first of his lighter courses and withdrew. As time passed a few men came into the lunch room, their eyes finding the two figures in the private room. Drennen observed them casually. He saw Marc Lemarc and Captain Sefton. The old hard smile clung for a moment to his lips as he marked the angry stare which the man with the coppery Vandyck beard bestowed upon him. He saw Kootanie George enter alone; he saw, a little later, Ernestine Dumont flirting with Ramon Garcia, ignoring the big Canadian. Garcia stepped to Joe's side to arrange for the use of the room in which Drennen and Ygerne were; Ernestine, thinking the room empty as it usually was, came on to the arch of the door before she saw its occupants. As her eyes swept quickly from Ygerne to Drennen a hot flush ran up into the woman's cheeks. Then, with a little, hard laugh, she turned back to find a seat with Garcia at one of the oilcloth covered tables. Garcia, for the first time seeing Ygerne, bowed sweepingly, his eyes frankly admiring her, before he sat down with Ernestine.

"Ygerne!" said Drennen out of a desultory conversation in which an idle question put and unanswered was promptly forgotten.

"Well?" she asked quietly.

"I am going to tell you something. You will note that I have had but the one glass of wine; I have drunk only one toast. Therefore we may admit that I am sober and know what I am about. We are going to talk of the thing I have found somewhere in the mountains. That is why we are met to-night . . . so that you may have your opportunity to try to learn what I alone know, what you and so many others want to know. When we have finished our little banquet you, being a free agent, are at liberty to call upon one of your friends there or even upon Joe, to see you to your room. Or you can accept my escort."

While she watched him, her elbows on the table, her chin upon her clasped hands, he poured himself a second glass. She saw the light in his eyes change subtly as he continued:

"A second toast, my Princess Ygerne! To the girl I am going to kiss to-night on our way between Joe's and Marquette's!" He held his glass up and laughed at her across the top of it. "To the girl I'd love now were I a fool; the girl I wouldn't know to-morrow if I saw her! The girl who pits the beauty of her body against the calm of a man's brain. The girl whose eyes are as beautiful as shining stars. The girl whose eyes are filled with the madness of the lust of gold! To a sweet-faced, cool-hearted little adventuress . . . My Lady Ygerne! Am I insulting? You knew that before you did me the honour to dine with me. Shall I drink the toast, Ygerne?"

She sat regarding him gravely, the dimples of a moment ago merely sweet memories, her eyes stars no longer but deep twin pools, mystery-filled.

"Was there a time when you were a gentleman, Mr. Drennen?" she asked steadily.

"Was there a time when you were as innocent as you look, Ygerne?" he answered coolly.

He saw the anger leap up in her eyes, he noted a sudden hard, tense curving of her lips. Then, lifting her white shoulders, she laughed softly as she leaned back in her chair, relaxing.

"Drink," she said lightly. "As you say, we shall talk of your new strike. As you say, that is why I am here with you. And then . . ."

He had tossed off his wine and now said sharply:

"Then you will allow me the pleasure of escorting you to the door of Pere Marquette's . . . or you will get one of your hangdogs or Joe here to see you home. Which?"

"Do you think I am a coward?" she said quickly.

"All women are, I think," was his blunt answer.

"Then try to kiss me when you please! Since I am your guest to-night I shall expect you to see me to my room."

"I have told you what will happen."

She smiled at him. He saw the fleeting dimples at the corners of the red lipped mouth. And he saw too, in her eyes, the glint as of steel.

"Speaking of your discovery, Mr. Drennen. . ."

He laughed.



CHAPTER X

SEEKERS AFTER GOLD

There had been only three loitering men and one woman enjoying Joe's hospitality as they went out. The men were Lemarc, Sefton and Ramon Garcia, the woman Ernestine Dumont. Drennen saw that Ygerne made cool pretence of seeing none of them; Lemarc and Sefton had no doubt lingered to watch her leave and she did not take kindly to such espionage. She was busy with the careful buttoning of a glove, the left glove. The right hand she left bare.

Not fifty steps from Marquette's Drennen laid his hand upon her arm.

"Kiss me, Ygerne," he commanded quietly.

There was little light, but he saw the glint of it upon the pistol in her hand.

"You know what you would have to pay," she said coolly. "Is it worth it?"

For answer he threw out his arms to draw her lithe body close up to his. But as her gloved hand struck him across the face she had sprung back, twisting a little, avoiding him, putting a quick two yards between them. He felt, rather than saw, that her pistol, levelled across the short space separating them, bore full upon his chest.

"Wait! Listen to me. You must listen."

She was no longer calm. He could hear her panting, whether from the exertion of snatching herself away from him or from the tense grip of whatever emotion was playing upon her nerves he could not tell.

"Don't you know that I mean what I say? That I can kill you, that I will kill you if you dare insult me further?"

"I know only one thing," he told her, his voice sterner than she had heard it before. "The King of Fools has put a mad desire into my brain. And you have helped him. I am always ready to pay for whatever I get and I am not used to haggling over the price."

"I have told you that I would kill you if you dared!" she flashed the words at him.

"And I," he retorted coolly, "told you that I'd kiss you if you dared come with me. Were we both bluffing? Or neither, Ygerne?"

"Coward!" she panted, and he knew how the red lips curled to the words. Even that picture but made madder the mad longing upon him. With his ugly laugh at the odd twist of feminine logic which had applied such an epithet at such a time, he came swiftly toward her.

As he came on Ygerne fired. The darkness was thick, but it seemed to her frowning eyes that he had foreseen the shot at the second before it was fired and had swung his shoulders to the side so that it cut by him without touching him. Again she fired; but now he was upon her and his hand had struck the pistol aside so that the questing bullet sped skywards. His arms were about her, drawing her tighter until they hurt her; she heard his breathing as his lips sought hers. Her right arm was held down at her side but her left hand struck at his face, tore at him, thrust him each possible quarter of an inch away, shielded her face. Again and again she struck, an unthinkable strength in her tense body.

The door at Marquette's was thrown open and half a dozen men rushed out into the road. The girl felt Drennen's arm relax, the right arm about her shoulders. With a quick movement she slipped free of it.

"Who shot?" called one of the men. "What's wrong?"

Ygerne, two paces from Drennen's side, answered very quietly, her coolness amazing him.

"I fired. It was a wager with Mr. Drennen. I shot at a wolf. I think I missed. Didn't I, Mr. Drennen?"

Drennen did not answer. The men in the road muttered among themselves, guessed something of the truth, laughed and went back into the house. Drennen walked with Ygerne to her own door. As he lifted his hat she threw open the door and the light streamed across his face. She saw that it was white and that his lips were set tight. Her eyes went quickly to the white silk shirt he had that day bought of Marquette. There was a widening splotch of red at the side, below the shoulder.

"Are you badly hurt?" she asked coolly.

"I don't know. I guess not. Good night, Ygerne."

"I thought that somewhere in you there was the soul of a gentleman," she said, her voice rising in clear scorn. "You are nothing but brute!"

"Nothing but brute," he repeated after her harshly. "You are quite right."

She looked at him fixedly a moment. Meeting her eyes he saw a swift change come. She was smiling at him now quite as though nothing unpleasant had arisen during a commonplace evening; she even put out her hand, the ungloved one which had shot him two minutes ago, and said lightly:

"I haven't thanked you for a very pleasant evening, Mr. Drennen. It is one I shall not forget soon. Good night."

For a moment he made no answer. Instead he stood looking steadily, curiously at her. Then suddenly he stooped a little, caught up her hand and brushed it lightly with his lips; the right, ungloved hand. Then he turned away.

She saw that he steadied himself by the fence about Marquette's yard and now was moving slowly toward his dugout. He had forgotten to put on his hat and still held it crumpled in his hand. She stood for a little while staring after him. Then she went into the house, closing the door softly.

Drennen, making his slow way homeward, met the men Lemarc and Sefton in a place where the light from an open door streamed across the road. Before Lemarc cried out Drennen had seen the working muscles of his face; the man was in the grip of a terrible rage.

"Damn you," cried Lemarc wildly. "What have you done? That was Ygerne's gun; I know it. If you have laid a hand on her . . ."

"Stand aside, you fool," snapped Drennen, less angry at Lemarc than at himself for his own physical weakness.

"I tell you," shouted Lemarc, his hand whipping out from under his coat and upward, the lamp rays from the house running down the keen two-edged steel, "if you . . ."

"Shut up, Marc." It was Captain Sefton's voice, sharp and threatening and steady with its cold anger. Drennen, looking to him, saw in his face a fury no less than Lemarc's but held under control. "Things are bad enough as they are."

"What do I care?" snarled Lemarc, wrenching at the hand Sefton had shot out to his arm. "If you think I'll stand for everything . . ."

"You'll stand for anything I say stand for," Sefton said coolly. "Remember that, Lemarc. Besides, Ygerne's all right. She can take care of herself, my boy. Come on."

Grumbling, Lemarc allowed himself to be led away. Drennen passed on and to his dugout. He found his bunk in the darkness and sat down upon the edge of it, resting, breathing heavily, his weakness grown already into giddy nausea. Finally, feeling the blood hot against his flesh and knowing that he must get it stopped, he struck a match and lighted a candle. With fingers shaking a little he tore his shirt away at the side and found the hurt. A little, contemptuous grunt escaped him as he made out just how bad it was. The bullet had merely ripped along his side, inflicting a shallow surface wound, coming the nearest thing in the world to missing him altogether. Had he not been pitifully nerveless from another wound not ten days old and his strength exhausted from his first active day since it had been given to him, he could have laughed at this and at the girl who had fired it. He stopped the bleeding as best he might, drew a rude bandage about his body, and sank back on his bunk dizzy and sick.

"And now," he muttered disgustedly, "because I have been a damned fool over a pretty cat with a red mouth and poisonous claws I've got another week of hell before I can go out on the trail again."

The knowledge that he was a fool was no new knowledge to Drennen. He sneered at himself for staking his life against a chance woman's lips, and, snarling, put out his candle. He drew the tumbled covers of his bed about him, of neither strength nor will to undress or to go and close the door he had left open. He wanted to sleep; to wipe out the memory of this day's folly as he sought to lose the memory of all other days. He wanted his strength back because of the mere animal instinct of life, not because life was a pretty thing.

But he did not sleep. His was that state of weakness and exhaustion of a battered body which fends off immediate, utter restfulness. He had shut the gates of his mind to the girl, Ygerne. But it was as though his hands, holding the gates shut, were powerless, and her hands, dragging at them that she might enter, were strong. With weariness and faintness came a light fever.

Through his fever the girl passed and repassed all night. He saw her as she had stood yonder on the mountain side, at the foot of the rainbow. He saw her as she had stepped out to meet him when he had gone to Marquette's for her, as she had sat across the table from him. Her white arms flashed at him, her white throat and bare shoulders shone through a blur of wandering fancies. Her red mouth was before him through the long hours, luring him now, the lips blossoming into a kiss; mocking him now; laughing with him, her cheeks dimpling as she laughed; laughing at him, hard as carved coral. All night the grey mystery of her eyes was upon him, their expression ever shifting, now filled with promise like dawn skies, now vague with threats like grey depths of ocean over hidden rocks.

When his will broke down in his utter weakness and he gave over trying to sleep, he drew himself up against the wall which was head-board for his bunk, lighted his candle and filled his pipe. Smoking slowly, the candle light in his eyes, the objects of his dugout brought into sudden harsh reality, he drove his mind away from the girl and sent it to the gold which he had discovered in its hidden place in the mountains. Now he could tell himself calmly that a few days of inactivity didn't matter. A few more days and he would be himself again; and then he might follow what path of life he chose, because he would be a rich man. And then he grew drowsy and dozed, only to have Ygerne Bellaire slip back into his befogged imaginings with her white shoulders, her grey eyes and her red mouth.

When in the faint light before the dawn the sick yellow flame of the second candle was dying out Drennen was making his way to Joe's. He drank his coffee and then drove himself to eat two bowls of mush. His face was so bloodless and drawn that Joe stared at him as at a ghost. Each time that Drennen moved he felt a burning pain in his side as though the wound were tearing open afresh.

The forenoon he spent in his dugout, dozing a little, but for the most part staring moodily out of his open door at the muddy waters of the Little MacLeod. He was aware, toward noon, of an unusual bustle and stir in the Settlement. Men were arriving, almost in a steady stream, a few on horseback, the major part on foot. There floated out to him loud voices from Pere Marquette's store; they were drinking there. He wondered idly what lay back of this human influx. He was too sick to care greatly.

He had left word with Joe to send the boy with lunch at noon. The boy came in shortly after one o'clock, explaining that there had been such a rush at the counter that Joe couldn't let him go sooner. Drennen cursed him and drove him out, asking no questions.

The human tide sweeping into the Settlement rose steadily during the afternoon. A street which had been deserted twenty-four hours ago was now jammed from side to side. Drennen came to understand dully as the day wore on that there could be but one explanation; a rush like this meant that some fool had dropped his pick into a vein of gold and word of it had flashed across the mountains. Even then, his pain and exhaustion and giddy sickness were such that he did not realise that he himself was to thank for the pouring of hundreds of men into MacLeod's.

When at last the true explanation did dawn upon him he reached out for his pipe, stuffed the bowl full of his tobacco and leaned back upon his bunk, his eyes frowning, his lips hard about his pipe stem. So, silent and brooding, he waited, knowing that it was to expect too much of human endurance to think that they would let him alone much longer.

The first man to visit him thrust through the doorway unceremoniously and coming straight to Drennen's side said bluntly, "I am Madden, Charles Madden of the Canadian Mining Company. Maybe you've heard of me?"

Drennen eyed him insolently, taking stock of the fresh cheeks, the keen blue eyes, the square, massive, masterly jaw, the assertive air, the clothing which was civilisation's conventional garb and which in the matter alone of heavy laced boots made concession to the mountains. The man was young, perhaps had not yet gotten into his thirties, and none the less had already that dominance of personality belonging to a seasoned captain of industry. Drennen, drawing at his pipe, maintained his silence.

"Well?" demanded Charlie Madden.

He whipped at one gloved hand with the gauntlet he held in the other and stared at Drennen impatiently. He had just arrived and had made no delay in coming to the dugout; Drennen noted the dust of his ride upon his face, the spurs still upon his boots. The atmosphere he bore with him was one of business urgency.

"Damn it, man," snapped Madden, "I've got something else to do besides smother in your hovel. I'm here to talk business."

He flung himself into the solitary chair in the one-room place, jerked his head about, saw that the door was open, got up and closed it, and came back to his chair. Drennen, eyeing him with steady hostility, did not open his lips.

"Now," and Madden had tossed gauntlets and hat to the floor beside him, "I'm anxious to get this thing over with. You've struck gold, they tell me? Let's see the colour of it."

"What's your proposition?" Drennen asked carelessly.

Madden laughed his stock-in-trade laugh; it was intended to make the other man feel vaguely that he was talking nonsense to a seer.

"Do you think I run around with a proposition to make every prospector who thinks he's found a bonanza? Before I know where the claim is or see the dirt out of it?"

Drennen lay back a little, his hands clasped behind his head.

"I know something of your company and your methods," he said coolly. "You're a pack of damned thieves. And, since you ask it, I do think that you run around all loaded with your proposition. Your game is to pay a man enough to get him drunk and keep him drunk for a spell; that's his cash bonus; he gets the rest in stocks. Then you break him with assessments and kick him out. I'm not talking business to-day, thank you," he ended drily.

Madden looked at him keenly, making a swift appraisal which had in it something of the nature of a readjustment. Then he laughed again.

"Look here, Mr. Drennen," he said confidentially, leaning close to the man on the bunk, "my company has a bigger financial backing than any other in the country. We are willing to take what we can get as cheap as we can get it, of course I'll admit that. At the same time if you've got a gold mine we're ready and we're able to pay all it's worth. You've got the brains to know that the day has passed for a man to work his own claim if there's anything in it. You've got to sell out to somebody. Why not to the Canadian?"

Now, Madden, having heard the tale of Drennen's dice game with a canvas bag of virgin gold backing his play and of a fight in which Drennen had gone down from a bullet fired by Ernestine Dumont, had made up his mind that in the dugout he would come upon a certain type of man which he knew well. He expected to find Drennen half sodden with liquor, garrulous, boastful and withal easy to handle. His estimate changed swiftly, but he altered merely in slight detail his plan of attack. After a keen glance about the dugout his words came smoothly. Drennen was no illiterate miner but he was sorely ridden by poverty, just the same.

"Give me your word that you've really found the real stuff," Madden said, "and we'll talk business. Oh, that isn't the ordinary course, to be sure, but I'm willing to make an exception after seeing you; you are not the ordinary man. Come out with me to Lebarge; we'll pick up a lawyer and sign some papers. For your protection and mine, understand. Then we'll have a look at your claim. Incidentally," his hand coming suddenly from his pocket with a roll of bills in it, "you can put in your own expense account, and," with a wink, "you can go as far as you like. I'm a generous cuss with the company's money when they give me full swing."

Drennen put out his hand; Madden urbanely stripped off one of the bills and handed it to him. It was for fifty dollars. Drennen struck a match, set fire to a corner of the bill and used the lighter to get his pipe going. Madden, upon his feet in pink-faced wrath, was silenced by Drennen's voice booming out angrily:

"So you think you can bait me into your lawyer trap with jingling pennies in a tin cup! Look at that, man; look at that!"

With a sudden gesture he had caught out his canvas bag and had poured the heavy contents upon the bunk beside him. Madden bent forward quickly, and a little gasp came into his throat, a new, more vivid tide of pink into his cheeks as he saw. Drennen shoved fifty dollars in minted gold to one side.

"There's your change," he said crisply. And when Madden's fingers had reluctantly dropped the nuggets back to the quilt, "And as for propositions, I'm the man who's making them. I'm to be left alone to file on my claims and protect myself first. Then, if you're on hand, you can look my property over. I'm going to sell; if you're the first company to take up my offer it might be that I'd sell to you."

"And your proposition?" demanded Madden sharply.

"An assurance that the mine will be worked; ten per cent of the total number of shares in my name; a further assurance of exemption from assessment for ten years; and a little bonus."

Madden used his stock-in-trade laugh again. It was well that he made use of it when he did; else he would not have been able to summon it up from his paralysed throat. For he put a question and got a brief, direct answer, and the answer affected him much as a fist in the pit of the stomach might have done.

"What sort of cash bonus?" was the question.

"One hundred thousand dollars!" was the cool rejoinder.



CHAPTER XI

THE WITCHERY OF YGERNE

Charlie Madden of the Canadian Mining Company wasn't the man to squander time which might be valuable in idle surmises. Ten minutes after leaving Drennen he had sent a man on horseback scurrying down the hundred miles of trail to Lebarge. The man carried a letter to the General Manager. The letter ran in part:

". . . I don't know whether the man is crazy or not. Having seen his specimens I'm rather inclined to think he's not. But he's fool enough to have shown the stuff before filing on his claim. Send me Luke and Berry and Jernigan on the run. Drennen is laid up with a couple of bullet holes in him. I'll keep him from filing as long as I can; the rest is up to the men you send me."

Then, his eyes filled with the glint of his purpose, his jaw seeming to grow lean with the determination upon him, Madden made himself as comfortable as conditions permitted in MacLeod's Settlement and settled down to a period of unsleeping watchfulness. He took a room at Pere Marquette's.

Before the crowd in the camp had thronged Joe's Lunch Counter toward evening the fever of excitement had grown into a delirium. Madden hadn't talked; Drennen hadn't talked. And yet the word flew about mysteriously that Drennen had asked ten per cent of the stock of his mine and a hundred thousand dollars cash! "God! He had driven his pick into the mother lode of the world!" That was the thing which many men said in many ways, over and over and over again. The Canadian Mining Company was trying to frame a deal with him; Madden had rushed a man to Lebarge with some sort of message; two other big mining concerns had their representatives in town. And Drennen hadn't filed on his claim; the gold lay somewhere in the mountains offering itself to whatever man might find it. A man who could not buy his own grubstake to-day might "own the earth" to-morrow.

Before darkness came MacLeod's Settlement, seething with restless humanity for a few hours, was again pouring itself out into the wilderness in many erratic streams. And no man left who had not first gone by Pere Marquette's and seen the nuggets which the old man had put into his one glass-topped show case, and no man but carried the picture of them dancing before his eyes as he went. Kootanie George, who had had no word for Ernestine Dumont since she had shamed him, went with them. Ramon Garcia, having kissed Ernestine Dumont's hand, went with them. And, oddly enough, Kootanie George and Ramon Garcia went together as trail pardners.

The one man who evinced no concern at what was going on was David Drennen. His calm was like that of a chip caught and held motionless for a little in the centre of a whirlpool while scores of other chips gyrated madly about him; himself the pivot about which all rotated while he seemed unmoved. There were hundreds of sharp-eyed old prospectors looking for the thing he had found; if they in turn found it it would become theirs and be lost to him.

The Settlement saw more strangers in a week than it had ever seen in the days of its existence before. The rare opportunity was given to take stock first hand of men of whom it had talked many times, men whose names meant something. Such a man was Charlie Madden with the fresh cheeks and the way of an old captain of industry. Such was the man who came in behalf of the northwestern company. A man between fifty and sixty, big bodied, stalwart, stern faced, silent tongued. An old prospector from the outside put an end to much speculation by informing a knot of men that this was old Marshall Sothern; the name carried weight and brought fresh interest. Such a man was Ben Hasbrook, little and dried up and nervous mannered, a power in the network of ramifications of a big corporation having its head in Quebec, its tail in Vancouver, its claws everywhere throughout Canada. These men spelled big interests; these were the lions come to wrest away the prey which the pack of wolves was ravening for.

Ben Hasbrook trod almost in Charlie Madden's footsteps going to Drennen; he came away almost immediately, tugging at his beard, hot-eyed and wrathful. Marshall Sothern, having had a word with Pere Marquette, a word with Lunch Counter Joe, having seen Hasbrook's retreat, frowned thoughtfully and postponed any interview he may have desired with No-luck Drennen. He paid for a room at Joe's for a week in advance, went into solitary session, smoking his blackened pipe thoughtfully, his powerful fingers beating a long tattoo upon the sill of the window through which his eyes could find Drennen's dugout. With full square beard, iron grey hair, massive countenance, there was something leonine about Marshall Sothern. It appeared reasonable that if he were going into the battle against Madden and Hasbrook, then Madden and Hasbrook would need their wits about them. He seemed at once gifted with infinite patience and unalterable will. He did not move from his window until he had seen David Drennen come out of his dugout, making his slow way to supper at Joe's. Sothern's eyes, as keen as knife blades, studied the dark face, probing deep for a knowledge of the man himself. It was as though he were making his first move in the game from ambush, as though he felt that the most important thing in the world just now were a thorough understanding of the man with whom he must deal. He had had Marquette's estimate and Joe's . . . now he sought to form his own. . . .

There was a hard smile upon Sothern's face as Drennen passed on, a smile not without a strange sort of satisfaction, flashing a quick light into the eyes.

"By God, I like him!" he burst out softly. "So you're David Drennen, are you? Well, my boy, the hounds of hell are after you . . . that's in your face. But it's in your face, too, that you can stand on your own feet. Hm. In this game I'm going to keep an eye on Madden and Hasbrook, and both eyes on you."

But, despite the dynamic possibilities of action and strife and history making, the days went by without event. Drennen came his three times daily to Joe's for his meals, spent the major part of his time in his dugout or taking short, lonely walks up and down the river, coaxing back his strength. He saw much of Lemarc and Sefton upon the street, noting that they, like himself, had stayed behind, letting the other fools go on their fools' errands, sensing that their craft bade them linger to watch him. He saw Ygerne several rimes, always from a distance, and made no attempt to speak with her. He saw Madden, Ben Hasbrook and Marshall Sothern, grew accustomed to the knowledge that they were playing their waiting game, not unlike Sefton and Marc Lemarc, and gave them little attention. They didn't interest him; when he was ready he would deal with them and until that time came need not waste his thoughts upon them.

But all of the stubborn will of a David Drennen could not keep his mind away from Ygerne Bellaire though he held his feet back from taking him to her, though he drove his eyes away from her. He had let down the bars once for her to come into his life as he had let them down for no man or other woman in years. He had yielded to a mood, thinking that it was only a mood and that so far as he was concerned she would cease to exist when he willed it. He found himself, however, seeking to explain her presence here, companioned by such men as Marc Lemarc and Captain Sefton; he sought to construct the story of her life before she had come into this land where women from her obvious station in life did not come; he wrestled with the enigma of her character, unconsciously striving to find extenuation for the evil he deemed was in her.

"We are a bad lot here," he muttered once after long puzzling. "A bad lot. Some of us are bad because we are weak and the world has tempted. Some of us are bad because we are strong and the world has driven. Some of us are cruel, like steel; some of us are treacherous, like poison. Where do you fit in, Ygerne Bellaire?"

Once only had he met her face to face on the street, many men marking their meeting. Coming unexpectedly upon her he had been tugged two ways by his emotions, a division and sign of weakness which was no usual thing in him. But he had caught a quick expression upon her face in time, and had seen that she was going to pass him with no sign of recognition. He had deliberately turned his back upon her. He had heard a man laugh, and a little spurt of venomous pleasure leaped up in his heart as he knew that she too had heard and as he pictured the blood whipped into her face.

And now again he came upon her all unexpectedly; this time she was alone and there were no men near to see. He stopped, staring down at her insolently. She was sitting upon a fallen log, a mile from the Settlement down the Little MacLeod, her eyes fixed upon the racing water with that expression which tells that they see nothing of what is before them. She had not heard him until he came quite close to her. She started as she looked up, ready upon the instant to leap to her feet. Then she settled back quite calmly, an insolence in her eyes not unlike his. She waited for him to speak, and presently, again conscious of the tugging two ways, he did so.

"There's a man in camp named Charlie Madden," he said with a viciousness which evidently puzzled her until he had gone on. "You've met him, I dare say?"

"Yes," she answered coolly. "He asked me to have dinner with him last night."

Drennen's laugh jeered at her.

"You don't burn daylight, do you?" he sneered. "The man has money; he is young; he looks quite the pink-cheeked, impressionable pup, as good as a gilded youth on Broadway. How did he accept the wonder tale of the virgin purity of your red lips, Ygerne?"

"I didn't accept his invitation," she retorted as coolly as before.

"Why not?" he said sharply, a little hotly. "Couldn't you tell that the fool has money?"

"I didn't like him," she said.

"Ho, you didn't like him!" His tone drove a little higher colour into her face, but she kept the serene indifference in her half-smile. "But you did dine with me . . . because you liked me, no doubt!"

"Let us say," she replied a trifle wearily, her eyes going back to the river, "that I was lonely; and that I was prepared to like you, Mr. Drennen."

He found himself in a sudden flaring anger. The anger was unreasonable, but it but burned the hotter for all that. He had sought to take a joy out of being brutal to the girl, just why he was very far from understanding. Now the joy did not come as he had expected it. In his anger there was a sense of insane resentment against her that she was just a girl, not a man as he would have her now so that he might give her the lie and make her suffer physically by beating at her with his hard fists. In the blind rage upon him he blamed her for having come into his life at all even though she were merely a passing figure through a little corner of it. The years, while they had brought no happiness to him, had at least given him a calm indifference to all things; now for many days and nights she had broken that calm. In his heart he cursed her, his emotion rising toward a fierce, passionate hatred.

"In hell's name," he cried abruptly, his voice ringing with a new menace in it, "what are you doing here? Why don't you go on? What are you staying here for? Is the world so damned small that you've got to come and preen yourself under my eyes?"

For a moment she did not answer. The expression in the eyes turned upon him changed swiftly. There was a quick fear, gone in a flash in pure wonder. All this he saw clearly as too he saw a flicker of amusement. And back of the amusement which maddened him were other things, emotions hinted darkly, baffling him.

"The other day," she said steadily in the face of his rage, "you contented yourself by commanding me to take myself off of the mountain back there. Now you request me to get out of Canada? Or out of America? Or the western hemisphere, which is it? And, kind sir, why is it?"

Looking up at him, to show him how little he moved her, to make him doubt if he had read aright when he had thought it was fear in her eyes, she laughed. The laughter, welling up softly, musically, from deep in the round white throat, the defiant posture, head thrown back, something of the vague, sweet intimacy in it, affected him strangely. His face reddened. His hands shut spasmodically, clenching hard, lifting a little from his sides. Instinctively she drew back, her own hand slipping into her bosom, a quick flutter of fear in her heart that he was actually going to strike her.

"Why?" His lips were drawn back from his teeth; his face was more evil in the grip of the passion upon him than she had ever seen it before; his voice harsh and ugly. "Because you come when you do now, a thousand years too soon or a dozen years too late! Because I hate you as I have never learned how to hate a man no matter what thing he had done! I don't know what there is in me that is stronger than I am and that makes me keep my hands off your throat. Do you know what you have done, Ygerne, with the infernal witchery of you? You have made me love you, me, David Drennen, who knows there is no such thing as love in a rotten world! I want you in my arms; I want to kiss that red mouth of yours; I want to kill any man who so much as looks at you! My life was as I would have it; in a few days I would be a rich man with all of the power of a rich man; . . . and then you came. Why do I hate you, your eyes, your mouth, your body and your brain? Why?" He broke off in a laugh which showed what his wounds, his sickness, his passion had done for him, and she drew still further back from him, shuddering. "I hate you. . . . By God! because you've made of me a fool like the others! because you have made me love you!"

A frenzy of delirium was upon him. She did not know whether the man were sane or not; he did not care. But he knew that he spoke the truth. Twice had he yielded to her, and he was not the man to yield easily. Once, and he had thought it a passing light mood, when he had let down the bars for her to come in. Now that recklessly he flung open the flood gates which had dammed his own emotions, allowing the headlong torrent to sweep away everything with it. It was madness; it was folly; it was insanity for a man like David Drennen to let his heart be snared out of him by the girl upon whom he had looked so few times. And yet, be it what else it might be, it was the simple truth.

"Laugh at me, why don't you?" snarled the man, little beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead. "Or blush and stammer any of the idiotic things which a woman says to the man at the moment of his supreme idiocy. Or flatter yourself with the vanity of it. Are you a good woman or a bad? I don't know. Are you generous or mean? I don't know. Are you loyal and stanch and true—or treacherous and contemptible? I don't know. I don't know a thing about you, and yet I let you slip into my life one day and the next rile up all of the mud which was settling to the bottom. Go and brag of it to your two hangdogs. But, by heaven," and his fist smashed down into an open palm, "you and your dogs keep out of my way. If the three of you are here another twenty-four hours I'll drive them out and with them any other man you so much as look at!"

He stared at her for a moment, grown suddenly silent and white faced. He lifted his arms as though he would sweep her up into them. Then he dropped them so that they fell to his side like dead weights and swung about, turning his back upon her, going swiftly upstream toward the Settlement.

Across the river came the call of a robin. A splash of blue fire in the willows was a blue bird's wing. A solitary butterfly made a half circle about him, passing close to him as though to beat him back with its delicate, diaphanous wings. The pale yellowish buds everywhere were changing to a lusty verdant. Air and grass were filled with questing insect life thrilling upward with little voices. The snows were slipping, slipping from the mountainsides, the waters rising in river and lake. The sap was astir in shrub and tree, bursting upward joyously. Nature had breathed her soft command to all of the North Woods; every creature and thing of life in the North Woods had heard the call.



CHAPTER XII

MERE BRUTE . . . OR JUST PLAIN MAN?

Ygerne, sitting very still, watched Drennen until he had passed around a bend in the river and was lost to her sight behind a clump of willows. His impassioned outburst had been too frenzied not to have moved her powerfully. But the expression in the eyes which followed him was too complex to give any key to the one emotion standing above the others in her breast. When she could see him no longer she rose and followed slowly.

Because the course of the Little MacLeod is full of twists and kinks, spine of ridge and depression of ravine thrusting the stream aside or welcoming it closer, she had no further view of him until they were both near the Settlement, Drennen himself already abreast of the first building at this end of the camp, his own dugout. She thought that he was going to stop at his cabin; then she saw that he had passed on. She had suspected that the man was delirious with the fever upon him; that his brain had reeled from the impact of the blows showered upon it and had staggered from its throne. Now the suspicion came to her that Drennen had come to her in his cups; that the thing which had loosened his tongue and distorted his vision was nothing more nor less than whiskey.

He was lurching as he walked, but bearing on swiftly. She had not been mistaken when she had thought that he had turned in toward his cabin. But in this his action had been involuntary. He had reeled, had paused as he caught and steadied himself, had gone on drunkenly.

There were a score of men up and down the short street. Already some of them had marked his coming. Ygerne turned hurriedly to the left, put the line of houses between her and the street, passing back doors quickly on her way to Pere Marquette's.

Only once did Drennen stop. He ran his hand across his eyes as though to brush away some filmy fogginess of vision. There was impatience in the gesture. With a little grunt of satisfaction he went on. He had seen both Lemarc and Sefton talking with other men half way up the street.

As he passed Joe's he was lurching more and more, his walk grown markedly unsteady. His eyes were flaming and growing red; his face was splotched with colour, hot, angry colour; he was muttering to himself, little broken, feverish, illogical outpourings of the seething passion within him. He passed three men who were lounging and smoking. He did not turn his eyes toward them. They were the three big mining men, Madden and Hasbrook and Sothern. They saw him, their eyes following him quickly, each man with his own personal interest.

"Drunk, eh?" laughed Charlie Madden. "Suppose we draw straws to see who takes him in tow!"

Hasbrook's sharp featured face grew shrewd in speculation, his tongue clicking nervously. Marshall Sothern's shaggy brows lowered a bit; Madden and Hasbrook had looked from Drennen to each other and to him; he alone kept his eyes hard upon the man making his way with unsteady stubbornness up the street.

When a man stood in his way Drennen thrust out his arm, pushing him aside. His eyes grew ever the more terrible with the madness of the rage upon him, bloodshot and menacing. They lost Lemarc and Sefton, wandered uncertainly across the blurr of faces, glowered triumphantly as again they found the men he sought.

He drew up with a little jerk, not ten steps from the two men who as usual were standing close together. Such had been the strange impressiveness of his approach that now he was greeted by a deep silence. The only sound was his own hard breathing, then his words when he burst out violently.

As though his tongue were a poisoned whip he lashed them with it. Burning denunciation exploding within his heated brain was flung off in words to bite like spraying vitriol. His voice rose higher, shriller, grown more and more discordant. He cursed them until the blood ran into Lemarc's cheeks and seeped out of Sefton's. And when at last words failed and he choked a moment he flung himself upon them, bellowing inarticulate, half-smothered wrath.

Men drew back from before him. It was not their fight and they knew how and when to shrug their shoulders and watch. Lemarc, running his hand under his coat for his knife, was struck down before the hand could come in sight again. Drennen's searching fist had found the man's forehead and the sound of the blow was like a hammer beating against rock. Either Sefton had no arms upon him or had not the time to draw. He could only oppose his physical strength against the physical strength of a man who was an Antaeus from the madness and blood lust upon him. Sefton's white face went whiter, chalky and sick as Drennen's long arms encircled his body. Lemarc was rising slowly, his knife at last in his hand when Sefton's body, hurled far out, struck the ground.

Drennen was not fighting as a man fights. Rather were his actions those of some enraged, cautionless beast. Rushing at Lemarc he beat fiercely at a man who chanced to stand in his way, and the man went down. Lemarc was on his feet now, his knife lifted. And yet Drennen, bare handed, was rushing on at him. Sefton was up too, and there was a revolver in his hand. But Drennen, snarling, his fury blind and raging higher, took no heed of the weapon's menace. The thing in Lemarc's eyes, in Sefton's, was the thing a man must know when he sees it; and yet Drennen came on.

But another man saw and understood before it was too late. Marshall Sothern who had followed Drennen with long strides, was now close to his side. The old man's stalwart form moved swiftly, coming between Drennen and Sefton. With a quickness which men did not look for in a man of his age, with a strength which drove up from those who saw a little grunt of wonder, he put out his great arms so that they were about Drennen's body, below his shoulders, catching his arms and holding them tight against his ribs.

"Stop!" burst out Sothern's deep-lunged roar. "Can't you see the man is sick? By God, I'll kill any man who lays a hand on him!"

Speaking he hurled his greater weight against Drennen, driving him back. Perhaps just then the strength began to run out of the younger man's body; or perhaps some kindred frenzy was upon Marshall Sothern. Drennen, struggling and cursing, gave back; back another step; and then, wilting like a cut flower, went down, the old man falling with and upon him. As they fell Drennen lay still, his eyes roving wonderingly from face to face of the men crowding over him. Then his gaze came curiously to the face so near his own, the stern, powerful face of Sothern. An odd smile touched Drennen's lips fleetingly; he put out a freed arm so that it fell about Sothern's shoulders, his eyes closed and consciousness went out of him with a sigh.

"Bring him over to Marquette's."

It was Charlie Madden's voice. Madden and Hasbrook were crowding their way close to the two men in the centre of the group, but little behind Sothern in keeping their eyes upon the man because of whom they were here, for whom they were prepared to fight jealously.

"Stand back!"

Sothern's answer. He had risen, stooped a little, gathered Drennen up in his arms. After the way of men at such a time there was no giving back, rather a growing denseness of the packed throng.

"Don't you hear me?" boomed Sothern angrily. "I say stand back!"

Those directly in front of him, under his eyes, drew hesitantly aside, stepping obediently to right or left. Carrying his burden with a strength equal to that of a young Kootanie George, Marshall Sothern made his way through the narrow lane they made for him. But he did not turn toward Pere Marquette's.

"Where are you taking him?" demanded Madden suspiciously, again forcing his way to Sothern's elbow. "That's not the way . . ."

"I'm taking him to his own home," said Sothern calmly. "The only home he's got, his dugout."

"Oho," cried Madden, suspicion giving place to certainty and open accusation, while Hasbrook, combing at his beard, was muttering in a like tone. "You'll take him off to yourself, will you? Where you can do as you damned please with him? Not much."

Marshall Sothern merely shook his head and moved on, thrusting Madden to one side with his heavy shoulder. He was carrying Drennen as one might carry a baby, an arm about the shoulders, an arm under the knees. Men offered to help him but he paid no heed to them. Leonine the man always looked; to-day he looked the lion bearing off a wounded whelp to its den.

Expostulating, Madden dogged his heels, the rest following. Lemarc and Sefton, speaking together, had dropped far behind; Hasbrook was close to Madden's elbow. So they passed down the street. Ygerne Bellaire, standing now in front of Marquette's, watched them wonderingly.

Sothern came first to the dugout. The door being open, he passed in without stopping. He laid the inert form down gently and came back to the door.

"Well?" he demanded, his steady eyes going to Madden.

Madden laughed sneeringly.

"If you think I'm going to stand for a high-handed play like this," he jeered, "you're damned well mistaken. You're not the only man who's got an interest in him. He doesn't belong to you, old man."

"They'd have killed him if it hadn't been for me," returned Sothern imperturbably. "Until he's on his feet and in his mind again he does belong to me. We haven't the pleasure of knowing each other very well, Charlie. But I can give you my word that when I say a thing I mean it. If you don't believe it . . . start something."

He stepped outside, closing the door after him softly. He brought out his pipe, knocked the dead tobacco from it and filled it afresh, lighting it before Madden and Hasbrook, consulting together in an undertone, had found anything to say. His eyes were calm and steady; there was even a hint of a smile in them as they rested upon Madden's eager, angry face. There had been no threat in his last words. But he had meant them.

There was but one door to the dugout; it was closed, and more than that, Marshall Sothern stood calmly in front of it. Drennen was inside and he was going to stay there. Madden muttered something; Sothern lifted his brows enquiringly and Madden did not repeat. The situation being neither without interest or humour, some of the men laughed. Madden considered swiftly: Drennen was unconscious; Sothern could do nothing with him immediately. He drew Hasbrook aside and the two went slowly up the street.

Sothern beckoned a man he knew in the crowd, a little fellow named Jimmie Andrews.

"Get a horse," he said quietly. "I want you to carry a couple of letters to Lebarge for me. If you can't get a horse any other way buy one. Come back as soon as you're ready to start. I'll have the letters ready."

He turned back into the dugout, closed the door and dropped the wooden bar into place. Jimmie Andrews went hastily after a horse and twenty minutes later rode out of MacLeod's Settlement, headed for the railroad. He carried a letter to the Superintendent of the Northwestern. The second letter was addressed to Dr. Thos. Levitt.

During the two days which followed the Settlement went tip-toe. No man of them saw David Drennen except now and then through the door when Marshall Sothern had opened it for the warm midday air. There were men in the street who offered wagers that he was going to die and, what was more to the point, that he would die without telling where he had found gold. Sothern ministered to him day and night, letting no one in, having his own meals sent here, sitting by the bunk or at the doorstep, smoking. When a passer-by asked, "How's he gettin' along?" Sothern's answer was always the same: "Slowly."

Drennen had been through much privation and hardship before his discovery, severe bodily punishment and fatigue thereafter. On top of physical suffering had been imposed the mental stress, the veritable mad agony and strife of the dual emotions which Ygerne had inspired in him. It was in the cards that he should come near death; but that he should not die. A man's destiny is characterised at times by an instinct of savagery; it tortures him until his sense of pain is dulled and lost in unconsciousness; then it lets him grow strong again for fresh tortures.

After the forty-eight hours had passed Jimmie Andrews had returned bringing the physician with him. Dr. Levitt had stayed twenty-four hours and had gone again, saying that there was nothing for him to do that Sothern could not do as well. He rather thought that Drennen's beautiful physique would pull him through. But it would take time, careful attention, rest and properly administered nourishment.

"Can't you get a woman to help?" he asked as he was going. "I don't give a damn what kind she is. One fool of a woman is worth a dozen men at times like this." He pocketed his fee, bestowed upon Sothern a gratuitous wink with the words, "I guess it's a good investment for you, eh? Madden and Hasbrook look as sore as saddle boils."

Drennen slept much but restlessly. When he was awake he stared with clouded, troubled eyes at the smoke-blackened ceiling or out of the door at the willows or into Sothern's rugged face. His fever raged high, his body burning with it, his brain a turbulent melting pot wherein strange fancies passed through odd, vaporous forms. He confused events of a far-off childhood with occurrences of yesterday. He was a little boy, gone black-berrying, and Ygerne Bellaire went with him. His dugout was a cabin in the Yukon where he had lived a year, or it was a speeding train carrying him away from an old home and into the wilderness. There were times when Marshall Sothern, bending over him, was an enemy, torturing him. Times when the old man was his own father and Drennen put out his hands to him, his face alight. Times when the sick man cursed and reviled him. Times when he broke into shouting song or laughter or raved of his gold. But most often did he speak the name Ygerne; now tenderly, now sneeringly, now with a love that yearned, now a hatred which shook him terribly and left him exhausted.

The doctor had gotten back to Lebarge before Marshall Sothern sent for Ygerne. She came without delay.

"This man is very sick," he told her, bending a searching look at her from under brows shaggy in thought. "He talks of you very much. Does he love you or does he hate you?"

She looked at him coolly, her gaze defying him to pry into matters which did not concern him. He understood the look and said calmly:

"I want him to get well. There are reasons why he has got to get well."

"I know," she laughed at him. "Good, golden reasons!"

"If he loves you, as I have a mind he does," Sothern went on quietly, "I think that you could do more to help him than any one else. If he hates you you might do more harm than good. That is why I asked."

"He is delirious?"

"A great deal of the time; not always."

Her brows puckered thoughtfully.

"I think," she said at last, "that he loves me and hates me . . . both! But I'll come in and see if I can be of any help. I, too, have good reasons for wanting him to live."

So the door to Drennen's dugout was opened to Ygerne Bellaire. But to no one else in the Settlement; Marshall Sothern saw to that. Madden came, Hasbrook came; but they did not get their feet across the rude threshold. They grumbled, Madden in particular. They accused Sothern of taking an unfair advantage; of keeping the delirious man under his own eye and ear that he might seek to steal his secret from him; of plotting with Ygerne to aid in the same end. But, say what they might outside, they did not come in.

"We'll see which is the greater, his love for me or his hate," the girl had said. She sat down by the bed, laying her hand softly upon the bared arm which Drennen had flung out. He turned, looking at her with frowning eyes. In silence she waited. Sothern, standing by the door, his eyes watchful as they passed back and forth from her face to Drennen's, was silent. For a score of seconds Drennen's gaze was unfaltering. Then, with a little sigh, he drew her hand close to him, rested his cheek against it and went to sleep. Sothern, looking now at the girl's face, saw it flush as though with pleasure.

Now she was at the dugout almost as much as Marshall Sothern. The long hours of the day she spent at the bedside, going to her own room only when it grew dark. And even in the night, once Sothern sent for her. Drennen had called for her; had grown violent when she was denied to him and would not be quieted when Sothern sought to reason with him. So Ygerne, dressing hurriedly, her sweater about her, came.

"Why do you come to me that way?"

Drennen had lifted himself upon his elbow, calling out angrily.

"What do you mean?" she asked wondering.

"In that miserable sweater!" he cried. "That's good enough for other women, not for you."

And he made her go back and put on the dress she had worn that night when she had dined with him. She argued with him but he insisted. He would have none of her in her sweater.

"Oh, well," she said, and went out. Sothern thought that she had gone for good. His eyes narrowed and stared speculatively when in a little she came in again. Drennen smiled, openly approved of the Ygerne whom he had sought to kiss, took her hands, kissed them and holding them grew quiet.

He grew stronger almost steadily after that. He had much fever and delirium, but his wounds healed and he ceased to lose ground as he had been doing. In his ravings he made much passionate love to Ygerne, his tones running from the gentleness of supplication to the flame of hot avowal. In lucid moments of sanity he accepted her presence as a quite natural condition, too utterly exhausted by the periods of delirium through which he had passed to ask questions. A few times, indeed, he railed at her as he had done when he had come upon her on the river bank. But for the most part his attitude answered over and over the question Ygerne had implied when first she had come to his side; his love was greater than his hate.

Then there came a day when David Drennen was the old David Drennen once more. He awoke with clear eyes and clear brain. He saw both Marshall Sothern and Ygerne Bellaire. He closed his eyes swiftly. He must think. As he thought, remembering a little, guessing more, a hard smile, the old bitter smile came to his lips. He opened his eyes again and lifted himself upon his elbow. The eyes which met Sothern's were as hard as steel; they ignored the girl entirely.

"I've been sick?" he said coolly. "Well, I'm not sick any longer. In a day or so I'll be around again. Then I'll pay you for your trouble."

And seeing from the look in Sothern's eyes that the rude insult had registered he laughed and turned his face away from them. Sothern and the girl stepped outside together, without a word.

"He is just plain brute!" the girl cried with passionate contempt.

The old man shook his head gravely. He laid his hand very gently upon her shoulder, his unexpected familiarity drawing a quick questioning look from her.

"Little girl," he said thoughtfully, "he's just plain man, that's all; man hammered and beaten awry by the vicious little gods of mischance. If there's anything good left in him it's his love for you. There is a time coming when I am going to wield the destinies of one of the greatest corporations in the West. My responsibility then, compared to yours now, will be as a grain of sand to Old Ironhead up yonder."



CHAPTER XIII

YGERNE'S ANSWER

"The perfume of roses, of little red roses; (Thou art a rose, oh, so sweet, corazon!) The laugh of the water who falls in the fountain; (Thou art the fountain of love, corazon!) The brightness of stars, of little stars golden; (Estrella de mi vida! My little life star!) The shine of the moon through the magnolia tree; I am so sad till thou come, mi amor! Dios! It is sweet to be young and to love! More sweet than wine . . . to be young and to love!"

There was tenderness in the voice. Each note was like the pure sound of a little gold bell struck softly with a tiny golden hammer.

There had been determination in David Drennen's eye, in his carriage, in his stride which swiftly bore him onward through the early night from his own dugout toward the old Frenchman's store. Not fifty steps from Marquette's he stopped abruptly, listening to the soft singing. It was not so dark that he could not make out the slender, exquisite form of the young Mexican. Ramon Garcia, wrapped about in his long coat like a cavalier in a graceful cloak, his face lifted a little, his head bared, was close to a certain window of Pere Marquette's. Drennen knew whose window.

With no conscious desire to eavesdrop, merely stopped by an unforeseen contingency, Drennen stood still. Garcia, his eyes upon a line of light under the window shade, did not see him. It was hardly more than an instant that Drennen stood there, watching; but the little drama was enacted before he moved on.

Slowly, while the last notes were fainting away plaintively, the window was raised. Drennen saw Ygerne Bellaire, half in light, half in shadow. She leaned out. She was laughing softly. Garcia, his bow carrying to the ground his hat which in the dim light appeared to Drennen's fancy to wear the black plume which would not have been misplaced there, came closer to the window. Upon the girl's face was a gaiety Drennen had not seen there until now; her lips curved to it, her eyes danced with it. She had a little meadow flower in her hand; Drennen wondered if she had been eagerly selecting it from a cluster of its fellows while Garcia sang.

"You are not real, senor," she said lightly. "I wonder if you know that?"

"It is you . . ." he began, his voice charged with the music about which the man's soul was builded.

"No, no," she laughed. "You are not real. You have just wandered out of an old romance like a ghost; when the sun comes up you'll have to creep back between dusty covers of a book a hundred years old."

He put out a hand towards hers on the window sill.

"Give me the little flower," he pleaded, southern lover-wise. "I shall never let it go away from its place on my heart, though I fear," and his hand crept a little closer, "that my heart will burst with the joy of it!"

The little meadow flower went from her fingers to his.

"A flower for your song, senor. A poor little flower which should have golden petals."

"Living," he murmured, no heights or depths of sentiment seeming beyond him, "it shall always be with me, a joy so sweet that it almost kills. Dead, I shall be happy just to wear it."

She laughed as he caught her hand and kissed it. The window closed softly, the shade was drawn down, and Ramon Garcia, hat still in one hand, the flower in the other, passed down the street, still singing in a gentle undertone. Drennen turned abruptly at right angles to the way he had come and passed out of the Settlement into the darkness under the trees.

Swiftness and determination had gone out of his stride. Unconsciously he allowed his feet to carry him along a well known trail which led along the flank of the wooded slope. Once or twice he stopped. Then again he moved on, always further, from the Settlement.

He was well again and strong. Rest and nature had done all they could for him in a handful of long, quiet days. He was still twenty pounds lighter than he should be normally, but he had both feet firmly set in a smooth highway of convalescence. The mental and spiritual roadways were not so smooth or straight.

He had seen much of Ygerne of late. He had come to know that, wise man or fool, he loved her. They had met frequently, at Joe's, upon the short street, in their walks up and down the river. They had not spoken of all that had gone before and there had been as much silence as talk between them. He continued to tell himself coolly that he knew nothing of her, that she might be good or bad, loyal or treacherous. But he knew that he did not hate her and that he did love her. He knew that he was not angry because she had come into his life but that he was glad.

He knew to-night that his whole spiritual being was made simply of two elements: of love, which is a white flame in a man like Drennen; of jealousy, which is a black shadow. He had been on his way to her, his mind made up that he would not sleep without telling her of his love. The sight of Garcia had halted him. Garcia's singing to her had awakened a fierce anger within him; his flesh had twitched and something had seemed to sear hot through it as Garcia's lips touched her hand.

Now he tried to look at these matters calmly. He knew that in the fury which had sent him at Lemarc and Sefton before Marshall Sothern had gathered up his limp body the driving force had been jealousy. He knew that even then, in his delirium, he wanted her all to himself.

Less than a month had passed since first he had seen her and he did not now know what manner of woman she was. But he did know that that does not matter. His fate had driven him into the North Woods ten years ago that he might be here when she came; her destiny had brought her to MacLeod's Settlement from New Orleans to him. Because the greatest of all laws lies hidden under a clutter of little things that law is none the less great or real. He had grown to see as a miraculous manifestation of this law even the fact that he and Ygerne Bellaire had been born in the same generation. . . . Stern-minded men of science, whose creed is to doubt all things until they are proven in such wise as an objective brain can accept them as incontrovertible, see no miracle in the fact that a certain female moth, left alone upon a mountain top, will draw to herself a male mate from mountainous miles away. Even in the insect world there is a silent call which is a voice of destiny. Omnipotence is not above concerning itself with the embrace of two tiny, fragile-winged creatures in the darkness of the solitudes. Surely there is an urge and yearning of human souls which knows not distance and obstacles, which brings together man and his mate.

These were strange, new thoughts to David Drennen and yet they came naturally as an old knowledge set aside, half forgotten, ultimately vividly recalled. He loved Ygerne; she must love him. Therein alone could lie the explanation of his presence here and of hers. When he had quitted his dugout this evening there had been more than determination in his heart; there had been confidence.

And now? He wandered aimlessly. Determination and confidence had both left him. Garcia had sung to her and the singing had pleased. Garcia had made love to her in his song and she had thrown open her window. Garcia had kissed her hand and she had given him a flower.

Deep in his troubled thoughts Drennen had stopped a third time. He was in thick shadow and saw two figures that had followed him. He made out that here were Lemarc and Sefton as they came on, cautiously and silently. This thing was to be expected; these men were plucking with greedy fingers as fortune's robe and for such as they he was one to be watched. He saw them pass on along the trail; his still form in the shadows was blotted out from them by the tall boles of the trees. His eyes followed them a moment, then lost them. Already he had forgotten them. His thoughts went back to Ygerne Bellaire, to the scene at the window.

The moon pushed a great golden disc up over the ridge. It was at the full and made glorious patterns of light through the forest. Little voices of the night which he had not heard until now began to thrill and quiver under the soft light. It was as though the North Woods were filled with a secret, pigmy people who were moon worshippers; as though now they greeted their goddess with an elfin chant of praise.

A strange sadness fastened itself upon the man. The beauty of the night touched him deeply. It brought with its stillness an unaccustomed emotion of melancholy. He was suddenly lonely. The night was rarely perfect and yet it wanted something. It was complete yet it was empty. The moonrise, the golden glory of stars set against the soft bosom of the sky, brought a sense of lack of something. It touched the soul and yet did not satisfy. It awoke a sort of soul thirst and hunger in him. Upon him was the old yearning, the yearning of the man for his mate, that longing experienced never so poignantly as in a spot like this where a man is alone with the woodland.

Dimly conscious of many emotions mingled and confused, David Drennen was keenly awake to the sweeping alteration which a few days had effected in him. Not that he fully understood that which he recognised. He was inclined to look upon himself as a different man; like many a man before him whom love or hate, a great joy or a great disaster, had appeared to make over, he was but experiencing the sensation resultant from the emancipation of a certain portion of his being which had existed always until now in a state of bondage, silent and hidden.

He stood a long time, very still. So motionless that when the moon had driven the shadows back and found him out he looked a brother to the inanimate objects about him. But when at last he moved, while slowly, it was without hesitation. He was going to Ygerne.

Marquette's store was closed, the doors locked. There was a light from Ygerne's window, another light from a second window, Madden's room. Drennen passed about the house and came to the door of the living room. There was no light shining under the door, but he knocked. In a little Mere Jeanne, a wrap thrown about her, came in answer.

"May I see Miss Bellaire?" he said simply. "Will you tell her that it is important?"

Mere Jeanne looked at him shrewdly, with little hesitation made up her mind that he came as a lover, left him at the door and went to the girl. A moment later Ygerne entered the little living room. Drennen stepped across the threshold.

"I wanted to talk with you," he said gravely.

The girl shot a quick, curious look at him and went to a chair.

"Will you come outside with me?" he asked quietly. "It is quite a private matter. We can walk up and down in the moonlight, just outside."

A moment she seemed to hesitate. Then she shook her head.

"We are alone here," she replied. "What is it?"

"It is many things, Ygerne." He closed the outside door and stood with his back to it, his eyes very steady upon hers. A sudden pulsing of blood coursed through him but he held himself steady, forcing his voice to remain grave and quiet. "To begin with I want to apologise to you for having been a brute to you since I first saw you. If you can't find it in your heart to make any excuses for me at least you can know that I am both sorry and ashamed of myself."

Again she shot that quick, questioning glance at him. She felt as he had felt: "This is some new David Drennen."

"You know me pretty well," he went on. "Better than I know you, I think. I am a man whose name has been dragged through a lot of muck and mire. I am the son of a thief. My father was without honour. God knows how good or how bad I am. My life for ten years has been an ugly thing, a good deal more evil than good. If you are the sort of woman I like to think you are, then I suppose that my presence here is little less than an insult to you, though God knows I don't mean it to be."

He paused. She watched him as before, save that now a quick light of understanding had come into her eyes, a faint flush to her cheeks. Like Mere Jeanne, she had glimpsed the lover in the man—he couldn't know that already he had told her all that he had come to say; but she knew.

"I told you the truth the other day, Ygerne. That day when I went mad. I love you. I'd like to be another sort of man, a better sort, coming to tell you this. But if I were a better man I couldn't love you any better."

Despite the surety that the words were coming they must have brought a little shock to her. She rose swiftly, her hands coming up from her sides until they clasped each other in front of her.

"I didn't believe in love until you came, Ygerne. I have never seen such a thing in the life I have lived. You see, to begin with, I thought my father loved me and that I loved him. I was mistaken. I thought I had a friend once and again I was mistaken. But now I know there is such a thing. I want you and you are all that I want in the world. I want you, Ygerne, in a way I did not know a man could want anything. Through you I have come to look at all creation in a new way; it seems to me that there is a God. Am I talking like a madman again? Or just like a fool? . . . I feel sometimes that I love you because I was created for the sole purpose of loving you; that you must love me for the same reason. There are other times when that doesn't seem possible, when I can't conceive of your coming to me as I come to you. But in the end I had to know, Ygerne. Am I a fool? Or do you love me?"

He had made no movement toward her. He stood very still at the door. He had striven with his emotion so that outwardly he mastered it. His voice had remained calm and very steady.

"You said a moment ago," Ygerne answered him, and her voice too was cool almost to the point of indifference, "that you had been a brute to me. Knowing you as I do, is it likely that I should have come to love you?"

"No," he said.

"Then why do you come to me this way, now?"

"Because I had to come. Because it is not always the likely thing which happens. Because I have thought that we were made for each other, you and I. Because I must know."

He waited for her answer, an answer which he feared she had already given him. He hungered for her so that he could only wonder how he could hold himself back from taking her up into his arms. But he mastered himself so that the girl could not guess how hard he strove for the mastery.

"Is love a little thing or a big thing?" she said suddenly.

"A big thing. I think it is the biggest thing in the world."

"And still, believing that, you think that I am a girl to let you treat me as you have treated me since we first saw each other, and then to come to you when you decide to crook your finger to me, giving you my love? Is that it? Is that why you are here to-night?"

"Is that my answer, Ygerne?" he said, his tone more stern than it had yet been.

"That is no answer at all, Mr. Drennen. It is a question."

His face grew a little white as he stared at her.

"I think, Ygerne, that I shall tell you good night now. And in the morning, before you are up, I'll be gone. All my life I hope I shall never see you again. And you can know that every day of it I'll be mad to see you."

He bent his head to her, turning away, a dull agony in his heart. His hand was upon the knob of the door. Then she came toward him swiftly. Half way across the room she stopped. Suddenly her face was scarlet, her eyes were shining at him like stars. Her beauty was a new beauty, infinitely desirable.

"Were I the man," she said with a voice which shook with the passion in it, "I'd not want my woman to come to me! I'd want to go to her, to take her with my own strength, to hold her with it, to know that she was too proud to yield even when she was burning to be taken!"

"Ygerne!" he said sharply.

There was a sort of defiance in the sudden, tensity of her erect body, an imperiousness in the carriage of her head. Her eyes met his with something of the same defiance in them. But in them, too, was a great light.

Drennen came to her swiftly. His arms tightened about her, drawing her so close that each heart felt the other striking against it. She let him hold her so, but even yielding she seemed to resist. His lips, seeking her red mouth, found it this time. She gave back the passion of his kiss passionately. He felt a thrill through him like an electric current.

"By God, Ygerne," he cried joyously, "we'll make life over now!"

Suddenly she had wrenched herself free of him.

"I didn't love you yesterday," she said pantingly, holding him back at arm's length, her wide, half-frightened eyes upon his. "Will I love you to-morrow? . . . You must go now; go!"

He put out his arms for her but she had run back to the door through which she had come to him. He heard the door close, then another. She had gone to her own room.

Caught up between heaven and hell he made his way homeward. Passing her window he saw that it was dark. He hesitated, then moved on. Suddenly he stopped. He had heard her singing, her voice lilting gaily, quite as though no strong emotion had come into her life to-night. A swift anger vaguely tinged with dread leaped into Drennen's heart. She was humming a line of Garcia's little song:

"Dios! It is sweet to be young and to love!"



CHAPTER XIV

DRENNEN MAKES A DISCOVERY

For David Drennen, in whose mouth the husks of life were dry and harsh and bitter, a miracle had happened. Nor was that miracle any the less a golden wonder because to other men in other times it had been the same. Marshall Sothern had been right; the time had come when a woman's responsibilities were to be greater than those of the head of a monster corporation. Banked and covered as it was in the ashes of the after years, there was the old living spark of humanity in David Drennen. Ygerne Bellaire came in time to fan it into a warming glow. The fire which should come from it should be her affair. It would cheer with its warmth; or it should devastate with its flames. The spark, fanned into love's fire, had in an instant sent its flickering light throughout the darker places of a man's being.

A woman, accomplishing that which Ygerne Bellaire had done, is sometimes not unlike a child scattering coals in a dry forestland. The forest, the child itself, may be consumed.

Men who had not called him Drennen the Unlucky had named him Headlong Drennen. His is that type which, in another environment and taking the gamble of life from another angle, is termed a plunger. There was no room for half-heartedness in so positive a nature. Where he loved he worshipped. He had had an idol once before, his father. Now, after half a score of years, he made himself another idol. And it, in turn, made of him another man.

Worship must be unquestioning. It is builded upon utter faith. So Drennen, his slow words spoken to Ygerne, his love for her freed, as it were, from any restraint he had hitherto tried to put upon it, his whole being given over to it, came without question to believe in her. She was the woman meant to be his mate and he had called to her and she had come to him. His moment of doubt had fled with his declaration. Otherwise he would have been the paler personality which it was not in him to be, half-hearted. Of her passion and pride he made character. From the look which he had seen in her eyes he made tenderness and truth. Every attribute of that ideal which is somewhere in the heart of every man, until at last the one woman comes to occupy its place more sweetly and warmly and intimately, he brought forth from its dark recess to bestow upon Ygerne.

All night he did not sleep. The sun, rising, found him quite another man than that upon which it had set last night. In men like Drennen a few hours and a strong emotion can accomplish results which in other men would require the passing of years. And the same rising sun showed a new world to the eyes opened eagerly to see it, displayed a fresh universe to a heart starved for it. He had sought to see only the shadows yesterday; now he looked for the light and it was everywhere. It lay quivering upon the mountain tops, it flooded the valleys, it brightened his own heart, it touched the bosoms of other men, it shone in their eyes.

He had shaved and dressed himself neatly. On his way to his early breakfast he met Marshall Sothern on the street. Drennen came to him swiftly, putting out his hand.

"I have been rather a brute and an unqualified boor," he said quietly. "I owe you a very great deal, Mr. Sothern, my life I suppose. I'd like to shake hands."

Sothern looked at him strangely, both sensing and seeing the change in the man. He put out his hand and it settled hard about Drennen's.

"My boy," he said simply, "you have my word for it that you owe me not so much as a word of thanks. You are getting along all right?"

"Yes. So well that I'm off to-day for Lebarge to file on my claims. I'll not waste any time in getting back. If then you care to look over the property . . ."

The buoyancy within him had been speaking through the vibrant tones of his voice. Suddenly he broke off, his eyes widening to a look of groping wonderment. His jaw had dropped a little, he stood as if frozen in his place, even the hand which Sothern had just released held motionless half way on its brief return journey to his side. In an incredibly short instant he had grown pale; his voice, when he spoke the two words, was harsh and unsteady:

"My God!"

Sothern threw up his hand as though to beat back physically a flow of words.

"Not now!" he commanded sharply. "Wait. Later. . . ."

He had turned abruptly and moved away in a haste which carried him with long strides down the street. Drennen, the rigidity of his body giving way to a little shiver which ran up and down him from shoulders to calves, stared speechlessly after Sothern. His mouth, closed slowly, now opened suddenly as though he were going to call, but no words came. He took one swift step after Sothern, then stopped in an uneasy indecision.

Far down the open roadway he could see Marc Lemarc with Captain Sefton coming into the Settlement from the direction of the dugout. In front of Marquette's, as he glanced swiftly the other way, he could see Charlie Madden at the doorstep. Joe was at his own door. It seemed to Drennen that they were all looking at him. He turned then, his back toward Sothern, and went to the lunch counter.

Joe asked twice what he would eat before Drennen heard and gave his order. Madden came in while he was stirring the coffee which was growing cold under his vacant eyes, and took a stool near him, studying him none the less keenly because the look was so swift.

"Well, Drennen," he said lightly, "you'll be ready to talk business pretty soon now."

Drennen started.

"Why, good morning, Madden. Yes; yes, I'll be ready to talk business pretty soon."

"You're not still holding out for that ridiculous proposition you made me the other day, are you?"

"Yes. And it isn't ridiculous, Madden. It's worth it."

Madden smiled.

"Look here, Drennen," he said easily, "you can bluff all you like now, but you can't go on bluffing much longer. You'll have to get down to business. Whatever your mine is worth is just what you can ask for it. Hasbrook and Sothern are both on the job, and they're both good enough old ducks. But they haven't got the companies behind them I've got behind me. They can't get their fingers on the money as I can. And," shrugging his shoulders, "they're old guys and too damned cautious to live. I'll take a gamble. Damn it, I'm always ready for a gamble."

He nipped a check book from his pocket and unscrewed the cap of a pen.

"I'll take a chance," he said sharply. "Right now I'll write you a check for a thousand dollars. That's just for a ninety days' option. We'll clean out of this, go down to Lebarge and file your title. Then we'll see what you've got. Are you on?"

The temptation of the pen against the blue slip of paper was lost to Drennen. While Madden was talking there had again crept into his eyes that look which tells that a man's mind is wandering to other thoughts. Again, with a start, he brought his gaze back to Madden.

"A thousand dollars? An option?" He shook his head. "No."

"Why, man, are you crazy?" Madden's look hinted that Madden half believed he was. "I'm just chucking a thousand dollars at you, throwing it away for the fun of it . . ."