"What's amiss with Keeko?"

The sick woman opened a pair of startled eyes. She half turned her face towards the darkened doorway.

Nicol was standing there. He had entered the room at that moment, but with a quiet unusual to him. She gazed at him without reply. Perhaps the activity of her brain was dulling. Perhaps she was searching the face, the sight of which she had learned in years to hate and fear.

It was a handsome face still, for all the man was approaching fifty. It was fleshy, and its dark beard did not improve it. But the eyes were keen and fine for all there was coldness and cruelty in their hard depths. The abundant moustache was without a tinge of grey in it, but it lacked trimness, and hung over a cruel mouth like a tattered curtain. The woman knew the value of these good looks, however. They served to mask a mind and heart that knew no scruple. So it was that her reply finally came in a quick apprehensive question.

"What d'you mean?" she gasped, in her spasmodic way. "What's she done?"

Nicol laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. He moved across to the bed and sprawled himself upon its foot, while his eyes searched the emaciated face as though some secret speculation was going on in his mind while he talked of other things.

"She held me up with a gun," he said slowly. "That's all. She held me up! Me! And she did it with a nerve I had to reckon was pretty fine. There were twenty or more of the darn Shaunekuks around. Guess I was mad at the time. But I had to laff after."

The unmoving eyes of the woman on the bed were reading him. No mood of his could deceive her. She had learned her lesson bitterly in something like seventeen years. The man was acting now. He was laughing over an incident which filled him with a consuming rage.

"You came here to tell me about it." The voice was faint with bodily weakness, but there was no weariness in the anxious watchfulness of her eyes. "Guess you'd best tell it. It's not your way to waste time in this room with anything pleasant to hand out. It's easier for me to listen, and nothing you can say can do me much hurt."

The man laughed again. It was a laugh that was cut off abruptly.

"I don't need to look for sympathy where you are," he said. "Anyway I don't guess I need any."

"No."

The antagonism of the monosyllable was unmistakable.

Nicol shrugged.

"That swine, Snake Foot," he said. "He refused to do as I told him. He guessed Keeko needed him at the landing, and he hadn't time for me. So I took him to the flogging post."

It was said coldly. Quite without emotion.

"And you flogged him with your—quirt?"

"Sure."

The man's teeth clipped together.

"Oh, yes," he went on, after a moment. "I'm not the sort to let a neche get away with that sort of thing. You see, I reckon I'm master around this layout."

"And Keeko?"

Again came the man's ominous laugh in reply.

"She was quick. I reckoned she was here with you. Making her fancy farewell. But she was around before I'd hardly begun. Oh, yes. She acted her show piece, and if you'd seen it I guess she'd have got your applause good. It was against me. She jumped in front of that red-skinned swine so my quirt nearly came down on her. But it didn't. And I'm glad. Guess she's too soft, and pretty, and dandy to hurt—yet. A feller doesn't feel that way with women later, when they show him the hell they've always got waiting on any fool man. She's got grit. Sure she has. It's good for a girl to have grit, and I'd say she's got it—plenty. But she put up a gun at me. And I reckon she meant to use it if need be. It's that that's the matter. That's been put into her darn fool head. That's not Keeko."

The man's manner had changed abruptly. His heavy brows depressed, and, to the listener, it was as though she could hear his teeth grit over each word he spoke. But even so she could not restrain her passionate joy at the defeat the man's words admitted.

"She beat you?" she said, a great light flooding her big eyes. "She beat you," she repeated, "and made you quit. She took your measure for the coward who could flog a wretched neche who couldn't defend himself. I'm glad."

For a moment the sting of the woman's words looked like overwhelming the man's restraint. But the black shadow of his brows suddenly lightened, and again he shrugged his heavy shoulders with a transparent indifference.

"Oh, yes," he admitted. "She beat me." Then he added slowly, and with an appearance of deep reflection: "But then she's young. How old? Nineteen?" He nodded. "Nineteen, and as pretty as a picture. Prettier by a heap than her mother ever was." His lips parted with a noise that expressed appreciation and appetite. "Say, did you ever see such a figure? She kind of makes you think of a yearling deer, or the picture of one of those swell girls Diana always has chasing around her. And she don't know a thing but what this country's taught her—which I guess isn't a lot. But she can learn. Oh, yes. She can learn." Then with deliberate, cold emphasis: "And one of the things she'll learn is that she can't hold me up with a gun without paying for it."

The mother's eyes widened with fear, with loathing.

"What do you mean?" she cried, with a force which must have alarmed anyone who understood or cared for her bodily condition. "Pay? How can you make her pay? Oh, you don't know Keeko. You don't know what you're up against. Keeko would shoot you like a dog if you dared——"

The man raised a protesting hand and smiled into the eyes which betrayed so much.

"Easy, easy," he said. "You're jumping too far. It's taken you years, and I guess you haven't learnt yet. Guess I'll have to do better. You're one of those fool women who never learn. If you'd horse sense you wouldn't have said what you handed me just now. You're glad Keeko took my measure for a coward. You're pleased, mighty pleased she beat me. Oh, yes, I know, you've done your best she should act that way. That's because you're scared, and you don't love me like you used to. You reckon she'd shoot me like a dog. Anyway you hope so."

Nicol shook his head, and prolonged the smile with which he regarded the mother's emaciated features.

"Oh, no," he went on. "She won't shoot me like a dog. But I'll tell you what will happen. I don't mind telling you now. She won't get back till the fall. And when she comes back you won't see her. So you won't be able to hand her the things I'm saying. You're more than half dead now. You'll be all the way before she comes back, and I guess you'll be able to lie around somewhere out of sight in the woods watching the game I play. I'm going to show Keeko what a fool she was to listen to your talk. She's just going to see the dandy fellow I really am. She's going to be queen of this camp, set up on a throne I've made for her. And if I know women she's going to fall for it. There's no need for scruple. She's not my daughter. I'm not even her step-father. I've a hand full of trumps waiting for her, and when you're dead, and she gets back, I'm going to play 'em all. Then—after—when I'm tired of the game, she's going to pay for that gun play till she hates to remember the fool mother whose talk she ever listened to. We're here a thousand miles from anywhere, which is the sort of thing only a crazy woman like you could ever for—Hello! What in hell d'you want?"

Nicol sat up. In a moment his entire manner changed. He scowled threateningly as he eyed the dusky figure in the doorway. It was the squaw Lu-cana whose moccasined feet had given out no sound as she approached.

"White feller man come by river," she said, in the soft, hushed voice of her race, while her eyes refused to face the scowl of the white man.

"White man? What the hell! Who the devil is he?"

Nicol had risen to his feet, his manner brutally threatening. The squaw feared him, as did all the Indians. But in the presence of the sick white woman she found a measure of courage.

"Him wait. Him say, 'Boss Nicol, yes?'" she replied, and stood waiting with her dark eyes fixed upon the woman she served.

But the sick woman gave no sign. Her poor troubled brain was staggered by the hideous threat which she had been forced to listen to. She lay there like a corpse prepared for burial, utterly unconcerned for that which was passing.

Just for a moment the man hesitated. He glanced back at the bed as though regretful at being dragged from his torture of the defenceless woman lying there. Then with a shrug, he moved across the room, and, thrusting the squaw aside, hurried out to meet his unexpected visitor.

It was an utterly different man who shook the visitor by the hand. Nicol was smiling with a pleasant amiability. And no man could better express cordiality than he.

"It's 'Tough' Alroy," he said, as though that individual were the only person in the world he wanted to see. "Well, well," he went on heartily. "My head's just bursting with pleasure and surprise. Say, I often remember the days—and nights—in Seal Bay. Gee! This brings back times, eh? Is it just a trip or?——"

"Business."

The man grinned. He was more than well named. His black eyes were full of good-humoured deviltry. He was a type, in his picturesque buckskin, familiar enough among the trail men of the Northland. Tough, as his nickname suggested, hard, unscrupulous, ready for anything that the gods of fortune passed down to him, nothing concerned, nothing mattered so that he gathered enough for a red time at his journey's end.

"Business?"

"Yep. Lorson Harris. It's big. Guess I've a brief along with me that's to be set right into your hands, an' when you've eaten the stuff wrote ther', why, you need to light a pipe with it, an' see ther's none left over. I've been takin' a hand up to now. But ther's reasons why I've cut out. It's for you now. Can we parley?"

The trader's cordiality had become absorbed in a deeply serious regard. He was guessing hard. Lorson Harris was the one man in the world whom he seriously feared. He knew he was bound to him by chains which galled every time he strained against them. The great trader's tentacles were spread out over the length and breadth of the Northland. There was no escape from them. He had said a few moments before that here, at Fort Duggan, they were a thousand miles from anywhere. But then he was thinking of something quite different. So long as he lived in the Northland he knew he was within immediate reach of Lorson Harris. What was this message from Lorson Harris? What did it portend?

He abruptly turned and indicated the broad sill of the door of the main fort building.

"Sit right here, boy," he said, forcing himself to a return to his original cordiality. "Guess there's room for us both. We can talk till you're tired here. After we're through I don't seem to see any difficulty in raking out a bucket of red-hot fire juice or any other old thing you happen to fancy."

Tough Alroy grinned and accepted the invitation.

"That's the talk," he said. "Here's Lorson's letter. You read that right away, and I'll make a big talk after."

The two men sat down, and while Nicol tore open the dirty envelope, and read his taskmaster's orders, Tough lit a pipe, and watched him out of the corners of his black, restless, wicked eyes.