"It's because she's in debt to me--or thinks she is, for of course she isn't--and wants to pay it and get rid of it as soon as she can. I tell you, Win, she couldn't bear to touch my hand when she gave me the key to the storehouse the other night--laid it down on the table for me to pick up. It has actually become physical with her. She'd shudder if I touched her. I'm not going to supper there. Why should I take advantage of a hold I have on her generosity? No, I'll not go." And from that position Beresford could not move him. After supper the constable found a chance to see Jessie alone. She was working over the last touches of the gun-case. "When it's finished who gets it?" he asked, sitting down gracefully on the arm of a big chair. She flashed a teasing glance at him. "Who do you think deserves it?" "I deserve it," he assured her at once. "But it isn't the deserving always who get the rewards in this world. Very likely you'll give it to some chap like Tom Morse." "Who wouldn't come to supper when we asked him." She lifted steady, inquiring eyes. "What was the real reason he didn't come?" "Said he couldn't get away from the store because--" "Yes, I heard that. I'm asking for the real reason, Win." He gave it. "Tom thinks you hate him and he won't force himself on your generosity." "Oh!" She seemed to be considering that. "Do you?" "Do I what?" "Hate him." She felt a flush burning beneath the dusky brown of her cheeks. "If you knew what he'd done to me--" "Perhaps I do," he said, very gently. Her dark eyes studied him intently. "He told you?" "No, one hears gossip. He hates himself because of it. Tom's white, Jessie." "And I'm Indian. Of course that does make a difference. If he'd had a white girl whipped, you couldn't defend him," she flamed. "You know I didn't mean that, little pal." His sunny smile was disarming. "What I mean is that he's sorry for what he did. Why not give him a chance to be friends?" "Well, we gave him a chance to-night, didn't we? And he chose not to take it. What do you want me to do--go and thank him kindly for having me whipped?" Beresford gave up with a shrug. He knew when he had said enough. Some day the seed he had dropped might germinate. "Wouldn't it be a good idea to work a W.B. on that case?" he asked with friendly impudence. "Then if I lost it, whoever found it could return it." "I don't give presents to people who lose them," she parried. Her dancing eyes were very bright as they met his. She loved the trim lines of his clean beautiful youth and the soul expressed by them. Matapi-Koma waddled into the room and the Mounted Policeman transferred his attention to her. She weighed two hundred twelve pounds, but was not sensitive on the subject. Beresford claimed anxiously that she was growing thin. The Indian woman merely smiled on him benignantly. She liked him, as all women did. And she hoped that he would stay in the country and marry Sleeping Dawn. CHAPTER XX