Could there be any greater happiness than to stand by his side, helping to render a dying, captive race happier--healthier? Could her great wealth be put to better use than this of teaching two hundred thousand red people how to meet and adjust themselves to the white man's way of life? Their rags, their squalor, their ignorance were more deeply depressing to her lover than the poverty of the slums, for the Tetongs had been free and joyous hunters. Their condition was a tragic debasement. She began to feel the arguments of the Indian helpers. Their words were no longer dead things; they had become electric nodes; they moved her, set her blood aflame, and she clinched her hands and said: "I will help him do this great work!" XXIX ELSIE WARNS CURTIS Brisbane was early awake, abrupt and harsh in command. "Come! we must get out o' here," he said. "I don't want to be under the slightest obligation to this young crank. I intend to break him." She flamed into wrath--a white radiance. "When you break him you break me," she said. "What do you mean?" "I mean I've changed my mind. I think he's right and you are wrong." The entrance of the sheriff prevented a full accounting at the moment, but it was merely deferred. Once in the carriage, Brisbane began to discredit her lover. "Don't tell me Curtis is disinterested; he is scheming for some fat job. His altruistic plea is too thin." "You are ill-fitted to understand the motives of a man like Captain Curtis," Elsie replied, and every word cut. "What have you--or I--ever done that was not selfish?" "I've given a thousand dollars to charity for every cent of his." "Yes, and that's the spirit in which you gave--never to help, only to exalt yourself, just as I have done. Captain Curtis is giving himself. He and his sister have made me see myself as I am, and I am not happy over it. But I wish you would not talk to me any more about them; they are my friends, and I will not listen to your abuse of them." It was a most fatiguing ride. Brisbane complained of the heat and the dust, and of a mysterious pain in his head; and Elsie, alarmed by his flushed face, softened. "Poor papa, I'm so sorry you had to come on this long ride!" Lawson was also genuinely concerned over the Senator's growing incoherency, and privately told the driver to push hard on the reins. When they rounded the sharp point of the Black Bear Mesa, and came in sight of the long, low, half-way house, Lawson sat up with a jerk. "There is the mob--camped and waiting for the sheriff." As Elsie looked at the swarming figures of the cowboys her mind forecasted tragic events. The desperadoes were waiting to lynch Cut Finger--that was plain. Curtis had said he would not surrender his prisoner to be lynched. He was coming; he would be met by this mob. She clutched Lawson by the arm. "We must warn him!" He merely nodded; but a look in his eyes gave her to understand that he would do his duty.