“A freak accident,” interrupted Nevada, her cheeks showing alarming symptoms of a sudden attack of fever. “That old pipe! You didn’t take it, and I must have tucked it up somewhere until you came again. I suppose it rattled down.” Rawley’s eyes had never been so blue. They were like looking down upon a sunlit sea. He dipped his fingers into the pocket of Nevada’s blouse and produced the pipe, turning it tenderly in his hands. “God bless the day I learned to smoke!” he murmured, his eyes still dancing. “It may have rattled down--but I know it’s a good omen. It means--” “Yes?” Nevada’s big eyes were upon his face. A faint tremor was in her lips, as if laughter and tears were fighting for the mastery. “The omen says that you and I are going to get married within a week. Well within a week.” He was studying the pipe as a mystic studies the crystal. “It tells me that the hatchet is forever buried. This is the pipe of peace, and it passed from me to you. That means that you and I go through life together. Our trails never separate. It means--” “Oh, hush!” Nevada cried sharply and struck at the pipe in his hand. “Our trails can’t lie together. We can’t marry, ever--ever! You know that as well as I do. We’re cousins.” She turned her face to the wall. Rawley did not speak. He looked up from the pipe, straight into the eyes of Anita, sitting in a corner like a bronze Buddha disguised as a squaw. Anita met his look with stolid obstinacy, never blinking, never a quiver in her face. Rawley’s jaw squared a little as he continued to look at her. His body swayed forward, his eyes boring into her very soul. So had King, of the Mounted, looked when he demanded that Anita should choose between himself and Jess Cramer. Rawley did not know why he stared at her so. He only knew that the truth was there, hidden behind those unreadable eyes. He knew that the truth would give him Nevada the moment that truth was spoken. No lips but Anita’s might speak that truth; other lips were sworn to silence. The old squaw whimpered under her breath. Her eyes flickered and could no longer look defiance into those terrible, commanding blue eyes,--the eyes of King, of the Mounted. Her hand went up to shield her face from the stare of them. She stirred uneasily in her chair. She spread her fingers, peering fearfully between them. The terrible blue eyes looked at her still. Slowly, painfully, scarce knowing that she did so, Anita pulled herself up from the chair and went forward as one goes to the bar of justice. As a flame shoots up suddenly from dying embers, so did a flame dart out from the ashes of her youth. The stooped, gross old body straightened. Anita’s head went back. Her eyes glowed with a little of their old fire. Her voice rang clear, proud with the pride of ancestry unknown.