“I know, I know!” she cried. “I believed those things then. Oh, you can’t tell how it hurt me to think that all the time you had been playing a double part—fooling my father and myself. But now I _know_. I know the whole wretched business; or at least enough to understand. I got into his papers back there on the Sicannie. There were things that amazed me—after that—I stormed at him till he told me the truth; part of it. You don’t know how sorry I am for those horrible, unwomanly things I said to you. How could I know? He lied so consistently—even at the last he lied to me—told me that the Company men had taken the post by surprise, that we were lucky to get away with our lives. I believed that until I saw you find that money. Then I knew that he had sold you out—his partner. I’ve been a little beast,” she sobbed, “and I’ve been afraid to tell you. Oh, you don’t know how much I wanted to tell you; but I was afraid. I’m not afraid now. If you are going to strike out alone, I shall go, too.” He bent and kissed her gravely. “The Northwest is no place for me, Jess,” he said. “I cannot cross it in the winter without being seen or trailed, and there is no getting out of that jail-break, if I am caught. I must go over the mountains, and so to the south, where there are no Police. You cannot come. Bolton, and—and Bob will see you safe to St. Louis. If nothing happens I shall be there in the spring.” She laid her head against his breast and sobbed, wailing over him before us all. I bit my lip at the sight, and putting my pride in my pocket went over to them. “Barreau,” I said, “I don’t, and probably never will, understand a woman. You win, and I wish you luck. But unless you hold a grudge longer than I do, there’s no need for you to play a lone hand. Let the dead past bury its dead, and we will all go over the mountains together. I have no wish to take a chance with the Police again, myself. You and Bolton seem to forget that I’m just as deep in the mud as you are in the mire.” Barreau stood looking fixedly at me for a few seconds. Then he held out his hand, and the old, humorous smile that had been absent from his face for many a day once more wrinkled the corners of his mouth. “Bob,” he said, “I reckon that you and I are hard men to beat—at any game we play.” ———— That, to all intents and purposes, ends my story. We did cross the mountains, and traverse the vast, silent slopes that fall away to the blue Pacific. Bolton had gilded the palm of the Hudson’s Bay Company in his search for me, and so they considerately dropped their feud with Barreau—at least there was no more shooting of dogs, nor any effort to recover the money that cost Montell his life. Or perhaps they judged it unwise to meddle with a party like ours.