He swung onto the marshy arm of a small lake, whose surface was profusely dotted with conical muskrat houses which reared their brown domes above the broken rice-straw and cattail stalks. He had nearly reached the center when suddenly he halted, whirled half around, and clutched frantically at the breast of his shirt. It was as though some unseen hand had dealt him a sharp blow, and a dull, scorching pain shot through his chest. He drew away his hand, red and dripping, glanced wildly about, staggered a few steps, and crashed headlong, with a rustling sound, into the thick growth of dry cattail stalks. On the bank of the marsh a thin puff of vapory smoke drifted across the face of a blackened stump and dissolved in the crisp air, and the sharp crack of a high-power rifle of small caliber raised scarcely an echo against the wall of the opposite shore. A man stepped from behind the stump, glanced sharply about him, and grinned as he leisurely pumped another cartridge into the chamber. He bit the corner from a thick plug of tobacco, and gazed out over the marsh, which showed only the light yellow of the dry stalks and the brown domes of the rat-houses. "That ain't so bad fer two hundred yards--plugged him square in the middle, too. God! I'd hate to die!" he muttered, and, turning, followed the shore of the lake and struck into the timber in the direction in which the other had been going. An hour later he slipped silently behind the trunk of a tree at the edge of a tiny clearing in the center of which stood a single, smoke-blackened tepee. The blue smoke from a small fire in front of the opening floated lazily upward in the still air, and beside the blaze a leathern-faced crone squatted and stirred the contents of a black pot which simmered from a cross-piece supported at the ends by crotched sticks driven into the ground. The old squaw fitted the lid to the pot, hung the long-handled spoon upon a projection of a forked upright, and, picking up a tin pail, disappeared down the well-worn path to the river. With an evil leer the man stepped boldly into the clearing and crossed to the opening of the tepee. Stooping, he suddenly looked within, where Jeanne Lacombie knelt upon one knee as she fastened the thongs of her moccasin. The man grinned as he recognized the silvery hairs of the great white wolf skin which the girl had thrown across her shoulders. "So you swiped the greener's wolf-hide, did you? I seen it was gone offen the end of the bunk-house." At the sound the girl looked up, and the blood froze in her veins at the sight of the glittering eyes and sneering lips of Moncrossen. He spoke again: "You thought I was done with you, did you? Thought I'd forgot you, an' the fight the old she-tiger put up that night on Broken Knee? But that was in the dark, or there'd been a different story to tell."