"Then you left Buckshot Dan--to come here and live with this white man?" Harold turned to her with a snarl. "Don't answer him, Sindy. It's none of his business." Then his smoldering eyes met Bill's. "Now we've talked enough. You can go." "Wait!" Something in the grave face and set features silenced the squaw man. "But it's true--we have talked just about enough. I've got one question. Lounsbury--do you think, by any chance--you've got any manhood left? Do you think you're rotten clear through?" Harold leaped then, savage as a wolf, and his rifle swung in his arms. Instantly Bill's form, impassive before, seemed simply to waken with life. There was no rage in his face, only determination; but his arm drove out fast as a serpent's head. Seemingly with one motion he wrenched the gun from the man's hand and sent him spinning against the wall. Before even his body crashed against the logs, Bill had whirled to face the squaw. He knew these savage women. It would be wholly in character for her whip a gleaming knife from her dress and spring to her man's aid. But she looked up as if with indifference, and once more went back to her work. Bill was considerably heartened. At least he didn't have to deal with the savage love that sometimes the Indian women bore the whites. Sindy was evidently wholly indifferent to Harold's fate. The match obviously had not been a great success. For an instant Harold lay still, crumpled on the floor; then his bleeding hands fumbled at his belt. Once more Bill sprang and snatched him to his feet. The holster, however, was empty. "No more of that," Bill cautioned. The man's eyes smoldered with resentment, but for the moment he was cowed. "Before you start anything more, hear what I've got to offer you." His voice lowered, and the words came rather painfully. "It's your one chance, Lounsbury--to come back. Virginia Tremont has come into the North, looking for you. She's at my camp. She wants to take you back with her." Lounsbury's breath caught with a strange, sobbing sound. "Virginia--up here?" he cried. "Does she know about--this----" He indicated the cabin interior, and all it meant, with one sweep of his arm. "Of course not. How could she? Whether you tell her or not is a matter for you and she to decide. She's come to find you--and bring you back." "My God! To the States?" "Of course." For the instant the black wrath had left his face, and his thought swung backward to his own youth,--to the days he had known Virginia in a far-off city. He was more than a little awed at this manifestation of her love. He supposed that she had forgotten him long since and had never dreamed that she would search for him here.