"That depends entirely on you--and what effect that accusation made. If you're with me, I fight. If not--well frankly--I don't know." "'Member the mill, when he burn down?" "Yes." "You no believe Ba'teese did heem. _Oui_, yes? Well, now I no believe either!" "Honestly, Ba'tiste?" Houston had gripped the other man's arm. "You don't believe it? You don't--" "Ba'teese believe M'sieu Houston. You look like my Pierre. My Pierre, he could do no wrong. Ba'teese satisfy." It sent a new flow of blood through the veins of Barry Houston,--that simple, quiet statement of the old trapper. He felt again a surge of the fighting instinct, the desire to keep on and on, to struggle until the end, and to accept nothing except the bitterest, most absolute defeat. He quickened his pace, the French-Canadian falling in with him. His voice bore a vibrant tone, almost of excitement: "I'm going back to Boston to-night. I'm going to find out about this. I can get a machine at Tabernacle to take me over the range; it may save me time in catching a train at Denver. There's some fraud, Ba'tiste. I know it.--and I'll prove it if I can get back to Boston. We'll stop by the cottage down here and see Miss Jierdon; then I'm gone!" "She no there. She, what-you-say, smash up 'quaintance with Medaine. She ask to go there and stay day or two." "Then she'll straighten things out, Ba'tiste. I'm glad of it. She knows the truth about this whole thing--every step of the way. Will you tell her?" "_Oui_. Ba'teese tell her--about the flume and M'sieu Thayer, what he say. But Ba'teese--" "What?" The trapper was silent a moment. At last: "You like her, eh?" "Medaine?" "No--the other." "A great deal, Ba'teese. She has meant everything to me; she was my one friend when I was in trouble. She even went on the stand and testified for me. What were you going to say?" "Nothing," came the enigmatical reply. "Ba'teese will wait here. You go Boston to-night?" "Yes." And that night, in the moonlight, behind the rushing engine of a motor car, Barry Houston once more rode the heights where Mount Taluchen frowned down from its snowy pinnacles, where the road was narrow and the turns sharp, and where the world beneath was built upon a scale of miniature. But this time, the drifts had faded from beside the highway; nodding flowers showed in the moonlight; the snow flurries were gone. Soon the downward grade had come and after that the straggling little town of Dominion. Early morning found Houston in Denver, searching the train schedules. That night he was far from the mountains, hurrying half across the continent in search of the thing that would give him back his birthright. Weazened, wrinkle-faced little Jenkins met him at the office, to stare in apparent surprise, then to rush forward with well-simulated enthusiasm.