But he had forgotten that a world existed without those four walls. His back was toward the door. His own great shoulders walled the girl in. Neither he nor she dreamed of a dark figure that had drifted from out the prairie swiftly into the dooryard, dreamed that that same all-knowing shadow, on soundless moccasined feet, had advanced to the doorway, stood silent, watching therein. As the first man and the first woman were alone, they fancied themselves alone. As the first man might have exulted over his mate, Clayton Craig exulted now. "Let you go, Bess," he baited, "let you go now that I've just gotten you?" He laughed passionately. "You must think that I'm made of clay and not of flesh and blood." He drew her closer and closer, until she could no longer struggle, until she lay still in his arms. "I'll never let you go again, girl, not if God himself were to demand your release. You're mine, Bess, mine by right of capture, mine--" The sentence halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the invader saw, realised. Instantly, instinctively, like similar repellent poles, they sprang apart. Enveloped in a maze of surging divergent passions, the two guilty humans stood silent so, staring at the intruder in breathless expectation, breathless fascination. * * * * * While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count, the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure, there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense, desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig. "Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I guess. What are you going to do about it?" The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful, he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband, tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward menacingly.