and you would not know. But with you--blooey--right away, you
feel. So, for some reason, you are, what-you-say?--shamming. But you
are Ba'teese' gues'. You sleep in Ba'teese' bed. You eat Ba'teese'
food. So long as that, you are Ba'teese' friend. Ba'teese--" he
looked with quiet, fatherly eyes toward the young man on the
bed--"shall ask no question--and Ba'teese shall tell no tales!"

CHAPTER IV

The simple statement of the gigantic trapper swept the confidence from
Houston and left him at a disadvantage. His decision had been a hasty
one,--a thing to gain time, a scheme by which he had felt he could, at
the proper time, take Thayer off his guard and cause him to come into
the open with his plans, whatever they might be. Fate had played a
strange game with Barry Houston. It had taken a care-free,
happy-go-lucky youth and turned him into a suspicious, distrustful
person with a constantly morbid strain which struggled everlastingly
for supremacy over his usually cheery grin and his naturally optimistic
outlook upon life. For Fate had allowed Houston to live the youth of
his life in ease and brightness and lack of worry, only that it might
descend upon him with the greatest cloud that man can know. And two
years of memories, two years of bitterness, two years of ugly
recollections had made its mark. In all his dealings with Thayer,
conducted though they might have been at a distance, Barry Houston
could not place his finger upon one tangible thing that would reveal
his crookedness. But he had suspected; had come to investigate, and to
learn, even before he was ready to receive the information, that his
suspicions had been, in some wise at least, correct. To follow those
suspicions to their stopping place Barry had feigned amnesia. And it
had lasted just long enough for this grinning man who stood at the foot
of the bed to tickle his feet!

And how should that grotesque giant with his blazing red shirt and
queer little cap know of such things as amnesia and the tracing of a
deadened nerve? How should he,--then Barry suddenly tensed. Had it
been a ruse? Was this man a friend, a companion--even an accomplice of
the thin-faced, frost-gnarled Thayer--and had his simple statement been
an effort to take Barry off his guard? If so, it had not succeeded,
for Barry had made no admissions. But it all affected him curiously;
it nettled him and puzzled him. For a long time he was silent, merely
staring a