"I sell you the flour. How I got it is my
affair. I take the responsibility. The police will deal with _me_!"

"I hope so," said Watusk smugly.

"I have made out a receipt," Ambrose went on. "You sign it, then
distribute the flour among the people, and give me the men's names so I
can charge them on my book.

"To-morrow I give it out," said Watusk. "To-day I put the flour in
Gaston Trudeau's empty house by the river. Maybe goin' to rain
to-night."

"Just as you like about that," said Ambrose. "When are you going to
pull out for home?"

"Soon," replied Watusk vaguely.

"They tell me it is the best time now to hunt the moose," remarked
Ambrose suggestively. "And the bear's fur is coming in thick and soft.
You have been here two weeks without hunting."

Again Watusk's eyes narrowed like a sulky child's. "Must the Kakisas
got hunt every day?" he asked spreading out his hands. "The people are
weak with hunger. We got eat before we travel."

Ambrose left this interview in a highly dissatisfied state of mind.

Later in the day Watusk must have thought better of his surliness for
he sent a polite message to Ambrose at Simon Grampierre's house,
requesting him and Simon to come to a tea dance that night.

He had borrowed Jack Mackenzie's house for the affair since no teepee
was big enough to contain it. Mackenzie's was the first house west of
the Kakisa encampment.

"Tea-dance! Bah! Indian foolishness!" said Simon.

"Let us go anyway," said Ambrose. "I feel as if there was something
crooked going on. This Indian will bear watching."

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SUBTLETY OF GORDON STRANGE.

At the same moment Gordon Strange was sitting on the bench at the foot
of the flag-staff, smoking, and gazing speculatively across the river
at the teepee village.

Colina issued out of the big house, and seeing him, joined him. It was
her first public appearance since the scene at the mill, and it was
something of an ordeal.

Her face showed what she was going through. She was elaborately
self-conscious; defiance struggled with a secret shame. In her heart
she knew she was wrong, yet she thirsted for justification.

"What is the situation?" she asked haughtily.

Strange told her briefly. His air was admirable. He betrayed no
consciousness of anything changed in her; he was deferential without
being obsequious.

He let her understand that she was still his peerless mistress who
could do no wrong. T