ame up with the
two men whom they had followed these last few days. They were
Lieutenant Max and the big Canadian and the two were not alone.
Drennen, walking a little ahead of his father, came to a dead halt, his
body grown suddenly rigid. He had seen that there was a second camp
fire, a tiny blaze of dry fagots not twenty steps from the first but
partially screened by the undergrowth among the trees, and that the
slender form of a woman bent over it. His pause was only momentary;
when he came on his face gave no sign of the emotion that had been
riding him nor of the old disappointment again as he saw that the woman
was not Ygerne but Ernestine Dumont.

Lieutenant Max, a rifle across the hollow of his arm, stepped out to
meet them. Not knowing who his guests were he moved so that the
firelight was no longer just behind him, so that he was in the shadows.
Kootanie George, upon his knees, holding a bit of fresh meat out over
the fire upon a green, sharpened stick, turned his head but did not
move his great body.

"Who is it?" demanded Max sharply. And then, before an answer had
come, he saw who they were and cried out: "Why, it's David Drennen!
And Mr. Sothern! Gad, I never thought to see you two here!"

He came forward and shook hands warmly, showing an especial pleasure in
meeting Marshall Sothern again. The eyes of both men kindled as they
gripped hands, in Sothern's a look of affection, in Max's an expression
compounded of liking and respect.

Max had finished his meal; George, his appetite in keeping with his
size, was doing his last bit of cooking; Ernestine, bending over her
own lonely blaze, was seeking to warm a body which the fresh evening
had chilled, a body which looked thinner and withal more girlish than
it had looked for many a day. The face which she turned toward the new
arrivals with faint curiosity, was paler than it had been of yore; her
eyes seemed larger; there were traces of suffering which she had not
sought to hide.

Lieutenant Max was unmistakably glad to welcome Drennen and Sothern to
camp. The atmosphere hovering about the trio upon whom father and son
had come was not to be mistaken even in the half gloom. There was
nothing in common between the officer and the big Canadian beyond their
present community of interest in coming up with the fugitives whom the
law sought through Max and revenge quested through Kootanie. And
Ernestine, though with them, was distinctly not of them