kind to her, and she loved him; and all at once he knew that he
could not yield him or her to the mercy of this black-hearted man before
him.

He had lived an iniquitous life; he was inured to all except the worst
forms of wickedness; but for the moment--in love of his daughter--he
stood redeemed. He was on the right side at last. His hand drew back,
and his face was like iron.

"Shut that foul mouth!" he cautioned, with a curious, deadly evenness of
tone. "I haven't surrendered yet to you two wolves. If one of you dares
to lay a hand on Beatrice, I'll kill him where he stands."

Even as he spoke his thought went to his rifle, leaning against a dead
log ten feet away. This was the moment of test: the jealousy and rivalry
and hatred between himself and Ray had reached the crisis. And the
spirit of murder, terrible past any demon of the Pit, came stalking from
the savage forest into the ruddy firelight.

Ray leered, his muscles bunching. "And I say to you, you're a dirty
traitor too," he answered. "She ain't your daughter any more. She's Ben
Darby's squaw. She's not fit for a white man to touch any more, for all
her lies. You say one word and you'll get it too."

And at that instant the speeding pace of time seemed to halt, showing
this accursed scene, so savage and terrible in the eerie light of the
camp fire, at the edge of the haunted, breathless darkness, in vivid and
ghastly detail. Neilson leaped forward with all his power; and if his
blow had gone home, Ray would have been shattered beneath it like a tree
in the lightning blast. But Ray's arms were incredibly swift, and his
rifle leaped in his hands.

The barrel gleamed. The roar reechoed in the silence. Neilson's head
bowed strangely; and for a moment he stood swaying, a ghastly blankness
on his face; then pitched forward in the dew-wet grass.

Beatrice's last defense had fallen, seriously wounded; and Ray's arm
seized her as, screaming, she tried to flee.

XL

The shot that wounded Jeffery Neilson carried far through the forest
aisles, reechoing against the hills, and arresting, for one breathless
moment, all the business of the wilderness. The feeding caribou swung
his horns and tried to catch the scent; the moose, grubbing for water
roots in the lake bottom, lifted his grotesque head and stood like a
form in black iron. It came clear as a voice to the cavern where Ben
lay.

The man started violently in his cot. His entire nervous system seeme