face.

"I don't know what business you've got to order me out--unless--" His
gaze included the girl for a moment, and the insult of his leer was
unmistakable.

Morse caught him by the scruff of the neck, ran him out of the room,
and flung him down the steps into the road. The gambler tripped on the
long buffalo coat he was wearing and rolled over in the snow. Slowly
he got to his feet and locked eyes with the other.

Rage almost choked his words. "You'll be sorry for this one o' these
days, Morse. I'll get you right. Nobody has ever put one over on Poker
Whaley and nobody ever will. Don't forget that."

Tom Morse wasted no words. He stood silently on the steps, a splendid,
supple figure of menacing power, and watched his foe pass down the
road. There was in him a cruel and passionate desire to take the
gambler and break him with his hands, to beat him till he crawled away
a weak and wounded creature fit for a hospital. He clamped his teeth
hard and fought down the impulse.

Presently he turned and walked slowly back into the house. His face
was still set and his hands clenched. He knew that if Whaley had hurt
Jessie, he would have killed him with his naked fingers.

"You can't stay here. Where do you want me to take you?" he asked, and
his cold hardness reminded her of the Tom Morse who had led her to the
whip one other night.

She did not know that inside he was a caldron of emotion and that it
was only by freezing himself he could keep down the volcanic eruption.

"I'll go to Susie Lemoine's," she said in a small, obedient voice.

With his hands in his pockets he stood and let he find a fur coat and
slip into it. He had a sense of frustration. He wanted to let go of
himself and tell all that was in his torrid heart. Instead, he encased
himself in ice and drove her farther from him.

They walked down the road side by side, neither of them speaking. She
too was a victim of chaotic feeling. It would be long before she could
forget how he had broken through the door and saved her.

But she could not find the words to tell him so. They parted at the
door of Lemoine's cabin with a chill "Good-night" that left them both
unhappy and dissatisfied.

CHAPTER XIX

"D'YOU WONDER SHE HATES ME?"

To Morse came Angus McRae with the right hand of friendship the day
after the battle in the log house.

Eyes blue as Highland lochs fastened to those of the fur-trader. "Lad,
I canna tell ye what's in my heart. '