g to the place where he and Morse had
left their horses. On the way he came face to face with a girl, a
lithe, dusky young creature, Indian brown, the tan of a hundred
summer suns and winds painted on the oval of her lifted chin. She was
carrying a package of sacks to the place where the pemmican was being
made.

West's eyes narrowed. They traveled up and down her slender body. They
gloated on her.

After one scornful glance which swept over and ignored Morse, the girl
looked angrily at the man barring her way. Slowly the blood burned
into her cheeks. For there was that in the trader's smoldering eyes
that would have insulted any modest maiden.

"You Jessie McRae?" he demanded, struck of a sudden with an idea.

"Yes."

"You smashed my whiskey-barrels?"

"My father has told you. If he says so, isn't that enough?"

He slapped an immense hand on his thigh, hugely diverted. "You damn
li'l' high-steppin' filly! Why? What in hell 'd I ever do to you?"

Angus McRae strode forward, eyes blazing. He had married a Cree woman,
had paid for her to her father seven ponies, a yard of tobacco, and a
bottle of whiskey. His own two-fisted sons were metis. The Indian in
them showed more plainly than the Celt. Their father accepted the fact
without resentment. But there was in his heart a queer feeling about
the little lass he had adopted. Her light, springing step, the lift of
the throat and the fearlessness of the eye, the instinct in her for
cleanliness of mind and body, carried him back forty years to the land
of heather, to a memory of the laird's daughter whom he had worshiped
with the hopeless adoration of a red-headed gillie. It had been the
one romance of his life, and somehow it had reincarnated itself in
his love for the half-breed girl. To him it seemed a contradiction of
nature that Jessie should be related to the flat-footed squaws who
were slaves to their lords. He could not reconcile his heart to the
knowledge that she was of mixed blood. She was too fine, too dainty,
of too free and imperious a spirit.

"Your horses are up the hill, Mr. West," he said pointedly.

It is doubtful whether the trader heard. He could not keep his
desirous eyes from the girl.

"Is she a half or a quarter-breed?" he asked McRae.

"That'll be her business and mine, sir. Will you please tak the road?"
The hunter spoke quietly, restraining himself from an outbreak. But
his voice carried an edge.

"By Gad, she's some clipper," West