d, and ridiculed,
and forbade her? What could _she_ do in the refashioning of a
world-old wild--one woman against the established creeds of an iron
wilderness? Where, now, were her dreams of empire, her ideals, and her
castles in Spain? Was she to return, broken on the wheel? Crushed
between the adamantine millstones of things as they ought not to be?

The resolute lips drooped, a hot salt tear blurred Vermilion's
camp-fire and distorted the figures of the gambling scowmen. She
closed her eyes tightly. The writhing green shadow-shapes lost form,
dimmed, and resolved themselves into an image--a lean, lined face with
rapier-blade eyes gazed upon her from the blackness--the face of Tiger
Elliston!

Instantly, the full force and determination of her surged through the
girl's veins anew. The drooping lips stiffened. Her heart sang with
the joy of conquest. The tight-pressed lids flew open, and for a long
time she watched the shadow-dance of the flames on her tent wall. Dim,
and elusive, and far away faded the dancing shadow-shapes--and she
slept.

Not so Vermilion, who, when his companions tired of their game and
sought their blankets, sat and stared into the embers of his dying
fire. The half-breed was troubled. As boss of Pierre Lapierre's
scowmen, a tool of a master mind, a unit of a system, he had prospered.
But, no longer was he a unit of a system. From the moment Chloe
Elliston had bargained with him for the transportation of her outfit
into the wilderness, the man's brain had been active in formulating a
plan.

This woman was rich. One who is not rich cannot afford to transport
thirty-odd tons of outfit into the heart of the wilderness, at the
tariff of fifteen cents the pound. So, throughout the days of the
journey, the man gazed with avarice upon the piles of burlapped pieces,
while his brain devised the scheme. Thereafter, in the dead of night
occurred many whispered consultations, as Vermilion won over his men.
He chose shrewdly, for these men knew Pierre Lapierre, and well they
knew what portion would be theirs should the scheme of Vermilion
miscarry.

At last, the selection had been made, and five of the most desperate
and daring of all the rivermen had, by the lure of much gold, consented
to cast loose from the system and "go it alone." The first daring move
in the undertaking had succeeded--a move that, in itself, bespoke the
desperate character of its perpetrators, for it was no accide