the low, half-moaned words, "Oh, please, please, don't
let him get me!" to tell Chloe that her worst fears were realized.

"Do not be afraid, my dear," she faltered. "He cannot harm you now,"
and hurriedly closing the door, staggered across the living-room, threw
herself into a chair beside the table, and buried her face in her arms.

Harriet Penny opened her door and glanced timidly at the still figure
of the girl, and, deciding it were the better part of prudence not to
intrude, noiselessly closed her door. Hours later, Big Lena, entering
from the kitchen, regarded her mistress with a long vacant-faced stare,
and returned again to the kitchen. All through the night Chloe dozed
fitfully beside the table, but for the most part she was
widely--painfully--awake. Bitterly she reproached herself. Only she
knew the pain the discovery of MacNair's treachery had caused her. And
only she knew why the discovery had caused her pain.

Always she had believed she had hated this man. By all standards, she
should hate him. This great, elemental brute of the North who had
first attempted to ignore, and later to ridicule and to bully her.
This man who ruled his Indians with a rod of iron, who allowed them
full license in their debauchery, and then shot them down in cold
blood, who shot a boy in the back while in the act of doing his duty,
and who had called her a "damn fool" in her own house, and was even
then off on the trail of another man he had sworn to kill on sight. By
all the laws of justice, equity, and decency, she should hate this man!
She was conscious of no other feeling toward him than a burning,
unquenchable hate. And yet, deep down in her heart she knew--by the
pain of her discovery of his treachery--she knew she loved him, and
utterly she despised herself that this could be so.

Daylight softly dimmed the yellow lamplight of the room. The girl
arose, and, after a hurried glance at the sleeping Ripley, bathed her
eyes in cold water and passed into the kitchen, where Big Lena was busy
in the preparation of breakfast.

"Send LeFroy to me at once!" she ordered, and five minutes later, when
the man stood before her, she ordered him to summon all of MacNair's
Indians.

The man shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other as he
faced her upon the tiny veranda. "MacNair Injuns," he answered, "dem
gon' las' night. Dem gon' 'long wit' MacNair. Heem gon' for hunt
Pierre Lapierre!"

CHAPTER XXI

L