il room, he
calls it--where he makes bargains. I hope they are both there,
_Sakewawin_--both Hauck and Brokaw." She seized his hand, and held it
tightly as she led him deeper into darkness. "I wonder why so many of
the Indians are in? I did not know they were coming. It is the wrong
time of year for--a crowd like that!"

He felt the quiver in her voice. She was quite excited, he knew. And yet
not about the Indians, nor the strangeness of their presence. It was her
_triumph_ that made her tremble in the darkness, a wonderful
anticipation of the greatest event that had ever happened in her life.
She hoped that Hauck and Brokaw were in that room! She would confront
them there, with _him_. That was it. She felt her bondage--her
prisonment--in this savage place was ended; and she was eager to find
them, and let them know that she was no longer afraid, or alone--no
longer need obey or fear them. He felt the thrill of it in the hot,
fierce little clasp of her hand. He saw it glowing in her eyes when they
passed through the light of a window. Then they turned again, at the
back of the building. They paused at a door. Not a ray of light broke
the gloom here. The stars seemed to make the blackness deeper. Her
fingers tightened.

"You must be careful," he said. "And--remember."

"I will," she whispered.

It was his last warning. The door opened slowly, with a creaking sound,
and they entered into a long, gloomy hall, illumined by a single oil
lamp that sputtered and smoked in its bracket on one of the walls. The
hall gave him an idea of the immensity of the building. From the far end
of it, through a partly open door, came a reek of tobacco smoke, and
loud voices--a burst of coarse laughter, a sudden volley of curses that
died away in a still louder roar of merriment. Some one closed the door
from within. The girl was staring toward the end of the hall, and
shuddering.

"That is the way it has been--growing worse and worse since Nisikoos
died," she said. "In there the white men who come down from the north,
drink, and gamble, and quarrel. They are always quarrelling. This room
is ours--Nisikoos' and mine." She touched with her hand a door near
which they were standing. Then she pointed to another. There were half a
dozen doors up and down the hall. "And that is Hauck's."

He threw off his pack, placed it on the floor, with his rifle across it.
When he straightened, the girl was listening at the door of Hauck's
room. Beckon