u that. To-morrow we will leave the Nest openly--and with Hauck's and
Brokaw's permission. But should they find you here now--in my room--I am
quite sure we should have immediate trouble on our hands. I've a great
deal to tell you--much that will make you glad, but I half expect
another visit from Hauck, and you must hurry to your room."

He opened the door slightly, and listened.

"Good-night," he whispered, putting a hand for an instant to her hair.

"Good night, _Sakewawin_."

She hesitated for just a moment at the doors and then, with the faintest
sobbing breath, was gone. What wonderful eyes she had! How they had
looked at him in that last moment! David's fingers were trembling a
little as he locked his door. There was a small mirror on the table and
he held it up to look at himself. He regarded his reflection with grim
amusement. He was not beautiful. The scrub of blond beard on his face
gave him rather an outlawish appearance. And the gray hair over his
temples had grown quite conspicuous of late, quite conspicuous indeed.
Heredity? Perhaps--but it was confoundedly remindful of the fact that he
was thirty-eight!

He went to bed, after placing the table against the door, and his
automatic under his pillow--absurd and unnecessary details of caution,
he assured himself. And while Marge O'Doone sat awake close to the door
of her room all night, with a little rifle that had belonged to Nisikoos
across her lap, David slept soundly in the amazing confidence and
philosophy of that perilous age--thirty-eight!

CHAPTER XXIII

A series of sounds that came to him at first like the booming of distant
cannon roused David from his slumber. He awoke to find broad day in his
room and a knocking at his door. He began to dress, calling out that he
would open it in a moment, and was careful to place the automatic in his
pocket before he lifted the table without a sound to its former position
in the room. When he flung open the door he was surprised to find Brokaw
standing there instead of Hauck. It was not the Brokaw of last night. A
few hours had produced a remarkable change in the man. One would not
have thought that he had been recently drunk. He was grinning and
holding out one of his huge hands as he looked into David's face.

"Morning, Raine," he greeted affably. "Hauck sent me to wake you up for
the fun. You've got just time to swallow your breakfast before we put on
the big scrap--the scrap I told you about l