o white men or Indians. He did not see the blaze in their eyes,
the joyous trembling of their bodies, their silent, savage exultation in
the spectacle.

He was looking at the cage.

It was 20 feet square--built of small trees almost a foot in diameter,
with 18-inch spaces between--and out of it came a sickening, grinding
smash of jaws. The two beasts were down, a ton of flesh and bone, in
what seemed to him to be a death embrace. For a moment he could not tell
which was Tara and which was Brokaw's grizzly. They separated in that
same breath, gained their feet, and stood facing each other. They must
have been fighting for some minutes. Tara's jaws were foaming with blood
and out of the throat of Brokaw's bear there rolled a rumbling, snarling
roar that was like the deep-chested bellow of an angry bull. With that
roar they came together again, Tara waiting stolidly and with panting
sides for the rush of his enemy. It was hard for David to see what was
happening in that twisting contortion of huge bodies, but as they rolled
heavily to one side he saw a great red splash of blood where they had
lain. It looked as if some one had poured it there out of a pail.

Suddenly a hand fell on his shoulder. He looked round. Brokaw was
leering at him.

"Great scrap, eh?"

There was a look in his red face that revealed the pitiless savagery of
a cat. David's clenched hand was as hard as iron and his brain was
filled with a wild desire to strike. He fought to hold himself in.

"Where is--the Girl?" he demanded.

Brokaw's face revealed his hatred now, the taunting triumph of his power
over this man who was a spy. He bared his yellow teeth in an exultant
grin.

"Tricked her," he snarled. "Tricked her--like you tricked me! Got the
Indian woman to steal her clothes, an' she's up there in her
room--alone--_an' naked_! An' she won't have any clothes until I say so,
for she's mine--body and soul...."

David's clenched hand shot out, and in his blow was not alone the
cumulated force of all his years of training but also of the one great
impulse he had ever had to kill. In that instant he wanted to strike a
man dead--a red-visaged monster, a fiend; and his blow sent Brokaw's
huge body reeling backward, his head twisted as if his neck had been
broken. He had not time to see what happened after that blow. He did not
see Brokaw fall. A piercing interruption--a scream that startled every
drop of blood in his body--turned him toward the cag