ill closer, and as he crushed his face to hers he felt
the warm, sweet caress of her lips, and the thrilling pressure of her
hands, at his blood-stained cheeks. A sound from behind made him turn
his head, and fifty feet away he saw the big grizzly ambling cumbrously
from the cabin. They could hear him growling as he stood in the
sunshine, his head swinging slowly from side to side like a huge
pendulum--in his throat the last echoing of that ferocious rage and
hate that had destroyed their enemies. And in the same moment Baree
stood in the doorway, his lips drawn back and his fangs gleaming, as if
he expected other enemies to face him.

Quickly David led Marge beyond the boulder from behind which he had
opened the fight, and drew her down with him into a soft carpet of
grass, thick with the blue of wild violets, with the big rock shutting
out the cabin from their vision.

"Rest here, little comrade," he said, his voice low and trembling with
his worship of her, his hands stroking back her wonderful hair. "I must
return to the cabin. Then--we will go."

"Go!"

She repeated the word in the strangest, softest whisper he had ever
heard, as if in it all at once she saw the sun and stars, the day and
night, of her whole life. She looked from his face down into the valley,
and into his face again.

"We--will go," she repeated, as he rose to his feet.

She shivered when he left her, shuddered with a terrible little cry
which she tried to choke back even as she visioned the first glow of
that wonderful new life that was dawning for her. David knew why. He
left her without looking down into her eyes again, anxious to have these
last terrible minutes over. At the open door of the cabin he hesitated,
a little sick at what he knew he would see. And yet, after all, it was
no worse than it should be; it was justice. He told himself this as he
stepped inside.

He tried not to look too closely, but the sight, after a moment,
fascinated him. If it had not been for the difference in their size he
could not have told which was Hauck and which was Brokaw, for even on
Hauck, Tara had vented his rage after Baree had killed him. Neither bore
very much the semblance of a man just now--it seemed incredible that
claw and fang could have worked such destruction, and he went suddenly
back to the door to see that the Girl was not following him. Then he
looked again. Henry lay at his feet across the fallen saplings of the
battered door, his h