ow this white man?"

"I dunno. I heard--mind you I dunno what there is in it--that Blake
French is the man. He's dirty enough. But I dunno's the Injuns know it.
I seen old Paul Sam. He wasn't talkin'. Just sittin' starin' straight
ahead. And the klootch lyin' on her bed alongside him where they'd put
her down. Ugh! Some of 'em wanted to send the doc out. He makes reports
of deaths and such to the government, and then he's coroner. So I
come."

The event touched Angus deeply. He had known the dead girl all his life.
She was, as Rennie said, a notch or two above the ordinary klootch. Paul
Sam, too, was a good Indian, a friend of his and of his father's, so far
as the white man who knows the Indian admits him to friendship. It would
be a heavy blow for the old man. But unless some of the young bucks took
the law into their own hands it was unlikely that the man responsible
for the tragedy--Blake French or another--would suffer at all.

It was long after dark when the judge drove in, and Angus waiting at the
livery stable, greeted him.

"How's McLatchie?" he asked. The judge, with emphasis, consigned
McLatchie to torment.

"A bellyache!" he exclaimed, "and he thought he was going to die. I
wanted Wilkes to cut him open, just as a lesson. And will you believe
me, the damned Scotch--I beg your pardon, Angus, I mean the damned
lowlander--when the fear of God produced by the fear of death left his
rotten heart with the pain from his equally rotten stomach, refused to
make his will. I made him do it, though--and pay for it. Well, you got
my note. Come up to the office, where we can talk."

But when he had lit a couple of lamps which illuminated his office and
turned to his desk he stopped short.

"Somebody's been in here," he said. "Things are not as I left them." He
drew out the drawers of his desk. "Aha!" he exclaimed, for the papers
they held had evidently been taken out and jammed back in disorder. "Now
what misguided idiot thought a law office worth robbing? I wonder,
now--By the Lord! but I believe that's it!"

"What?"

"Why somebody's been after _your_ documents," the judge replied. "O-ho,
Braden, me buck! You must think I'm a fool!"

"You mean you think Braden was trying to get back the original deeds?"

"And something else. It's a poor tribute he pays to my intelligence,
thinking I'd leave such papers lying at the mercy of a flimsy door lock.
People think I am careless, old-fashioned, because they can't see