hat you
mean?"

Seconds passed.

"I have spoken," said a low voice. "I do not care to discuss the matter
further."

"But I do care to discuss it," peremptorily. "As one of the family it is
my right, and I demand an answer."

Again the tiny roan was shaking an impatient head. It would not be long
until they were home now.

"Yes," answered the Indian.

"And that my uncle will permit it, gives his consent?" Again the
silence and again the low-voiced "Yes."

Over Craig's face, to his eyebrows and beyond, there swept a red flood,
that vanished and left him pale as the starlight about him.

"Well, he may; but by God I won't!" he blazed. "As sure as I live, and
if she's as plain as a hag, so long as her skin is white, you'll not
marry her. If it's the last act of my life, I'll prevent you!"

The voice of the white man was still, but his heart was not. Beat, beat,
beat it went until he could scarcely breathe, until the hot blood fairly
roared in his arteries, in his ears. Not until the challenge was spoken
did he realise to the full what he had done, that inevitable as time
there would be a reckoning. Now in a perfect inundation, the knowledge
came over him, and unconsciously he braced himself, awaited the move.
Yet for long, eternally long it seemed to him, there was none. The swift
reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning's store,
the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture. Adding thereto,
recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished, returned now
irresistibly, cumulatively. Struggle as he might against the feeling, a
terror of this motionless human at his side grew upon him; a blind,
unreasoning, primitive terror. But one impulse possessed him: to be
away, to escape the outburst he instinctively knew was but delayed. In
an abandon he leaned far forward over his saddle, the rowel of his spur
dug viciously into his horse's flank. There was a deep-chested groan
from the surprised beast, a forward leap--then a sudden jarring halt.
As by magic, the reins left his hand, were transferred to another hand.

"Don't," said a voice. "It will not help matters any to do that. It will
only make them worse." The two horses, obeying the same hand, stopped
there on the prairie. The riders were face to face. "I have tried to
prevent this, for the sake of the future, I have tried; but you have
made an understanding between us inevitable, and therefore it may as
well be now." The voice halted