He would wake
presently out of a nightmare. Yet, as surely as he quivered there, he
felt the imminence of a great moment--a lightning flash--a
thunderbolt--a balance struck.

Colter attended to the forgotten cigarette. He rolled it, lighted it,
all the time with lowered, pondering head, and when he had puffed a
cloud of smoke he suddenly looked up with face as hard as flint, eyes
as fiery as molten steel.

"Wal, Ellen--how aboot Jean Isbel--our half-breed Nez Perce friend--who
was shore seen handlin' y'u familiar?" he drawled.

Ellen Jorth quivered as under a lash, and her brown face turned a dusty
scarlet, that slowly receding left her pale.

"Damn y'u, Jim Colter!" she burst out, furiously. "I wish Jean Isbel
would jump in that door--or down out of that loft! ... He killed
Greaves for defiling my name! ... He'd kill Y'U for your dirty
insult.... And I'd like to watch him do it.... Y'u cold-blooded Texan!
Y'u thieving rustler! Y'u liar! ... Y'u lied aboot my father's death.
And I know why. Y'u stole my father's gold.... An' now y'u want
me--y'u expect me to fall into your arms.... My Heaven! cain't y'u tell
a decent woman? Was your mother decent? Was your sister decent? ...
Bah! I'm appealing to deafness. But y'u'll HEAH this, Jim Colter! ...
I'm not what yu think I am! I'm not the--the damned hussy y'u liars
have made me out.... I'm a Jorth, alas! I've no home, no relatives, no
friends! I've been forced to live my life with rustlers--vile men like
y'u an' Daggs an' the rest of your like.... But I've been good! Do y'u
heah that? ... I AM good--so help me God, y'u an' all your rottenness
cain't make me bad!"

Colter lounged to his tall height and the laxity of the man vanished.

Vanished also was Jean Isbel's suspended icy dread, the cold clogging
of his fevered mind--vanished in a white, living, leaping flame.

Silently he drew his knife and lay there watching with the eyes of a
wildcat. The instant Colter stepped far enough over toward the edge of
the loft Jean meant to bound erect and plunge down upon him. But Jean
could wait now. Colter had a gun at his hip. He must never have a
chance to draw it.

"Ahuh! So y'u wish Jean Isbel would hop in heah, do y'u?" queried
Colter. "Wal, if I had any pity on y'u, that's done for it."

A sweep of his long arm, so swift Ellen had no time to move, brought
his hand in clutching contact with her. And the force of it flung her
half across the cabin room,