final arbiter of
things--a voice dead to visible hope, yet behind which there trembled a
thing that made Philip face him with a new fire in his eyes.

"Why to-morrow or the next day?" he demanded. "Why shroud me in this
damnable mystery any longer, Jean? If there is fighting to be done, let
me fight!"

Jean's hollowed cheeks took on a flush.

"I would give my life if we two could go out and fight--as I want to
fight," he said in a low, tense voice, "It would be worth your life and
mine--that fight. It would be glorious. But I am a Catholic, M'sieur. I
am a Catholic of the wilderness. And I have taken the most binding oath
in the world. I have sworn by the sweet soul of my dead Iowaka to do
only as Josephine tells me to do in this. Over her grave I swore that,
with Josephine kneeling at my side. I have prayed that my Iowaka might
come to me and tell me if I am right. But in this her voice has been
silent. I have prayed Josephine to free me from my oath, and she has
refused. I am afraid. I dare reveal nothing. I cannot act as I want to
act. But to-night--"

His voice sank to a whisper. His fingers gripped deep into the flesh of
Philip's hand.

"To-night may mean--something," he went on, his voice filled with an
excitement strange to him. "The fight is coming, M'sieur. We cannot
much longer evade what we have been trying to evade! It is coming. And
then, shoulder to shoulder, we will fight!"

"And until then, I must wait?"

"Yes, you must wait, M'sieur."

Jean freed his hand and sat down in one of the chairs near the table.
His eyes turned toward the window.

"You need not fear another shot, M'sieur," he said quietly. "The man
who fired that will not fire again."

"You killed him?"

Jean bowed his head without replying. The movement was neither of
affirmation nor denial:

"He will not fire again."

"It was more than one against one," persisted Philip. "Does your oath
compel you to keep silent about that, too?"

There was a note of irritation in his voice which was almost a
challenge to Jean. It did not prick the half-breed. He looked at Philip
a moment before he replied:

"You are an unusual man, M'sieur," he said at last, as though he had
been carefully measuring his words. "We have known each other only a
few days, and yet it seems a long time. I had my suspicions of you back
there. I thought it was Josephine's beauty you were after, and I have
stood ready to kill you if I saw in you what I feared.