s voice rumbled
like an echo through the aisles of the forest. "We are not on the trail
of men, but of beasts and murderers. The Law that is three hundred
miles away has let them live in our midst. It has let them kill. It
said nothing when they stole Red Fawn from her father's tepee and
ravaged her to death. It has said: 'Give us proof that Thoreau killed
Reville, and that his wife did not die a natural death.' We are our own
law. In these forests we are masters. And yet with this brothel at our
doors we are not safe, our wives and daughters are within the reach of
monsters. To-day it is my daughter--her husband's wife. To-morrow it
may be yours. There can be no mercy. We must kill--kill and burn! Am I
right, men?"

This time it was not a murmur but a low thunder of voice that answered.
Philip and Jean forged ahead to his side. Shoulder to shoulder they led
the way.

From the camp at the Forks it was eighteen miles to the Devil's Nest,
where hung on the edge of a chasm the log buildings that sheltered Lang
and his crew. To these men of the trails those eighteen miles meant
nothing. White-bearded Janesse's trapline was sixty miles long, and he
covered it in two days, stripping his pelts as he went. Renault had run
sixty miles with his dogs between daybreak and dusk, and "Mad" Joe Horn
had come down one hundred and eighty miles from the North in five days.
These were not records. They were the average. Those who followed the
master of Adare were thin-legged, small-footed, narrow-waisted--but
their sinews were like rawhide, and their lungs filled chests that were
deep and wide.

With the break of day the wind fell, the sky cleared, and it grew
colder. In silence John Adare, Jean, and Philip broke the trail. In
silence followed close behind them the Missioner with his smooth-bore.
In silence followed the French and half-breeds and Crees. Now and then
came the sharp clink of steel as rifle barrel struck rifle barrel.
Voices were low, monosyllabic; breaths were deep, the throbbing of
hearts like that of engines. Here were friends who were meeting for the
first time in months, yet they spoke no word of each other, of the
fortunes of the "line," of wives or children. There was but one thought
in their brains, pumping the blood through their veins, setting their
dark faces in lines of iron, filling their eyes with the feverish fires
of excitement. Yet this excitement, the tremendous passion that was
working in them, found n