e fork he was protected on either side from the
hammering blows of the caroming timber. All about him the air was
filled with flying logs which ripped the bark from each other's sides,
while the shock and batter of the wild stampede threatened momentarily
to tear loose his grip.

It seemed to the desperate man that hours passed as he clung doggedly
to the huge trunk which trembled and shivered and plunged wildly at the
pounding impact, when suddenly it brought up against a half-submerged
rock, stopped dead, grated and jarred at the crash of following logs,
poised for an instant, and then slanted into deeper water, while up the
man's leg shot a twisting, wrenching pain, sickening--nerve-killing in
its intensity.

His grasp relaxed and his whole body went limp and lifeless as the big
log overrode the last rock barrier and was caught in the placid, slowly
revolving water of a shore eddy.

* * * * *

Half concealed by the naked tangle of underbrush on the verge of a low
bluff where the rock-ribbed rapid broke suddenly into smooth water, an
old Indian woman and a beautiful half-breed girl of twenty crouched
close, watching the logs plunge through the seething white-water.

The dark eyes of the girl shone with excitement, but this was no new
sight to the eyes of the older woman who in times past had watched
other drives on other rivers. As she looked her frown deepened and the
hundred little weather wrinkles in the tight-drawn smoke-darkened skin
showed thin and plain, like the crisscross cracks in old leather.

The shriveled lips pressed tight against the hard, snag-studded gums,
and in the narrow, lashless black eyes glowed the spark of undying
hate.

The sight of the rushing logs brought bitter memories. These were
things of the white man--and, among white men, only Lacombie was
good--and Lacombie was dead.

Young Lacombie, who came into the North with a song on his lips to work
for the great company whose word is law, and whose long arm is destiny.
Lacombie, who, in the long ago had won her, Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, the
daughter of Kas-ka-tan, the chief, who was called the most beautiful
maiden among all the tribes of the rivers.

The old crone drew her blanket about her and shuddered slightly as she
glanced from her own withered, clawlike hands, upon which dark veins
stood out like the cords of a freight bale, to the fresh beauty of the
young girl at her side who gazed in awed f