she work in the late hours when
revelry had worked its own undoing. Now she would learn the camp and the
safest side of it, the place of the captives and a way of escape. With
thought and eager plan she pushed from her mind the look of McElroy's
body.

She would--

In the darkness she stopped with inheld breath. Her groping foot had
touched an object, a soft object that stirred and rolled over on its
side and presently sat up. So near it was that she could feel the
movements of its garments, which fact told her it was human.

Then, without warning, a hand shot out and caught her knee in a grip of
steel. With all her strength the girl tore away, leaping backward. But a
tangle of vines snatched at her foot and she fell crashing forward with
a figure prone upon her, and in the darkness she fought silently for
life.

As in the camp of the Nakonkirhirinons the thin veneer had slipped away,
so now in the forest its heavier counterpart fell from this woman and
she turned savage as the thing with which she fought.

Of superb stature and strength, she was a match for the man, and two
pairs of hands searched for a throat, two bodies strained and struggled
for the mastery. It seemed that the noise of the conflict, the snapping
of dry dead wood, the swish and crash of leafy brush, must draw
attention from the camp, but it was too engrossed in its own mad
hilarity to heed so small a sound.

Over and over strained the strangely-met foes in silence, and presently
they struggled up, barehanded, face to face, for Maren had dropped her
rifle when she fell. As they whirled into a more open space the light
from the fire struck through the foliage and glistened on a tuft of
white hair on the swarthy temple before her.

"Hola! DesCaut!" gasped the girl.

"Oho! I win!"

For, with the sudden illumination, she forgot for a moment the present
and DesCaut; for it was the turncoat awaked from a drunken sleep
apart, who pushed swiftly forward, took the moment's advantage of her
hesitation, and pinioned her arms to her sides.

She might still have had a chance, for she was as strong as he, but that
he raised his voice in a call for help.

Thus it was that, in less time than the telling, Maren Le Moyne,
rescuer, leader of the long trail, was dragged, fast bound by a dozen
gripping hands, into the firelit space in the great circle, a captive
under the eyes of the man she had come to save.

Stumbling, jerked this way and that, one white