n trade. No more could
they set out to wage war upon their rivals with powder and ball. Keen
wit, swift dogs, and the politics of barter had taken the place of
deadlier things. LE FACTEUR could no longer slay or command that others
be slain. A mightier hand than his now ruled the destinies of the
northern people--the hand of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.

It was this thought, the thought that Law and one of the powerful
forces of the wilderness had met in this cabin of the big bateau, that
came to Carrigan as he drew himself still higher against his pillow. A
greater thrill possessed him than the thrill of his hunt for Black
Roger Audemard. Black Roger was a murderer, a wholesale murderer and a
fiend, a Moloch for whom there could be no pity. Of all men the Law
wanted Black Roger most, and he, David Carrigan, was the chosen one to
consummate its desire. Yet in spite of that he felt upon him the
strange unrest of a greater adventure than the quest for Black Roger.
It was like an impending thing that could not be seen, urging him,
rousing his faculties from the slough into which they had fallen
because of his wound and sickness. It was, after all, the most vital of
all things, a matter of his own life. Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain had
tried to kill him deliberately, with malice and intent. That she had
saved him afterward only added to the necessity of an explanation, and
he was determined that he would have that explanation and settle the
present matter before he allowed another thought of Black Roger to
enter his head.

This resolution reiterated itself in his mind as the machine-like voice
of duty. He was not thinking of the Law, and yet the consciousness of
his accountability to that Law kept repeating itself. In the very face
of it Carrigan knew that something besides the moral obligation of the
thing was urging him, something that was becoming deeply and
dangerously personal. At least--he tried to think of it as dangerous.
And that danger was his unbecoming interest in the girl herself. It was
an interest distinctly removed from any ethical code that might have
governed him in his experience with Carmin Fanchet, for instance.
Comparatively, if they had stood together, Carmin would have been the
lovelier. But he would have looked longer at Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain.

He conceded the point, smiling a bit grimly as he continued to study
that part of the cabin which he could see from his pillow. He had lost
intere