her head. Her self-invited guest was Whaley.

Jessie rose. "What do you want?"

She was startled at the man's silent entry, ready to be alarmed if
necessary, but not yet afraid. It was as though her thoughts waited
for the cue he would presently give. Some instinct for safety made her
cautious. She did not tell the free trader that her father and Fergus
were from home.

He looked at her, appraisingly, from head to foot, in such a way that
she felt his gaze had stripped her.

"You know what I want. You know what I'm going to get ... some day,"
he purred in his slow, feline way.

She pushed from her mind a growing apprehension.

"Father and Fergus--if you want them--"

"Have I said I wanted them?" he asked. "They're out in the woods
trappin'. I'm not lookin' for them. The two of us'll be company for
each other."

"Go," she said, anger flaring at his insolence. "Go. You've no
business here."

"I'm not here for business, but for pleasure, my dear."

The cold, fishy eyes in his white face gloated. Suddenly she wanted to
scream and pushed back the desire scornfully. If she did, nobody would
hear her. This had to be fought out one to one.

"Why didn't you knock?" she demanded.

"We'll say I did and that you didn't hear me," he answered suavely.
"What's it matter among friends anyhow?"

"What do you want?" By sheer will power she kept her voice low.

"Your mother's over at the house. I dropped in to say she'll probably
stay all night."

"Is your wife worse?"

He lifted the black brows that contrasted so sharply with the pallor
of the face. "Really you get ahead of me, my dear. I don't recall ever
getting married."

"That's a hateful thing to say," she flamed, and bit her lower lip
with small white teeth to keep from telling the squaw-man what she
thought of him. The Cree girl he had taken to wife was going down
into the Valley of the Shadow to bear him a child while he callously
repudiated her.

He opened his fur coat and came to the fireplace. "I can say nicer
things--to the right girl," he said, and looked meaningly at her.

"I'll have to go get Susie Lemoine to stay with me," Jessie said
hurriedly. "I didn't know Mother wasn't coming home."

She made a move toward a fur lying across the back of a chair.

He laid a hand upon her arm. "What's your rush? What are you dodgin'
for, girl? I'm good as Susie to keep the goblins from gettin you."

"Don't touch me." Her eyes sparked fire.

"You're mighty