u've got against you, three hundred red-coats like him."

"You tryin' to scare me?" demanded West sullenly.

"I'm trying to hammer some common sense into your head. Your chance
for a safe getaway rests on one thing. You've got to have friends in
the Lone Lands who'll hide you till you can slip out of the country.
Can you do that if the trappers--friends of McRae, nearly all of
'em--carry the word of what you did to this girl?"

"I'm gonna take her with me." West stuck doggedly to his idea. He knew
what he wanted. His life was forfeit, anyhow. He might as well go
through to a finish.

From where she sat before the great fire Jessie's whisper reached
Whaley. "Don't let him, please." It was an ineffective little wail
straight from the heart.

Whaley went on, as though he had not heard. "It's your deal, not mine.
I'm just telling you. Take this girl along, and your life's not worth
a plugged nickel."

"Hell's hinges! In two days she'll be crazy about me. Tha's how I am
with women."

"In two days she'll hate the ground you walk on, if she hasn't killed
herself or you by that time."

Waves of acute pain were pricking into Jessie's legs from the pink
toes to the calves. She was massaging them to restore circulation and
had to set her teeth to keep from crying.

But her subconscious mind was wholly on what passed between the men.
She knew that Whaley was trying to reestablish over the other the
mental dominance he had always held. It was a frail enough tenure, no
doubt, likely to be upset at any moment by vanity, suspicion, or heady
gusts of passion. In it, such as it was, lay a hope. Watching the
gambler's cold, impassive face, the stony look in the poker eyes, she
judged him tenacious and strong-willed. For reasons of his own he was
fighting her battle. He had no intention of letting West take her with
him.

Why? What was the motive in the back of his mind? She acquitted the
man of benevolence. If his wishes chanced to march with hers, it was
because of no altruism. He held a bitter grudge against Angus McRae
and incidentally against her for the humiliation of his defeat at the
hands of Morse. To satisfy this he had only to walk out of the house
and leave her to an ugly fate. Why did he not do this? Was he playing
a deep game of his own in which she was merely a pawn?

She turned the steaming duffles over on the mud hearth to dry the
other side. She drew back the moccasins and the leggings that the heat
might n