Too square! She walked away from him a little way, all her mind aflame
with his suggestions. He had taken to drink and dissipation because of
some woman. Was it the woman whose name she had heard last night? The key
to the thing puzzling her had been dropped almost at her feet, yet she
feared to pick it up. No teaching she had ever received told her it was
unprincipled to steal through another the confidence he himself had not
chosen to give her. But some instinct of justice kept her from further
question.

She knew the type of fellow who was rigging up the canoe, a light-headed,
assuming specimen, who had not yet learned to keep a still tongue in his
head, but he did not impress her as being a deliberate liar. Then, all at
once, she realized who he must be, and turned back. There was no harm in
asking that, at any rate.

"You are the man whom Overton sent to put Harris to bed last night, are
you not?" she asked.

He nodded, cheerfully.

"And your name is Jake Emmons, of the Spokane country?"

"Thet's who," he assented; "that's where I came across Lottie Snyder,
Overton's wife, you know. I was running a little stage there for a
manager, and she--"

"I am not asking you about--about Mr. Overton's affairs," she said, and
she sat down, white and dizzy, on the overturned canoe. "And he might not
like it if he knew you were talking so free. Don't do it again."

"All right," he agreed. "I won't. No one here seems to know about the bad
break he made over there; but, Lord! there was excuse enough. She is one
of those women that look just like a little helpless baby; and that caught
Overton. Young, you know. But I won't whisper her name in camp again, for
it is hard on the old man. But, as you are partners, I guessed you must
know."

"Yes," she said, faintly; "but don't talk, don't--"

"Say! You are sick, ain't you?" he demanded, as her voice dropped to a
whisper. "Say! Look here, Miss Rivers! Great snakes! She's fainted!"

When she opened her eyes again, the rough roof of her cabin was above
her, instead of the blue sky. The women folks were using the camp
restorative--whisky--on her to such good purpose that her hands and face
and hair were redolent of it, and the amount she had been forced to
swallow was strangling her.

The face she saw first was that of Max--Max, distressed and anxious, and
even a little pale at sight of her death-like face.

She turned to him as to a haven of refuge from the storm of emotio