hings, just because Mister Steve seems to put the fear of
God into you. It's hastened the things I've had in my mind quite awhile.
That's all. We're going to beat it. We're quitting for up north. It was
my notion from the start. Only I weakened with your squeal about the
country. Well, your squeals are no account now. We got to save our
skins. I'm going to beat Mister Steve, and show you he's just the same
as most other folks who've got a grip on the game. We're making north
where, if he gets a notion to follow, he'll need to play the lone hand.
And Steve on a lone hand can't scare me five cents. Up there I'll meet
him. We won't need to live a gopher's life in a cellar. And when he
comes along, if he's the guts you reckon he has, I'll meet him, and kill
him as sure as Hell's waiting for him." The man's hot eyes were suddenly
turned on the distant child's cot, and he nodded at it. "It's that makes
me sick," he cried vehemently. "It's his!"

"She's mine!" Nita cried sharply. "And where I go she goes."

Nita read the man's mood with all the instinct of a mother. Three years
ago when she brought Coqueline into the world the infant claim upon her
had been loose enough. It was different now. Her woman's weakness and
discontent had yielded her a ready victim to the showy promises and good
looks of Hervey Garstaing. But the road they had had to travel since had
been by no means easy. It had been full of disillusionment for the silly
woman. They had lived in fear of the law, in fear of Steve, for over two
years. And the grind of it, for the pleasure-loving wife who had buoyed
herself with dreams of gaiety and delight which her life in the North
had denied her, had driven her back upon the elemental that was only
latent in her. Coqueline was her all now. Nita clung to her baby as the
one indestructible link with that purity of life which no woman, however
fallen, can ever wholly disregard, or forget. The child was a
sheet-anchor for all time. Whatever the future had in store, little
Coqueline was her child, born in wedlock, the pledge of her maiden
dreams.

"Tchah! She's his!" The man's restraint was giving before the brutal,
the criminal, that was the essence of him. "Why in hell should I feed
his brat? Why should I be burdened with it? Can't you see? We've got to
drag her wherever we go, delaying us, an unhallowed worry, and a darn
danger at all times. Cut it out. Pass her along to some blamed orphan
outfit. Leave her to the