d as man's work was completely
forgotten. He remembered only the gentle dusky creature who needed his
man's support.

"You needn't say a thing, Uncle Steve," the youngster cried. "I was
crazy to go. I'm that way still. But--well, I just can't stand for
An-ina being left. She's more than my second mother. She's the only
mother I remember."

Steve nodded.

"I guessed you'd feel that way boy, and--I'm glad."

CHAPTER IV

KEEKO

Beyond the river, the trees came down to the water's edge, where roots
lay bare to the lap of the stream which frothed about them. They
shadowed the wide waters with a reflection of their own dark mystery.
They helped to close in the world about old Fort Duggan, deepening the
gloom of its aged walls, and serving to aggravate the shadow of
superstition with which the native mind surrounded it.

The hills rose up in every direction. They were clothed with forests
whose silence only yielded to crude sounds possessing no visible source.
The river seemed to drive its way through invisible passes. It appeared
out of a barrier of woodlands, backed by a rampart of seemingly
impassable hills, and vanished again in a similar opposite direction.
Between these points it lay there, a broad, sluggish stretch of water
upon which the old fort looked down from the rising foreshore.

The benighted instincts of the Shaunekuks know no half measure. Fort
Duggan to them was the gateway of Unaga, which was the home of all Evil
Spirits. So they looked upon the fort without favour, and left it
severely alone.

But now all that was changed. Fort Duggan was no longer silent, still,
the shadowed abode of evil spirits. Crazy white folks had come and taken
possession of it. They had dared the wrath of the Evil One, and the old
place rang with the echo of many voices.

For awhile these primitive folk had looked on in silence. They wondered.
They thought of the Evil One and waited for the blow to fall. But as the
weeks and months went by without the looked-for retribution they began
to take heart and give rein to a curiosity they could no longer resist.
Who were these folk? Why had they come? But most important of all, what
had they brought with them?

They found a white man and two white women. They found several dusky
creatures like themselves, only of different build. Oh, yes, they were
Indians, Northern Indians, but they were foreigners. They were slim,
tough creatures who gazed in silent contempt upon t