se talk she ever listened to. We're here a thousand miles from
anywhere, which is the sort of thing only a crazy woman like you could
ever for--Hello! What in hell d'you want?"

Nicol sat up. In a moment his entire manner changed. He scowled
threateningly as he eyed the dusky figure in the doorway. It was the
squaw Lu-cana whose moccasined feet had given out no sound as she
approached.

"White feller man come by river," she said, in the soft, hushed voice of
her race, while her eyes refused to face the scowl of the white man.

"White man? What the hell! Who the devil is he?"

Nicol had risen to his feet, his manner brutally threatening. The squaw
feared him, as did all the Indians. But in the presence of the sick
white woman she found a measure of courage.

"Him wait. Him say, 'Boss Nicol, yes?'" she replied, and stood waiting
with her dark eyes fixed upon the woman she served.

But the sick woman gave no sign. Her poor troubled brain was staggered
by the hideous threat which she had been forced to listen to. She lay
there like a corpse prepared for burial, utterly unconcerned for that
which was passing.

Just for a moment the man hesitated. He glanced back at the bed as
though regretful at being dragged from his torture of the defenceless
woman lying there. Then with a shrug, he moved across the room, and,
thrusting the squaw aside, hurried out to meet his unexpected visitor.

* * * * *

It was an utterly different man who shook the visitor by the hand. Nicol
was smiling with a pleasant amiability. And no man could better express
cordiality than he.

"It's 'Tough' Alroy," he said, as though that individual were the only
person in the world he wanted to see. "Well, well," he went on heartily.
"My head's just bursting with pleasure and surprise. Say, I often
remember the days--and nights--in Seal Bay. Gee! This brings back times,
eh? Is it just a trip or?----"

"Business."

The man grinned. He was more than well named. His black eyes were full
of good-humoured deviltry. He was a type, in his picturesque buckskin,
familiar enough among the trail men of the Northland. Tough, as his
nickname suggested, hard, unscrupulous, ready for anything that the gods
of fortune passed down to him, nothing concerned, nothing mattered so
that he gathered enough for a red time at his journey's end.

"Business?"

"Yep. Lorson Harris. It's big. Guess I've a brief along with me that's
to be set