uess you're right. It's Lorson all right. It's too good to let slip.
Well?"

"Too good? Well, I'd smile. Too good? Gee!" Nicol was wholly deceived as
Keeko intended him to be. He turned abruptly away to the counter where
the bottle of rye whisky stood and helped himself to a full measure of
it. He drank it down at a gulp. He had won the day. He had swept aside
the antagonism he had felt threatened his ultimate purposes. He was on
the high road to achieving all he had promised the dead mother in her
tortured moments. He felt that Keeko was dazzled. He was buying her as
he believed he could buy any woman. The rest would be easy. It only
needed a little patience, a little care. So he drank without fear of the
potent spirit he loved.

He staggered back to the stove and stood swaying beside the girl. And he
rested one powerful hand on her buckskin-clad shoulder while his lewd
fingers moved, gently caressing the soft flesh underneath. A wild,
panicky desire set Keeko half mad to fling his filthy hand from its
contact. But she resisted the impulse. She knew she dared not risk it in
his present mood and condition. Filled with unutterable loathing she
submitted to it.

"Well?" she demanded, while she forced the smile to her eyes again.

The man leered down at her out of his inflamed eyes. He shook his head
with maudlin indulgence.

"You don't need to know any more," he said thickly. "What's the use?
You're a gal with clean notions. Guess my hands are used to the dirty
sort of work Lorson needs."

"Then it is Lorson?"

"Lorson? Sure it's Lorson. Is there any other dirty swine in the North
ready to buy the lives of men?"

"Life?"

"Oh, hell! Yes," the man cried, with a gesture of tolerant impatience.
"Of course it's life. Lorson! A hundred thousand dollars! It couldn't be
for a thing less than life. It don't rattle me any."

Suddenly he flung caution to the winds. His passions were aflame, and
his bemused brain was incapable of reckoning cost.

"It's some folks up north," he went on. "They've a secret trade. Lorson
needs that trade. He's had 'em trailed, but they're wise, and they've
fooled him all the time. He's crazy about it, and----"

Keeko had risen abruptly from her seat. The movement had rid her of
those hideously searching fingers. She could stand them no longer. She
stood up with one foot resting on the bench she had vacated, tilting it,
and holding it balanced. Her smile had gone, but she was searching the