her day
when you could? Your tracks would have been covered. As it is, I may
later have to uncover some tracks for you."

"I preferred it the other way," he remarked, still smiling his
inscrutable smile.

"You surely had no scruples about it."

"Not in the least. I'd as soon have killed you as to have taken a drink
of water. But I simply love to play any kind of game that tests me,
tries me, puts me to my utmost mettle. I played that game in my own
way."

"I was never very subtle," I said to him simply.

"No, on the contrary, you are rather dull. I dared not kill you--it
would have been a mistake in the game. It would have cost me her
sympathy at once. Since I did not, and since, therefore, you owe me
something for that fact, what do you say about it yourself, my friend?"

I thought for a long time, my head between my hands, before I answered
him. "That I shall pay you some day Orme, but not in any such way as you
suggest."

"Then it is to be war?" he asked, quietly.

I shrugged my shoulders. "You heard me."

"Very well!" he replied, calmly, after a while. "But listen. I don't
forget. If I do not have my pay voluntarily in the way I ask, I shall
some day collect it in my own fashion."

"As you like. But we Cowles men borrow no fears very far in advance."

Orme rose and stood beside me, his slender figure resembling less that
of a man than of some fierce creature, animated by some uncanny spirit,
whose motives did not parallel those of human beings. "Then, Mr. Cowles,
you do not care to go back down the valley, and to return to the girl in
Virginia?"

"You are a coward to make any such request."

His long white teeth showed as he answered. "Very well," he said. "It is
the game. Let the best man win. Shall it then be war?"

"Let the best man win," I answered. "It is war."

We both smiled, each into the other's face.

CHAPTER XXIV

FORSAKING ALL OTHERS

When finally our entire party had been gotten across the Platte, and we
had resumed our westward journey, the routine of travel was, for the
time, broken, and our line of march became somewhat scattered across the
low, hilly country to which we presently came. For my own part, our
progress seemed too slow, and mounting my horse, I pushed on in advance
of the column, careless of what risk this might mean in an Indian
country. I wished to be alone; and yet I wished to be not alone. I hoped
that might occur which presently actually did happen.