s stiff and tense for the spring; Olo was yet
creeping into striking distance.

Grasping two blazing sticks by the charred ends, she faced the brutes.
The one held back, but Bash sprang, and she met him in mid-air with
the flaming weapon. There were sharp yelps of pain and swift odors of
burning hair and flesh as he rolled in the dirt and the woman ground
the fiery embers into his mouth. Snapping wildly, he flung himself
sidewise out of her reach and in a frenzy of fear scrambled for
safety. Olo, on the other side, had begun his retreat, when Li Wan
reminded him of her primacy by hurling a heavy stick of wood into his
ribs. Then the pair retreated under a rain of firewood, and on the
edge of the camp fell to licking their wounds and whimpering by turns
and snarling.

Li Wan blew the ashes off the meat and sat down again. Her heart had
not gone up a beat, and the incident was already old, for this was
the routine of life. Canim had not stirred during the disorder, but
instead had set up a lusty snoring.

"Come, Canim!" she called. "The heat of the day is gone, and the trail
waits for our feet."

The squirrel-skin robe was agitated and cast aside by a brown arm.
Then the man's eyelids fluttered and drooped again.

"His pack is heavy," she thought, "and he is tired with the work of
the morning."

A mosquito stung her on the neck, and she daubed the unprotected spot
with wet clay from a ball she had convenient to hand. All morning,
toiling up the divide and enveloped in a cloud of the pests, the man
and woman had plastered themselves with the sticky mud, which, drying
in the sun, covered their faces with masks of clay. These masks,
broken in divers places by the movement of the facial muscles, had
constantly to be renewed, so that the deposit was irregular of depth
and peculiar of aspect.

Li Wan shook Canim gently but with persistence till he roused and
sat up. His first glance was to the sun, and after consulting the
celestial timepiece he hunched over to the fire and fell-to ravenously
on the meat. He was a large Indian fully six feet in height,
deep-chested and heavy-muscled, and his eyes were keener and vested
with greater mental vigor than the average of his kind. The lines of
will had marked his face deeply, and this, coupled with a sternness
and primitiveness, advertised a native indomitability, unswerving of
purpose, and prone, when thwarted, to sullen cruelty.

"To-morrow, Li Wan, we shall feast." He su