ason came back into his eyes. Sheba was standing
before him, his rifle in her hand. She had struck him with the butt of
it.

"Don't touch him! Don't you dare touch him!" she challenged.

He looked at her long, then let his eyes fall to the battered face of
his enemy. Drunkenly he got to his feet and leaned against a willow.
His forces were spent, his muscles weighted as with lead. But it was not
this alone that made his breath come short and raggedly.

Sheba had flung herself down beside her lover. She had caught him
tightly in her arms so that his disfigured face lay against her warm
bosom. In the eyes lifted to those of the mine-owner was an
unconquerable defiance.

"He's mine--mine, you murderer," she panted fiercely. "If you kill him,
you must kill me first."

The man she had once promised to marry was looking at a different woman
from the girl he had known. The soft, shy youth of her was gone. She was
a forest mother of the wilds ready to fight for her young, a wife ready
to go to the stake for the husband of her choice. An emotion primitive
and poignant had transformed her.

His eyes burned at her the question his parched lips and throat could
scarcely utter. "So you ... love him?"

But though it was in form a question he knew already the answer. For the
first time in his life he began to taste the bitterness of defeat.
Always he had won what he coveted by brutal force or his stark will. But
it was beyond him to compel the love of a girl who had given her heart
to another.

"Yes," she answered.

Her hair in two thick braids was flung across her shoulders, her dark
head thrown back proudly from the rounded throat.

Macdonald smiled, but there was no mirth in his savage eyes. "Do you
know what I want with him--why I have come to get him?"

"No."

"I've come to take him back to Kusiak to be hanged because he murdered
Milton, the bank cashier."

The eyes of the woman blazed at him. "Are you mad?"

"It's the truth." Macdonald's voice was curt and harsh. "He and Holt
were robbing the bank when Milton came back from the dance at the club.
The cowards shot down the old man like a dog. They'll hang for it if it
costs me my last penny, so help me God."

"You say it's the truth," she retorted scornfully. "Do you think I don't
know you now--how you twist and distort facts to suit your ends? How
long is it since your jackal had him arrested for assaulting you--when
Wally Selfridge knew--and you knew--that h