ing the horse after her. Seeking over the water,
she soon discovered the dugout lying at Garth's camp; whereupon she
clambered on the horse again. Presently she came crashing through the
bush.

This was a vastly different kind of antagonist, that slipped from the
horse and faced him with blazing eyes. Rina regarded the weapon in his
hands with as little respect as if it had been a pop-gun. But there was
nothing baffling about her now, she was just the furious woman common to
any shade of skin.

"Where is he?" she cried--and without waiting for any answer, emptied
the hissing ewer of her wrath over Garth's head. Her careful English was
drowned in a flood of guttural Cree--she fished it up only to curse him.

Garth received the impact in silence, for at first she was in no
condition to take in the answers she demanded. He suddenly realized, as
a man thinks of an interesting circumstance that does not concern him at
all, how beautiful she was; and the thought gave him greater patience.

Rina, bethinking herself at last that her Cree was wasted on him, went
back to English. "You wait!" she cried threateningly. "Bam-bye, her
bone, him grow together, and she all the time cry of pain! Then you
want me bad, and I not come! She will have fever and die!" She
passionately threw down the leaves she had brought and ground them under
her heel.

"Mabyn is unhurt!" Garth repeated patiently more than once. "I put him
on the island."

At last it seemed to reach her. "What for you do that?" she demanded.

"He is always trying to kill me," he said. "I have only put him where he
can do no harm!"

"I tak' him off!" she cried defiantly. "I mak' a raft! You can't stop
me!"

"I have seized all the food," said Garth quietly. "You will get none for
him unless he stays where he is."

Rina's anger stilled and concentrated. "You devil!" she hissed.

Garth turned away. "When you are yourself," he said coolly, "I will talk
to you plainly and honestly about us all."

"I not talk with you!" she stormed. "You tell lies to me! I not come
again--till some time you sleep--then I come and kill you!"

He faced her with a sudden imperiousness she could not ignore. "Then the
way is made open for Mabyn to come to _her_!" he cried. "Where will you
be then?--thrown on the ground, as you were yesterday!"

The shot told. Her arms dropped, she visibly paled. The white man's
blood in Rina's cheeks betrayed her at the moments when most she
desired to