den, searching," went on Durade. "Tell
me--more."

"No!" cried Allie.

"Do you know, then?" he asked, very low.

"I'm not your daughter--and mother ran off from you. Yes, I know that,"
replied Allie, bitterly.

"But I brought you up--took care of you--helped educate you," protested
Durade, with agitation. "You were my own child, I thought. I was always
kind to you. I--I loved the mother in the daughter."

"Yes, I know.... But you were wicked."

"If you won't tell me it must mean she's still alive," he replied,
swiftly. "She's not dead;... I'll find her. I'll make her come back to
me--or kill her... After all these years--to leave me!"

He seemed wrestling with mingled emotions. The man was proud and strong,
but defeat in life, in the crowning passion of life, showed in his white
face. The evil in him was not manifest then.

"Where have you lived all this time?" he asked, presently.

"Back in the hills with a trapper."

"You have grown. When I saw you I thought it was the ghost of your
mother. You are just as she was when we met."

He seemed lost in sad retrospection. Allie saw streaks of gray in his
once jet-black hair.

"What will you do?" asked Allie.

He was startled. The softness left him. A blaze seemed to leap under
skin and eyes, and suddenly he was different--he was Durade the gambler,
instinct with the lust of gold and life.

"Your mother left me for YOU," he said, with terrible bitterness. "And
the game has played you into my hands. I'll keep you. I'll hold you to
get even with her."

Allie felt stir in her the fear she had had of him in her childhood when
she disobeyed. "But you can't keep me against my will--not among people
we'll meet eastward."

"I can, and I will!" he declared, softly, but implacably. "We're
not going East. We'll be in rougher places than the gold-camps of
California. There's no law but gold and guns out here... But--if you
speak of me to any one may your God have mercy on you!"

The blaze of him betrayed the Spaniard. He meant more than dishonor,
torture, and death. The evil in him was rampant. The love that had been
the only good in an abnormal and disordered mind had turned to hate.

Allie knew him. He was the first person who had ever dominated her
through sheer force of will. Unless she abided by his command her fate
would be worse than if she had stayed captive among the Sioux. This man
was not an American. His years among men of later mold had not changed
th