less fascination.

* * * * *

While an observer could have counted ten slowly, and repeated the count,
the three remained precisely as they were. While the same mythical
spectator could have counted ten more, the silence held; but inaction
had ceased. While time, the relentless, checked off another measure,
there was still no interruption; then of a sudden, desperately tense,
desperately challenging, a voice sounded: the voice of Clayton Craig.

"Well," he queried, "why don't you do something?" He moistened his lips
and shuffled his feet restlessly. "You've seen enough to understand, I
guess. What are you going to do about it?"

The Indian had not been looking at him. Since that first moment when the
two had sprang separate he had not even appeared conscious of his
presence. Nor did he alter now. Erect as a maize plant, dressed once
more in the flannels and corduroys of his station, as tall and graceful,
he merely stood there with folded arms, looking down on the girl. More
maddening than an execration, than physical menace itself, was that
passionless, ignoring isolation to the other man. Answering, the hot
blood flooded his blonde face, swelled the arteries of his throat until
his collar choked him. Involuntarily his hand went to his neckband,
tugged until it was free. Equally involuntarily he took a step forward
menacingly.

"Curse you, How Landor," he blazed, "you've learned at last, perhaps,
not to dare me to take something of yours away from you." Word by word
his voice had risen until he fairly shouted. "You've lost, fool; lost,
lost! Are you blind that you can't see? You've lost, I say!"

From pure inability to articulate more, the white man halted; and that
instant the room became deathly still.

A second, or the fraction of a second thereof, it remained so; then,
white-faced, apprehensive, the girl sprang between the two, paused so,
motionless:--for of a sudden a voice, an even, passionless voice, was
speaking.

"You don't know me even yet, do you, Elizabeth?" it chided. Just a step
the speaker moved backward, and for the first time he recognised the
white man's presence. His eyes were steady and level. His voice,
unbelievably low in contrast to that of the other, when he spoke was
even as before.

"I won't forgive you for what you've just done, Mr. Craig," he said.
"I'll merely forget that you've done anything at all. One thing I
expect, however, and that is that you'