the door of the chief's lodge, directly
before the fort and between it and the river, Edmonton Ridgar talked
in low tones with Negansahima. Indeed, like father and son seemed this
strangely assorted pair. Maren remembered afterward how near together
they had stood, the wild savage in his elk teeth and scant buckskin
garments, an indiscreet band of yellow paint showing a corner above his
blanket, and the dark, wiry trader with the grey eyes. Scattered, here
and there among the braves were many Bois-Brules, lean Runners of the
Burnt Woods, belonging she knew to the North-west Company. Also in that
moment she saw the frowning face and ugly eyes of Bois DesCaut beneath
the white lock on his temple. Long afterward was the girl to recall that
evening scene.

For another moment she hesitated, and then, from sheer loss of poise,
reached out her hand. The dancing eyes of the cavalier lit with all the
daring of conquest.

"My heart, Ma'amselle," he said gallantly, as he pressed the fragile
thing in her palm; and in another second he had stooped and kissed her,
as he had kissed many another woman, lightly, delicately, in the face of
the populace, joying to the depths of his careless nature in the dare of
the thing.

With a cry the girl sprang back, crushing the birchbark case with its
red flower into shapeless ruin. There was a muffled word, the flash of a
figure, and McElroy the factor had flung himself before her. She caught
the thud of a blow upon flesh and in a moment there were two men locked
in deadly combat before the post gate. In less time than the telling, a
circle of faces drew round, dark faces of Indians and Bois-Brules, light
faces of De Courtenay's men, and in all there leaped swift excitement as
they saw the combatants. White with passion, his brilliant eyes flaming
and dancing with fury, De Courtenay fought like a madman to avenge that
blow in the face, while McElroy, flushed and calmer, took with his hands
payment for all things,--slighted kindliness, Company thefts, and, above
all else, the stolen heart of his one woman.

How it would have ended there is no telling, for these two were evenly
matched--what De Courtenay lacked in weight he made up in swiftness and
agility,--had it not been for the side arm that hung at his hip, one
of those small pistols in use across the water where gentlemen fight at
given paces and not across a frozen river or through a mile of brush.

Once, twice, he tried to reach it, a