cious. "If you had
your gun why didn't you plug him when he left you?" he demanded.

Bela paused for an instant. This was a poser, because in her heart she
knew, supposing her story to be true, that she would have shot Sam.
She had to think quickly. "I not want no blood," she murmured. "I
'fraid Pere Lacombe."

It was well done. Big Jack nodded. "You leave your guns, too," he
stipulated.

"Sure!" she said, willingly putting them in the dugout. "Leave one man
to watch the boats and the guns. Two men and a woman enough to catch a
cook, I guess."

They laughed.

Bela was playing for high stakes, and her faculties were sharpened to
a sword-edge. Every look suggested the wronged woman thirsting for
justice. She ostentatiously searched in her baggage, and drawing out a
piece of moose-hide, cut it into thongs for bonds. Cleverer men than
Big Jack and his pals might have been taken in.

"Boys, she's right!" cried Jack. "We don't want no blood on our hands
to start off with, if we can see him punished proper. Shand, you stay
here. Lead off, girl!"

Shand shrugged with a sour look, and came down the bank. It was always
tacitly understood between him and Jack that young Joe was not to be
trusted alone, so he submitted.

The other three started. Bela, making believe to be baffled for a
moment, finally led the way up-stream. She went first at the rolling
gait the Indians affect. The men were hard put to it to keep up with
her over the uneven ground, for the grassy plain, which looked like a
billiard-table, was full of bumps.

She kept her eyes on the ground. It was a simple matter for her to
follow Sam's tracks in the grass, but the men, though they could see
the faint depressions when she pointed them out, could never have
found them unaided.

The tracks led them parallel to the general direction of the river,
cutting across from point to point of the willows on the outside of
each bend. On the horizon ahead was the pine-clad ridge that bounded
the lower end of the lake. Jack-Knife Mountain rose over it. The sea
of grass was dazzling in the sunlight.

Half an hour's swift walking gave them no glimpse ahead of their
quarry.

"Waste too much time talking," said Bela.

"Well, you did the most of it," retorted Joe.

It was evident from the direction of the tracks that Sam was taking
care to keep under cover of each point of the willows until he gained
the next one. Each point afforded his pursuers a new survey ahead