t!"

The other men were uneasy. If this was Joe's and Bela's way of making
love they wished they would do it in private. They were slow-thinking
men, accustomed to taking things at face value. Like all men, they
were shy of inquiring too far into an emotional situation.

Bela did not eat, but sat still, silent and walled-up. At such moments
she was pure Indian. Long afterward the men recollected the picture
she made that night, still and dignified as a death mask.

* * * * *

Joe could not leave Sam alone. "I wonder where our friend the ex-cook
is to-night?" he inquired facetiously of the company. "Boiling his own
pot at the Point, I suppose. He don't seem to hanker much for the
society of men. That's as it should be. Men and cooks don't gee."

Anyone looking closely would have seen Bela's breast rise and fall
ominously, but no one looked closely. Her face gave no sign.

"Sam was a little too big for his shoes last night," Joe went on.
"To-day I guess he thinks better----"

"Hello! Somebody talking about me?" cried a cheerful voice from the
door.

Sixteen men turned their heads as one. They saw Sam by the door
smiling. Bela involuntarily jumped up, and the box she was sitting on
fell over. Joe, caught up in the middle of a sentence, stared with his
mouth open, a comic expression of dismay fixed on his features.

Sam came in. His eyes were shining with excitement.

"What's the matter?" he asked, laughing. "You all look as if you saw a
ghost!" To Bela he said: "Don't disturb yourself. I've had my supper.
I just walked up for a bit of sociability before turning in, if you've
no objection."

He waited with a significant air for her to speak. There was nothing
naive about Sam's light manner; he was on the _qui vive_ for whatever
might come.

Bela tried to answer him, and could not. Her iron will was no longer
able to hide the evidences of agitation. Her lips were parted and her
breath was coming fast. She kept her eyes down.

There was a highly charged silence in the shack. All knew that the
turn of the drama depended on the next word to be spoken. They watched
Bela, bright-eyed.

By this time Joe had partly recovered his self-possession. "Let him
go!" he said roughly. "We don't want no cooks around!"

Sam ignored him. "Can I stay?" he asked Bela, smiling with a peculiar
hardness. "If you don't want me, all right. But it must come from
you."

Bela raised her eyes imploringl