“So you did get away from him after all?” she said, “and when he followed you, you shot him!  Just a boy—­and you shot him in the back!” The voice trembled with the scorn of her words.  MacNair pushed roughly past her.

“Don’t be a damn fool!” he growled, and called over his shoulder:  “Better rest him up for three or four days, and send him down to Fort Resolution.  He’ll stand the trip all right by that time, and the doctor may want to poke around for that bullet.”  Suddenly he whirled and faced her.  “Where is Lapierre?” The words were a snarl.

“So you want to kill him, too?  Do you think I would tell you if I knew?  You—­you murderer!  Oh, if I—­” But the sentence was cut short by the loud banging of the door.  MacNair had returned into the night.

An hour later, when she and Big Lena quitted the bedroom, Corporal Ripley was breathing easily.  Her thoughts turned at once to the Louchoux girl.  She recalled the look of terror that had crept into the girl’s eyes as she gazed into the upturned face of MacNair.  With the force of a blow a thought flashed through her brain, and she clutched at the edge of the table for support.  What was it the girl had told her about the man who had deceived her into believing she was his wife?  He was a free-trader!  MacNair was a free-trader!  Could it be——­

“No, no!” she gasped—­“and yet——­”

With an effort she crossed to the door of the girl’s room and, pushing it open, entered to find her cowering, wide-eyed between her blankets.  The sight of the beautiful, terrorized face did not need the corroboration of the low, half-moaned words, “Oh, please, please, don’t let him get me!” to tell Chloe that her worst fears were realized.

“Do not be afraid, my dear,” she faltered.  “He cannot harm you now,” and hurriedly closing the door, staggered across the living-room, threw herself into a chair beside the table, and buried her face in her arms.

Harriet Penny opened her door and glanced timidly at the still figure of the girl, and, deciding it were the better part of prudence not to intrude, noiselessly closed her door.  Hours later, Big Lena, entering from the kitchen, regarded her mistress with a long vacant-faced stare, and returned again to the kitchen.  All through the night Chloe dozed fitfully beside the table, but for the most part she was widely—­painfully—­awake.  Bitterly she reproached herself.  Only she knew the pain the discovery of MacNair’s treachery had caused her.  And only she knew why the discovery had caused her pain.

Always she had believed she had hated this man.  By all standards, she should hate him.  This great, elemental brute of the North who had first attempted to ignore, and later to ridicule and to bully her.  This man who ruled his Indians with a rod of iron, who allowed them full license in their debauchery, and then shot them down in cold blood, who shot a boy in the back while in the act of doing his duty,