Carrigan nodded.  “I understand,” he said.

XVI

In the cabin David waited.  He did not look through the window to watch St. Pierre’s approach.  He sat down and picked up a magazine from the table upon which Marie-Anne’s work-basket lay.  He was cool as ice now.  His blood flowed evenly and his pulse beat unhurriedly.  Never had he felt himself more his own master, more like grappling with a situation.  St. Pierre was coming to fight.  He had no doubt of that.  Perhaps not physically, at first.  But, one way or another, something dynamic was bound to happen in the bateau cabin within the next half-hour.  Now that the impending drama was close at hand, Carrigan’s scheme of luring St. Pierre into the making of a stupendous wager seemed to him rather ridiculous.  With calculating coldness he was forced to concede that St. Pierre would be somewhat of a fool to accept the wager he had in mind, when he was so completely in St. Pierre’s power.  For Marie-Anne and the chief of the Boulains, the bottom of the river would undoubtedly be the best and easiest solution, and the half-breed’s suggestion might be acted upon after all.

As his mind charged itself for the approaching struggle, David found himself staring at a double page in the magazine, given up entirely to impossibly slim young creatures exhibiting certain bits of illusive and mysterious feminine apparel.  Marie-Anne had expressed her approbation in the form of pencil notes under several of them.  Under a cobwebby affair that wreathed one of the slim figures he read, “St. Pierre will love this!” There were two exclamation points after that particular notation!

David replaced the magazine on the table and looked toward the door.  No, St. Pierre would not hesitate to put him at the bottom of the river, for her.  Not if he, Dave Carrigan, made the solution of the matter a necessity.  There were times, he told himself, when it was confoundedly embarrassing to force the letter of the law.  And this was one of them.  He was not afraid of the river bottom.  He was thinking again of Marie-Anne.

The scraping of a canoe against the side of the bateau recalled him suddenly to the moment at hand.  He heard low voices, and one of them, he knew, was St. Pierre’s.  For an interval the voices continued, frequently so low that he could not distinguish them at all.  For ten minutes he waited impatiently.  Then the door swung open, and St. Pierre came in.

Slowly and coolly David rose to meet him, and at the same moment the chief of the Boulains closed the door behind him.  There was no greeting in Carrigan’s manner.  He was the Law, waiting, unexcited, sure of himself, impassive as a thing of steel.  He was ready to fight.  He expected to fight.  It only remained for St. Pierre to show what sort of fight it was to be.  And he was amazed at St. Pierre, without betraying that amazement.  In the vivid light that shot through the western windows