“Yes,” repeated the voice, “I’m listening.”

The speaker did not respond at once.  With the trick of the very aged when they relax, in the past minutes he seemed to have contracted physically, to have shrunk, as it were, within himself.  The nervousness and uncertainty of a moment ago had passed now absolutely.  The deep-set eyes of him were of a sudden glowing ominously as they had done when telling the same tale to Rancher Hawkins the night before; but that was all.  His voluntary offering was given; more than this must come by request.

“I have nothing more to say—­unless you wish,” he repeated in the old formula.

For a second time silence fell; to be broken again by the crackling of a match in the white man’s hand.  Following, as though prompted by the sound, came a question.

“Why,”—­the Indian did not stir, but his eyes had shifted until they looked immovably into those of his companion,—­“why, please, was not the mother of the child at least at the funeral?”

“Because she could not come,” impassively.  “The baby was less than two days old.”

“She had been back, though, back at the ranch, for some time?”

“Yes.  Several weeks.”

“She returned alone?”

“Yes.”

“And to stay?”

Swifter and more swiftly came the questions.  Even yet no muscle of the inquisitor’s body stirred; but in the black eyes a light new to the other man, ominous in its belated appearance, was kindling.

“Yes,” answered Manning.

“She, Bess, had left her husband?”

“No, Craig had left her.”

Suddenly, instinctively, the impersonal had been dropped; but neither man noticed the change.

“There was a reason?”

“Yes,” baldly.  “Another woman.”

The locked fingers across the Indian’s knee were growing white; white as the sunlight without.

“And now he has returned, you say, to sell the ranch, her ranch?”

“It is her ranch no more.  It is his.”

“She, Bess, gave it to him after all that had happened, all that he had done?  You mean to tell me this?”

Abruptly, instinctively, for the end was very close at hand, the white man got to his feet, stood so silent.

“Tell me.”  The Indian was likewise erect, his dark face standing clear against the white background of the tent wall.  “Did Bess do this thing?”

“No,” said a voice.  “It came to him in another way.”

“Another way!” swiftly.  “Another way!” repeated.  “Another way!” for the third time; and then a halt.  For that moment realisation had come.  “There could be but one other way!”

Swiftly, instinctively, the white man turned about, until the face opposite was hid.  Hardened frontiersman as he was, prepared for the moment as he had thought himself, he could not watch longer.  To do so was sacrilege unqualified.  In his youth the man had been a hunter of big game.  Of a sudden now, horribly distinct, he had a vision of the expression in the eyes of a great moose, mortally wounded, when at the end he himself had drawn the knife.  Under its influence he halted, waiting, postponing the inevitable.