“So be it,” Baptiste the Red made answer.  “I have given you grace and choice.  I shall come presently, with my priests and fighting men, and either shall I kill you, or you deny your god.  Give up the priest to my pleasure, and you shall depart in peace.  Otherwise your trail ends here.  My people are against you to the babies.  Even now have the children stolen away your canoes.”  He pointed down to the river.  Naked boys had slipped down the water from the point above, cast loose the canoes, and by then had worked them into the current.  When they had drifted out of rifle-shot they clambered over the sides and paddled ashore.

“Give me the priest, and you may have them back again.  Come!  Speak your mind, but without haste.”

Stockard shook his head.  His glance dropped to the woman of the Teslin Country with his boy at her breast, and he would have wavered had he not lifted his eyes to the men before him.

“I am not afraid,” Sturges Owen spoke up.  “The Lord bears me in his right hand, and alone am I ready to go into the camp of the unbeliever.  It is not too late.  Faith may move mountains.  Even in the eleventh hour may I win his soul to the true righteousness.”

“Trip the beggar up and make him fast,” Bill whispered hoarsely in the ear of his leader, while the missionary kept the floor and wrestled with the heathen.  “Make him hostage, and bore him if they get ugly.”

“No,” Stockard answered.  “I gave him my word that he could speak with us unmolested.  Rules of warfare, Bill; rules of warfare.  He’s been on the square, given us warning, and all that, and—­why, damn it, man, I can’t break my word!”

“He’ll keep his, never fear.”

“Don’t doubt it, but I won’t let a half-breed outdo me in fair dealing.  Why not do what he wants,—­give him the missionary and be done with it?”

“N-no,” Bill hesitated doubtfully.

“Shoe pinches, eh?”

Bill flushed a little and dropped the discussion.  Baptiste the Red was still waiting the final decision.  Stockard went up to him.

“It’s this way, Baptiste.  I came to your village minded to go up the Koyukuk.  I intended no wrong.  My heart was clean of evil.  It is still clean.  Along comes this priest, as you call him.  I didn’t bring him here.  He’d have come whether I was here or not.  But now that he is here, being of my people, I’ve got to stand by him.  And I’m going to.  Further, it will be no child’s play.  When you have done, your village will be silent and empty, your people wasted as after a famine.  True, we will he gone; likewise the pick of your fighting men—­”

“But those who remain shall be in peace, nor shall the word of strange gods and the tongues of strange priests be buzzing in their ears.”