“And why have you trained Tara, little girl?”

David took her hand.  It lay warm and unresisting in his, a firm, very little hand.  He could feel a slight shudder pass through her.

“I heard—­something,” she said.  “The Nest is a terrible place.  Hauck is terrible.  Brokaw is terrible.  And Hauck sent away somewhere up there”—­she pointed northward—­“for Brokaw.  He said—­I belonged to Brokaw.  What did he mean?”

She turned so that she could look straight into David’s eyes.  She was hard to answer.  If she had been a woman....

She saw the slow, gathering tenseness in David’s face as he looked for a moment away from her bewildering eyes—­the hardening muscles of his jaws; and her own hand tightened as it lay in his.

“What did Hauck mean?” she persisted.  “Why do I belong to Brokaw—­that great, red brute?”

The hand he had been holding he took between both his palms in a gentle, comforting way.  His voice was gentle, too, but the hard lines did not leave his face.

“How old are you, Marge?” he asked.

“Seventeen,” she said.

“And I am—­thirty-eight.”  He turned to smile at her.  “See....”  He raised a hand and took off his hat.  “My hair is getting gray!”

She looked up swiftly, and then, so suddenly that it took his breath away, her fingers were running back through his thick blond hair.

“A little,” she said.  “But you are not old.”

She dropped her hand.  Her whole movement had been innocent as a child’s.

“And yet I am quite old,” he assured her.  “Is this man Brokaw at the Nest, Marge?”

She nodded.

“He has been there a month.  He came after Hauck sent for him, and went away again.  Then he came back.”

“And you are now running away from him?”

“From all of them,” she said.  “If it were just Brokaw I wouldn’t be afraid.  I would let him catch me, and scream.  Tara would kill him for me.  But it’s Hauck, too.  And the others.  They are worse since Nisikoos died.  That is what I called her—­Nisikoos—­my aunt.  They are all terrible, and they all frighten me, especially since they began to build a great cage for Tara.  Why should they build a cage for Tara, out of small trees?  Why do they want to shut him up?  None of them will tell me.  Hauck says it is for another bear that Brokaw is bringing down from the Yukon.  But I know they are lying.  It is for Tara.”  Suddenly her fingers clutched tightly at his hand, and for the first time he saw under her long, shimmering lashes the darkening fire of a real terror.  “Why do I belong to Brokaw?” she asked again, a little tremble in her voice.  “Why did Hauck say that?  Can—­can a man—­buy a girl?”

The nails of her slender fingers were pricking his flesh.  David did not feel their hurt.

“What do you mean?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.  “Did that man—­Hauck—­sell you?”