was on.  A low, growling roar came to him, and again he heard that tumult of human voices, like a great gasp rising spontaneously out of half a hundred throats, and in response to the sound he gave a sudden cry of rage.  Tara was already battling for his life—­Tara, that great, big-souled brute who had learned to follow his little mistress like a protecting dog, and who had accepted him as a friend—­Tara, grown soft and lazy and unwarlike because of his voluntary slavery, had been offered to the sacrifice which Brokaw had told him was inevitable!

And the Girl!  Where was she?  He was unconscious of the fact that his hand was gripping hard at the automatic in his pocket.  For a space his brain burned red, seething with a physical passion, a consuming anger which, in all his life, had never been roused so terrifically within him.  He rushed forward and took his place in the thin circle of watching men.  He did not look at their faces.  He did not know whether he stood next to white men or Indians.  He did not see the blaze in their eyes, the joyous trembling of their bodies, their silent, savage exultation in the spectacle.

He was looking at the cage.

It was 20 feet square—­built of small trees almost a foot in diameter, with 18-inch spaces between—­and out of it came a sickening, grinding smash of jaws.  The two beasts were down, a ton of flesh and bone, in what seemed to him to be a death embrace.  For a moment he could not tell which was Tara and which was Brokaw’s grizzly.  They separated in that same breath, gained their feet, and stood facing each other.  They must have been fighting for some minutes.  Tara’s jaws were foaming with blood and out of the throat of Brokaw’s bear there rolled a rumbling, snarling roar that was like the deep-chested bellow of an angry bull.  With that roar they came together again, Tara waiting stolidly and with panting sides for the rush of his enemy.  It was hard for David to see what was happening in that twisting contortion of huge bodies, but as they rolled heavily to one side he saw a great red splash of blood where they had lain.  It looked as if some one had poured it there out of a pail.

Suddenly a hand fell on his shoulder.  He looked round.  Brokaw was leering at him.

“Great scrap, eh?”

There was a look in his red face that revealed the pitiless savagery of a cat.  David’s clenched hand was as hard as iron and his brain was filled with a wild desire to strike.  He fought to hold himself in.

“Where is—­the Girl?” he demanded.

Brokaw’s face revealed his hatred now, the taunting triumph of his power over this man who was a spy.  He bared his yellow teeth in an exultant grin.

“Tricked her,” he snarled.  “Tricked her—­like you tricked me!  Got the Indian woman to steal her clothes, an’ she’s up there in her room—­alone—­an’ naked!  An’ she won’t have any clothes until I say so, for she’s mine—­body and soul....”