The man swaggered forward, the lash of the whip trailing across the puncheon floor.  Triumph rode in his voice and straddled in his gait.  He stood with his back to the fireplace absorbing heat, hands behind him and feet set wide.  His eyes gloated over the victims he had trapped.  Presently he would settle with both of them.

“Not a word to say for yoreselves, either one o’ you,” he jeered.  “Good enough.  I’ll do what talkin’ ’s needed, then I’ll strip the hide off’n both o’ you.”  With a flirt of the arm he sent the lash of the dog-whip snaking out toward Jessie.

She shrank back against the wall, needlessly.  It was a threat, not an attack; a promise of what was to come.

“Let her alone.”  They were the first words Whaley had spoken.  In his soft, purring voice they carried out the suggestion of his crouched tenseness.  If West was the grizzly bear, the other was the forest panther, more feline, but just as dangerous.

The convict looked at him, eyes narrowed, head thrust forward and down.  “What’s that?”

“I said to let her alone.”

West’s face heliographed amazement.  “Meanin’—?”

“Meaning exactly what I say.  You’ll not touch her.”

It was a moment before this flat defiance reached the brain of the big man through the penumbra of his mental fog.  When it did, he strode across the room with the roar of a wild animal and snatched the girl to him.  He would show whether any one could come between him and his woman.

In three long steps Whaley padded across the floor.  Something cold and round pressed against the back of the outlaw’s tough red neck.

“Drop that whip.”

The order came in a low-voiced imperative.  West hesitated.  This man—­his partner—­would surely never shoot him about such a trifle.  Still—­

“What’s eatin’ you?” he growled.  “Put up that gun.  You ain’t fool enough to shoot.”

“Think that hard enough and you’ll never live to know better.  Hands off the girl.”

The slow brain of West functioned.  He had been taken wholly by surprise, but as his cunning mind Worked the situation out, he saw how much it would be to Whaley’s profit to get rid of him.  The gambler would get the girl and the reward for West’s destruction.  He would inherit his share of their joint business and would reinstate himself as a good citizen with the Mounted and with McRae’s friends.

Surlily the desperado yielded.  “All right, if you’re so set on it.”

“Drop the whip.”

The fingers of West opened and the handle fell to the floor.  Deftly the other removed a revolver from its place under the outlaw’s left armpit.

West glared at him.  That moment the fugitive made up his mind that he would kill Whaley at the first good opportunity.  A tide of poisonous hatred raced through his veins.  Its expression but not its virulence was temporarily checked by wholesome fear.  He must be careful that the gambler did not get him first.