“But I do care to discuss it,” peremptorily.  “As one of the family it is my right, and I demand an answer.”

Again the tiny roan was shaking an impatient head.  It would not be long until they were home now.

“Yes,” answered the Indian.

“And that my uncle will permit it, gives his consent?” Again the silence and again the low-voiced “Yes.”

Over Craig’s face, to his eyebrows and beyond, there swept a red flood, that vanished and left him pale as the starlight about him.

“Well, he may; but by God I won’t!” he blazed.  “As sure as I live, and if she’s as plain as a hag, so long as her skin is white, you’ll not marry her.  If it’s the last act of my life, I’ll prevent you!”

The voice of the white man was still, but his heart was not.  Beat, beat, beat it went until he could scarcely breathe, until the hot blood fairly roared in his arteries, in his ears.  Not until the challenge was spoken did he realise to the full what he had done, that inevitable as time there would be a reckoning.  Now in a perfect inundation, the knowledge came over him, and unconsciously he braced himself, awaited the move.  Yet for long, eternally long it seemed to him, there was none.  The swift reaction of a passionate nature was on, and as in Bob Manning’s store, the suspense of those dragging seconds was torture.  Adding thereto, recollection of that former scene, temporarily banished, returned now irresistibly, cumulatively.  Struggle as he might against the feeling, a terror of this motionless human at his side grew upon him; a blind, unreasoning, primitive terror.  But one impulse possessed him:  to be away, to escape the outburst he instinctively knew was but delayed.  In an abandon he leaned far forward over his saddle, the rowel of his spur dug viciously into his horse’s flank.  There was a deep-chested groan from the surprised beast, a forward leap—­then a sudden jarring halt.  As by magic, the reins left his hand, were transferred to another hand.

“Don’t,” said a voice.  “It will not help matters any to do that.  It will only make them worse.”  The two horses, obeying the same hand, stopped there on the prairie.  The riders were face to face.  “I have tried to prevent this, for the sake of the future, I have tried; but you have made an understanding between us inevitable, and therefore it may as well be now.”  The voice halted and the speaker looked at his companion fixedly, minutely, almost unbelievingly.  “I know I am not as you white men,” went on the voice.  “I have been raised with you, lived my life so far with you; yet I am different.  No Indian would have done as you have done.  I cannot understand it.  Not three hours ago I saved your life.  It was a mere chance, but nevertheless I did it; and yet already you have forgotten, have done—­what you have done.”  So far he had spoken slowly, haltingly; with the effort of one to whom words were difficult.  Now the effort passed.  “I say I cannot understand