Bill did not speak.  He merely looked at his pistol.  Jacky spoke as if answering some remark of his.

“Yes, this is my affair.”

Then she turned upon the money-lender.  There was no wrath in her face, no anger in her tones; only that horrid, stony purpose which Lablache dreaded.  He wished she would hurl invective at him.  He felt that it would have been better so.

“The death which you have dealt to that poor old man is too good for you—­murderer,” she said, her deep, somber eyes seeming to pass through and through the mountain of flesh she was addressing.  “I take small comfort in the thought that he had no time to suffer bodily pain.  You will suffer—­later.”  Bill gazed at her wonderingly.  “Liar!—­cheat!—­you pollute the earth.  You thought to cozen that poor, harmless old man out of his property—­out of me.  You thought to ruin him as you have ruined others.  Your efforts will avail you nothing.  From the moment Bill discovered the use of your memorandum pad”—­Lablache started—­“your fate was sealed.  We swore to confiscate your property.  For every dollar you took from us you should pay ten.  But now the matter is different.  There is a justice on the prairie—­a rough, honest, uncorruptible justice.  And that justice demands your life.  You shall scourge Foss River no longer.  You have murdered.  You shall die!—­”

Jacky was about to go further with her inexorable denunciation when the door of the shed was flung wide, and eight Breeds, headed by Gautier and Baptiste, came in.  They came in almost noiselessly, their moccasined feet giving out scarcely any sound upon the floor of the room.

“Lord” Bill turned, startled at the sudden apparition.  Jacky hesitated.  Here was a contingency which none had reckoned upon.  One glance at those dark, cruel faces warned all three that these prairie outcasts had been silent witnesses of everything that had taken place.  It was a supreme moment, and the deadly pallor which had assumed a leadenish hue on Lablache’s face told of one who appreciated the horror of that silent coming.

Baptiste stepped over to where Jacky stood.  He looked at her, and then his gaze passed to the dead man upon the floor.  His beady, black eyes turned fiercely upon the cowering money-lender.

“Ow!” he grunted.  And his tone was the fierce expression of an Indian roused to homicidal purpose.

Then he turned back to Jacky, and the look on his face changed to one of sympathy and even love.

“Not you, missie—­and the white man—­no.  The prairie is the land of the Breed and his forefathers—­the Red Man.  Guess the law of the prairie’ll come best from such as he.  You are one of us,” he went on, surveying the girl’s beautiful face in open admiration.  “You’ve allus been mostly one of us—­but I take it y’are too white.  No, guess you ain’t goin’ ter muck yer pretty hands wi’ the filthy blood of yonder,” pointing to Lablache.  “These