He was silent.  An unlucky word had betrayed him.  He could have bitten his tongue.  Still, he reflected sullenly, it was bound to come.  You can’t make black white, however tenderly you describe it.

Colina sprang to her feet.

“Unfair!” she cried.  “That is to say a cheat!  You can say it while he is lying up-stairs desperately wounded!”

“Colina, be reasonable,” he implored.  “The fact that he is suffering can’t make a wrong right.”

“There is no wrong!” she cried.  “What do you know about conditions here?”

“They come to my camp,” he said simply, “one after another to beg me to help them.”

“And you were not above it,” she flashed back, “murderers and others!”

An honest anger fired Ambrose’s eyes.  “You’re talking wildly,” he said sternly.  “I’m trying to help you.”

Colina laughed.

With a great effort he commanded his temper, “What do you see yourself in your rides about the settlement?” he asked.  “Poverty and wretchedness!  How do you explain it when times are good—­when this is known as the richest post in the north?”

Colina would have none of his reasoning.  “These are just the dangerous ideas my father warned me against!” she cried passionately.  “This is how you make the natives discontented and unruly!”

“You will not listen to me!” he cried in despair.

“Listen to you!  I see him lying there—­helpless.  I am sick with compassion for him and with hatred against the creatures who did it.  And you dare to attack him, to excuse them!  I will not endure it!”

“I am not attacking him.  Right or wrong, he has brought about a disastrous situation.  He’s the first to suffer.  We’re all standing on the edge of a volcano.  We are five whites here, and three hundred miles from the nearest of our kind.  If we want to save him and save ourselves we’ve got to face the facts.”

Of this Colina heard one sentence.  “Do you mean, to say that father brought this on himself?” she demanded, breathlessly angry.

Ambrose made a helpless gesture.

“I am to understand that you justify the breed?” she persisted.

“You have no right to put words into my mouth!”

Colina repeated like an automaton.  “Do you think the breed was justified in shooting my father?”

“I will not answer.”

“You’ve got to answer—­before you and I go any farther!”

“Colina, think what you’re doing!” he cried.  “We must not quarrel.”

“I’m not quarreling,” she said with an odd, flinty quietness.  “I’m trying to find out something necessary for me to know.  You might as well answer.  Do you think the breed was justified in shooting my father?”

Ambrose, baited beyond endurance, cried:  “I do!  He went into the man’s house and laid hands on his property.  Even a breed has rights.”

Colina bowed her head as if in polite acceptance.  “You had better go,” she said in soft tones more terrible than a cry.  “I am sorry I ever saw you!”