One of the women awoke at the sound of the man’s voice.  She looked up at Barbara in sullen hatred—­otherwise she gave no indication that she saw anything unusual transpiring.  It was as though an exquisite American belle were a daily visitor at the Oda Yorimoto home.

“What do you want of me?” cried the frightened girl, in Japanese.

Oda Yorimoto looked at her in astonishment.  Where had this white girl learned to speak his tongue?

“I am the daimio, Oda Yorimoto,” he said.  “These are my wives.  Now you are one of them.  Come!”

“Not yet—­not here!” cried the girl clutching at a straw.  “Wait.  Give me time to think.  If you do not harm me my father will reward you fabulously.  Ten thousand koku he would gladly give to have me returned to him safely.”

Oda Yorimoto but shook his head.

“Twenty thousand koku!” cried the girl.

Still the daimio shook his head negatively.

“A hundred thousand—­name your own price, if you will but not harm me.”

“Silence!” growled the man.  “What are even a million koku to me who only know the word from the legends of my ancestors.  We have no need for koku here, and had we, my hills are full of the yellow metal which measures its value.  No! you are my woman.  Come!”

“Not here!  Not here!” pleaded the girl.  “There is another room—­away from all these women,” and she turned her eyes toward the door at the opposite side of the chamber.

Oda Yorimoto shrugged his shoulders.  That would be easier than a fight, he argued, and so he led the girl toward the doorway that she had indicated.  Within the room all was dark, but the daimio moved as one accustomed to the place, and as he moved through the blackness the girl at his side felt with stealthy fingers at the man’s belt.

At last Oda Yorimoto reached the far side of the long chamber.

“Here!” he said, and took her by the shoulders.

“Here!” answered the girl in a low, tense voice, and at the instant that she spoke Oda Yorimoto, Lord of Yoka, felt a quick tug at his belt, and before he guessed what was to happen his own short sword had pierced his breast.

A single shriek broke from the lips of the daimio; but it was so high and shrill and like the shriek of a woman in mortal terror that the woman in the next room who heard it but smiled a crooked, wicked smile of hate and turned once more upon her pallet to sleep.

Again and again Barbara Harding plunged the sword of the brown man into the still heart, until she knew beyond peradventure of a doubt that her enemy was forevermore powerless to injure her.  Then she sank, exhausted and trembling, upon the dirt floor beside the corpse.

When Theriere came to the realization that Barbara Harding was gone he jumped to the natural conclusion that Ward and Simms had discovered the ruse that he had worked upon them just in time to permit them to intercept Miller and Swenson with the girl, and carry her back to the main camp.