The change in Mackenzie was immediate and appalling.  His smiling face became transformed with fury, his black eyes gleamed with the cunning malignity of the savage, he shed his soft Scotch voice with his genial manner, the very movements of his body became those of his Cree progenitors.  Uttering hoarse guttural cries, with the quick crouching run of the Indian on the trail of his foe, he chased Kalman through the bluffs.  There was something so fiendishly terrifying in the glimpses that Kalman caught of his face now and then that the boy was seized with an overpowering dread, and ceasing to tantalize his pursuing enemy, he left the bluffs and fled toward the house, with Mackenzie hard upon his track.  Through the shed the boy flew and into the outer room, banging the door hard after him.  But there was no lock upon the door, and he could not hope to hold it shut against his pursuer.  He glanced wildly into the inner room.  French was nowhere to be seen.  As he stood in unspeakable terror, the door opened slowly and stealthily, showing Mackenzie’s face, distorted with rage and cunning hate.  With a silent swift movement he glided into the room, and without a sound rushed at the boy.  Once, twice around the table they circled, Kalman having the advantage in quickness of foot.  Suddenly, with a grunt of satisfaction, Mackenzie’s eye fell upon a gun hanging upon the wall.  In a moment he had it in his hand.  As he reached for it, however, Kalman, with a loud cry, plunged headlong through the open window and fled again toward the bluffs.  Mackenzie followed swiftly through the door, gun in hand.  He ran a few short steps after the flying boy, and was about to throw his gun to his shoulder when a voice arrested him.

“Here, Mackenzie, what are you doing with that gun?”

It was French, standing between the stable and the house, dishevelled, bloated, but master of himself.  Mackenzie stopped as if gripped by an unseen arm.

“What are you doing with that gun?” repeated French sternly.  “Bring it to me.”

Mackenzie stood in sullen, defiant silence, his gun thrown into the hollow of his arm.  French walked deliberately toward him.

“Give me that gun, you dog!” he said with an oath, “or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

Mackenzie hesitated but only for a moment, and without a word surrendered the gun, the fiendish rage fading out of his face, the aboriginal blood lust dying in his eyes like the snuffing out of a candle.  In a few brief moments he became once more a civilized man, subject to the restraint of a thousand years of life ordered by law.

“Kalman, come here,” French called to the boy, who stood far off.

“Mackenzie,” said French with great dignity as Kalman drew near, “I want you to know that this boy is a ward of a dear friend, and is to me like my own son.  Remember that.  Kalman, Mackenzie is my friend, and you are to treat him as such.  Where did you get that?” he continued, pointing to the bottle which Kalman had kept clutched in his hand through all the exciting pursuit.