“I get you, old man,” grunted Carrigan.  “I get you—­both!”

And he leaned back against his dunnage-sack, staring again at the witching slimness of the lovely Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain as she calmly resumed her paddling in the bow of the canoe.

V

In the few minutes following the efficient and unexpected warning of Bateese an entirely new element of interest entered into the situation for David Carrigan.  He had more than once assured himself that he had made a success of his profession of man-hunting not because he was brighter than the other fellow, but largely because he possessed a sense of humor and no vanities to prick.  He was in the game because he loved the adventure of it.  He was loyal to his duty, but he was not a worshipper of the law, nor did he covet the small monthly stipend of dollars and cents that came of his allegiance to it.  As a member of the Scarlet Police, and especially of “N” Division, he felt the pulse and thrill of life as he loved to live it.  And the greatest of all thrills came when he was after a man as clever as himself, or cleverer.

This time it was a woman—­or a girl!  He had not yet made up his mind which she was.  Her voice, low and musical, her poise, and the tranquil and unexcitable loveliness of her face had made him, at first, register her as a woman.  Yet as he looked at the slim girlishness of her figure in the bow of the canoe, accentuated by the soft sheen of her partly unbraided hair, he wondered if she were eighteen or thirty.  It would take the clear light of day to tell him.  But whether a girl or a woman, she had handled him so cleverly that the unpleasantness of his earlier experience began to give way slowly to an admiration for her capability.

He wondered what the superintendent of “N” Division would say if he could see Black Roger Audemard’s latest trailer propped up here in the center of the canoe, the prisoner of a velvety-haired but dangerously efficient bit of feminine loveliness—­and a bull-necked, chimpanzee-armed half-breed!

Bateese had confirmed the suspicion that he was a prisoner, even though this mysterious pair were bent on saving his life.  Why it was their desire to keep life in him when only a few hours ago one of them had tried to kill him was a. question which only the future could answer.  He did not bother himself with that problem now.  The present was altogether too interesting, and there was but little doubt that other developments equally important were close at hand.  The attitude of both Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain and her piratical-looking henchman was sufficient evidence of that.  Bateese had threatened to knock his head off, and he could have sworn that the girl—­or woman—­had smiled her approbation of the threat.  Yet he held no grudge against Bateese.  An odd sort of liking for the man began to possess him, just as he found himself powerless to resist an ingrowing admiration for Marie-Anne.  The existence of Black Roger Audemard became with him a sort of indefinite reality.  Black Roger was a long way off.  Marie-Anne and Bateese were very near.  He began thinking of her as Marie-Anne.  He liked the name.  It was the Boulain part of it that worked in him with an irritating insistence.