about it which thrilled her until every drop of blood in her body was racing with the impetus of the stream itself.  Eddies of wind puffing out from between the chasm walls tossed her loose hair about her back in a glistening veil.  He saw a long strand of it trailing over the edge of the canoe into the water.  It made him shiver, and he wanted to cry out to Bateese that he was a fool for risking her life like this.  He forgot that he was the one helpless individual in the canoe, and that an upset would mean the end for him, while Bateese and his companion might still fight on.  His thought and his vision were focused on the girl—­and what lay straight ahead.  A mass of froth, like a windrow of snow, rose up before them, and the canoe plunged into it with the swiftness of a shot.  It spattered in his face, and blinded him for an instant.  Then they were out of it, and he fancied he heard a note of laughter from the girl in the bow.  In the next breath he called himself a fool for imagining that.  For the run was dead ahead, and the girl became vibrant with life, her paddle flashing in and out, while from her lips came sharp, clear cries which brought from Eateese frog-like bellows of response.  The walls shot past; inundations rose and plunged under them; black rocks whipped with caps of foam raced up-stream with the speed of living things; the roar became a drowning voice, and then—­as if outreached by the wings of a swifter thing—­dropped suddenly behind them.  Smoother water lay ahead.  The channel broadened.  Moonlight filled it with a clearer radiance, and Carrigan saw the girl’s hair glistening wet, and her arms dripping.

For the first time he turned about and faced Bateese.  The half-breed was grinning like a Cheshire cat!

“You’re a confoundedly queer pair!” grunted Carrigan, and he turned about again to find Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain as unconcerned as though running the Holy Ghost Rapids in the glow of the moon was nothing more than a matter of play.

It was impossible for him to keep his heart from beating a little faster as he watched her, even though he was trying to regard her in a most professional sort of way.  He reminded himself that she was an iniquitous little Jezebel who had almost murdered him.  Carmin Fanchet had been like her, an AME DAMNEE—­a fallen angel—­ but his business was not sympathy in such matters as these.  At the same time he could not resist the lure of both her audacity and her courage, and he found himself all at once asking himself the amazing question as to what her relationship might be to Bateese.  It occurred to him rather unpleasantly that there had been something distinctly proprietary in the way the half-breed had picked her up on the sand, and that Bateese had shown no hesitation a little later in threatening to knock his head off unless he stopped talking to her.  He wondered if Bateese was a Boulain.