"So am I," he cried brusquely. "Well?"

"That's just what it isn't," Millie had withdrawn her hand. She moved to the doorway and gazed out into the sunlight. "I want to do something and just don't know how to do it. I know you hate folks who 'slop over.' But just think of the position. Steve's going to be away for two years, according to his reckoning. They've sent Corporal Munday to take over his post in his absence. What--what on earth is Nita to do in his absence? She'll get her rations, and her pay, and all that. But--she can't live around the post sort of keeping house for this boy--Munday.

She can't live there by herself anyway. Think of her by that shack with her kiddie. Two years, here in a country----Besides--"

"'Besides' nothing," exclaimed the man with that curious irritation of a troubled mind. "Is there need of 'besides' when you think of a good-looker girl who's barely twenty-two, with as dandy a baby as I've ever set eyes on, and who I helped into daylight, sitting around without her husband in a country that's peopled with white men whose morals would disgrace a dog-wolf? Two years! Why, it makes me sweat thinking.

If that feller Steve don't see my way of looking at things I'm going to tell him just what his parents ought to've been."

"And what's your way of thinking, Mac?" enquired his wife with the confidence of certain knowledge.

"My way? My way?" the man exploded, his blue eyes widening with incredulity. "Why, the way he's got to look. The way sense lies. That girl and her kiddie have got to come right along here and camp with us till the boy gets back. There's going to be no darn nonsense," he added threateningly, as though Millie were protesting. "She's going to come right here, where you can keep your dandy eye on her till----"

"Eyes--plural, Mac." Millie's smile was a goodly match for the summer day.

The doctor flung his head back in a deep-throated guffaw.

"Have it your own way," he cried. "One or two, they don't miss much.

Anyway, I guessed I'd put it to you before I went over to fix things up."

"Sure," laughed Millie comfortably. "You most generally ask my consent before you get busy." Then, in a moment, she became serious. "But you're right, Mac," she said. "Dora and I have been talking that way ever since we heard. And Mabel swears she's going to write the Commissioner of Police all she thinks about it, and that's 'some.' It's cruel sending off a married man on a trip like that without fixing things for his wife. You see and fix things, Mac. Nita's just as welcome as a ray of sunshine right here with us. It's a shame! It's a wicked downright shame! And Steve ought to know better than to stand for it. He ought to----"

"He can't kick." The man shook his head. "He's looking to get a superintendentship. A kick would fix that for good. No, he's got no kick coming. You need to understand the Police force right. It's no use talking that way. It's the work of the force first, last, and all the time. Everything else is nowhere, and the womenfolk, whom they discourage, last of all. And mind you, they're right. You can't run a family, and this h.e.l.lish country at the same time. If the Police weren't what they were it would need seventy thousand of them instead of seven hundred to make this territory better than a sink of crime for every low down skunk who can't keep out of penitentiary anywhere else. This thing has me so worried I haven't appet.i.te enough to care it's gone my feed time by a quarter hour. Isn't Miss Prue through with the darn potatoes, or--something?"

Millie laughed indulgently.

"I'll get along and see. You see, Miss Prue's a good and G.o.d-fearing squaw, when she isn't smoking her pipe or sitting asleep over the cook-stove. Anyway, I'll chase her up," and she bustled off in the direction of the kitchen.

Left to himself Ian Ross forgot entirely that he was awaiting his dinner. His deep-set eyes were turned to the view beyond the door, and his thoughts were still further afield. He was thinking of the pretty, eager face he had watched at the bachelors' dance at Deadwater. He was thinking of the men who had approached Nita with the ceremony which had so delighted her. He was old enough and wise enough to appreciate fully the dangers she would be confronted with in Steve's absence, dangers which it was more than likely Steve could not realize.

He liked Steve. For all their disparity of years a great friendship existed between them. Steve was a man who would succeed in anything he undertook. The doctor was sure of that. But--and this was the matter that troubled him most--Steve had utter and complete faith in his wife, the same as he had in all those who possessed his regard. Steve was a man of single, simple purpose. Strong as a lion in the open battle where the danger was apparent, but in the more subtle dangers of life he was a child.

Well, there were men in their world who const.i.tuted just one of those grave subtle dangers to Steve in Steve's absence. Ian Ross shared with everybody else the hatred of Hervey Garstaing. He had seen Garstaing and Nita together at the dance. He had seen them together at other times.

Oh,--he had never seen anything that was not perhaps perfectly legitimate. But he knew Hervey Garstaing better than most people at Deadwater. He saw far more of him than he desired. And Hervey was a good-looking man. Nita was young and full of a youthful desire for a good time. And then Hervey was also an unscrupulous hound whom it would have given the doctor the greatest pleasure in life to shoot.

Ian Ross laughed out loud as he strode through the woods on his way to the police post. A thought had occurred to him which pleased his simple mind mightily. It was not a very profound thought. And the humour of it was difficult to detect. But it pleased him, and he had to laugh, and when he laughed the echoes rang. It had occurred to him that it took a man of real brain to be a perfect "d.a.m.n fool."

The inspiration of his thought was undoubtedly Steve Allenwood. Steve Allenwood and his affairs had occupied his thoughts all the morning, and had interfered with a due appreciation of the dinner he had just eaten.

He was perturbed, and Millie had set the match to the powder train of his emotions and energies. His admiration for Steve was as unstinted as his sympathy for the call that had been suddenly made on him. But he knew Steve, and realized the difficulties that lay before him in carrying out the programme of kindly purpose Millie and he had worked out over their midday meal. It was this which had brought him to the conclusion which had inspired his laugh.

In that brief instant the complete silence of the woods about him had been broken up in startling fashion. No shot from a rifle, no mournful cry of timber-wolf could disturb the spell of nature like the jarring note of the human voice.

But it had another effect. It elicited a response no less startling to the man who had laughed.

"Ho you, Mac!"

Ian Ross halted. He had recognized the voice instantly.

"That you, Steve?"

"Sure," came back the reply.

Instantly the Scotsman's lack of self-consciousness became apparent.

"How in h.e.l.l did you know it was me?"

It was the turn of the invisible police officer to laugh.

"Guess there's only one laugh like yours north of 60--less a bull moose can act that way." Then he went on. "Sharp to your left. I'm down here on the creek. I was making your place and this way cuts off quite a piece."

Ross turned off at once and his burly figure crashed its way through the barrier of delicate-hued spruce. A moment later he was confronting the officer on the bank of the creek.

Steve's smile was one of cordial welcome.

"I was figgering to get you before you went back to the agency," he said in explanation.

The doctor's eyes twinkled.

"And I was guessing to get you--before I went."

Steve nodded.

"We were chasing each other."

"Which is mostly a fool stunt."

"Mostly."

They stood smiling into each other's eyes for a moment.

"You were needing me--particular?" Steve enquired after a pause.

Ross glanced down at the gurgling water of the shallow stream as it pa.s.sed over its rough gravel bed.

"I was needing a yarn. Nothing amiss at the post? You wanted me--particular?"

The smile in Steve's eyes deepened.

"No. I was needing a--yarn."

The doctor's twinkling eyes searched the clearing. A fallen tree was sprawling near by, with its upper boughs helping to cascade the waters of the stream. He pointed at it.

"Guess we don't need to wear our legs out."

Steve laughed shortly.

"That's where the neches beat us every time. You need to sit at a pow-wow."

"Sure. Their wise men sit most all the time."