"Oui. Ba'teese tell her—about the flume and M'sieu Thayer, what he say. But Ba'teese—"
"What?"
The trapper was silent a moment. At last:
"You like her, eh?"
"Medaine?"
"No—the other."
"A great deal, Ba'teese. She has meant everything to me; she was my one friend when I was in trouble. She even went on the stand and testified for me. What were you going to say?"
"Nothing," came the enigmatical reply. "Ba'teese will wait here. You go Boston to-night?"
"Yes."
And that night, in the moonlight, behind the rushing engine of a motor car, Barry Houston once more rode the heights where Mount Taluchen frowned down from its snowy pinnacles, where the road was narrow and the turns sharp, and where the world beneath was built upon a scale of miniature. But this time, the drifts had faded from beside the highway; nodding flowers showed in the moonlight; the snow flurries were gone. Soon the downward grade had come and after that the straggling little town of Dominion. Early morning found Houston in Denver, searching the train schedules. That night he was far from the mountains, hurrying half across the continent in search of the thing that would give him back his birthright.