She, too, would fight, even as he had fought—and win. He had not been discouraged and beaten. She remembered the look upon his face as he strode toward her that morning on the skidway in search of Leduc.
Unconsciously her tiny fists doubled, her delicate white jaw squared, and her eyes narrowed to slits, even as his had narrowed—but her lips did not smile.
He was her man! She could give him more than this half-breed girl could give him, and she would fight to win back her own—that which had been her own from the first.
Almost at her feet upon the floor, just under the edge of the bunk where it had been carelessly tossed, lay his mackinaw of coarse, striped cloth. The girl stooped, drew it forth, and smoothed it out.
"His coat," she breathed almost reverently as she patted its rough folds. "He took it off and wrapped it around Charlie. Oh, it must have been terrible—terrible!"
She was about to hang it upon its peg when something fell to the floor with a sharp slap—a long, heavy envelope that had dropped from a ragged tear in the lining where the men had ripped it from the body of the boy.
She hung the garment upon its peg and stooped to recover the packet. The envelope was old, and had evidently been exposed to the action of water, for the flap gaped open and the edges were worn through at the ends. Upon one side was tightly bound a photograph, dim and indistinct from the rub of the coarse cloth.
Her lips tightened at the corners as she stepped to the desk and turned up the lamp. She would see what manner of girl it was who had scored so heavily against her in this battle of hearts. She held the picture close to the yellow flame and stared unbelievingly at the nearly effaced features.
With a swift movement she tore the encircling cord from the packet and examined it more closely. Her heart beat wildly, and the blood surged through her veins in great, joyous waves. For the photograph showed, not the dark features of the Indian girl, but—her own!
Worn almost beyond recognition it was, with corners peeled and rolled back from the warped and water-thickened mounting—but unmistakably her picture.