Fear that Seymour had gone into ambush within the tent and would come to her aid, to the upsetting of all his plans, kept her from crying out for help. One of the squaws did throw down her shovel and start toward her, but the other called her back. They whispered a moment, then turned their backs and resumed their toil.
Even the realization that her Indian friends, hardened by the sorcery of too much gold, had failed her, did not lift her voice. At the head of the creek, she glimpsed the glacier imbedded in the mountainside like a gigantic prism, its innumerable facets reflecting the sunlight in all the colors of the rainbow. On either side lay a fringe of brush and timber. All these invited her, offering sanctuary from a fate that promised to be worse than death. But first, before she could flee to the hope of escape they held out, she must break the clutch of Bonnemort, the half-breed.
As she twisted and squirmed, her nails marked his face with furrowing scratches; but the smart of these seemed only to inflame him the more. As penalty, he demanded a kiss then and there where all her tribe could see. In the struggle to enforce his low-voiced decree, the bandanna that bound Moira's head fell to the ground. Her marvelous hair was revealed.
Both hands seized her and held her off, as helpless in his clutch as though she had been a child. For a moment his eyes enjoyed the oddly masked beauty of her. But soon, with comprehension, there entered a new light—that of recognition.
"So!" he muttered, baring his teeth as an angry beast bares its fangs. Transferring his hold to her streaming hair, Bonnemort flung the girl from her feet and started to drag her toward the tent.
At last, all other hope gone, Moira O'Malley screamed for help—-the help of her Mountie. The green old glacier broadcasted her distress, reverberating her shrieks until the gulch rang with them.
Within Bonnemort's tent "Scarlet" Seymour knelt before a chest, the lock of which he had just succeeded in breaking. He was staring with dilated eyes upon the real wealth of the Glacier Creek placers—truly richer than gold.
As he reached out his fingers to run them through the heaping gray wealth, a scream sounded. It might have been the cry of a buzzard soaring in the blue above the camp.
But the next moment the shriek took definite form as a human's cry for help. Then came the shrill of his name—a long-drawn "Russell!"
In a flash he comprehended. Moira had been discovered and had fallen into the hands of the despoilers. Without closing the lid of the treasure chest, he sprang to his feet and lunged out of the tent. A hundred yards down the path, he saw the breed and the girl in desperate struggle. Toward the scene of the unequal combat hastened a score of Argonaut natives.