kill her man. She not know. Poor Missis. She not think. Only so she please her man. So this devil man kill her man. So."
"What d'you mean?"
The man's gaze was compelling. Its steady light searched the soft eyes of the squaw. The woman withstood his gaze unflinchingly. Then she suddenly bent across, and drew the coverlet up, and tenderly hid the face of the dead. Then she looked up again into Steve's face.
"Come," she said quietly. "I tell you."
Without waiting for reply she led the way out of the room into the store beyond, with its bare counter, and shelves, and bins so meagrely supplied. Steve followed without a word. He had suddenly realized that as yet he knew only a part of the story of these people. There was more to be told.
The store displayed much the same purpose and care which everything else about the work of Marcel Brand revealed. The completeness of it all must have been surprising, had not Steve understood that the chemist had come here to carry his life's work to its logical completion. There were signs everywhere of capacity, and unstinted expenditure of money. But the haulage of it all. The thought was always in Steve's mind. The great stove in the corner of the long, low room. The carpentered shelvings, and drawers, and cupboards. The counter, too, no makeshift barrier set up for the purposes of traffic, but with every sign of skilled workmanship about it. He felt certain that all these things must have been borne up the slopes of the great table-land, hauled overland, or by water, from the workshops of civilization.
Habit was strong and An-ina moved at once to the great stove radiating its pleasant warmth. Steve took up his position opposite her.
The squaw began at once. She had nothing to conceal from this man who represented the law of the white men. Besides, was she not thinking of the boy who had stolen so closely into her mother heart?
"An-ina not say to Missis all," she said, in her simple way. "Oh, no. Missis much afraid. Much suffer. Him sick—much sick. No man—then all gone. She 'fraid. She all break up her heart. Marcel not come. Why? Why? An-ina know. She hear from Indian man. All Indian man know. Marcel him all killed dead. Indian man not kill him. Oh, no. Cy Allshore him kill him. Marcel him kill Cy too. Both kill each one. Oh, yes. Cy devil man. Cy think him kill up Marcel. Then him have Missis—have all things. Oh, yes. Indian man know. Indian man find both, all killed dead. Indian man tell An-ina. An-ina say no tell Missis. Maybe she all kill dead—too. Yes? An-ina love Missis. Love her much. She no hurt Missis. So she not say. Oh, no."
The searching eyes of Steve never left the woman's dusky face for a moment. They were boring their way to pierce the unemotional exterior for the truth that lay behind.
"Say, just stop right there," he commanded. "I need to get this right. You reckon this feller Cy—Cy Allshore was out for plunder—murder. You guess he kind of loved your Missis, and she didn't know. He reckoned to kill Marcel, and steal all this, and—his wife. That so?"
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