see real Indian fights? Did you--?" She paused with an involuntary
glance at Cartwell.

Porter, too, looked at the dark young face across the table and something
in its inscrutable calm seemed to madden him.

"My boyhood here? Yes, and a happy boyhood it was! I came home from the
range one day and found my little fifteen-year-old sister and a little
neighbor friend of hers hung up by the back of their necks on butcher
hooks. They had been tortured to death by Apaches. I don't like
Indians!"

There was an awkward pause at the dinner table. Li Chung removed the
soup-plates noiselessly. Cartwell's brown fingers tapped the tablecloth.
But he was not looking at Porter's scowling face. He was watching
Rhoda's gray eyes which were fastened on him with a look half of pity,
half of aversion. When he spoke it was as if he cared little for the
opinions of the others but would set himself right with her alone.

"My father," he said, "came home from the hunt, one day, to find his
mother and three sisters lying in their own blood. The whites had gotten
them. They all had been scalped and were dead except the baby, three
years old. She--she--my father killed her."

A gasp of horror went round the table.

"I think such stories are inexcusable here!" exclaimed Katherine
indignantly.

"So do I, Mrs. Jack," replied Cartwell. "I won't do it again."