Choo. As he went, he was conscious of low, cackling laughter, but when
he turned to look, the two Chinamen stood where he had left them,
blinking and immobile.

The uncanny feeling possessing him increased; the thing was unnatural.
He lurched on, however, looking for Li Choo. The Chinaman was not to be
found in the kitchen, in the woodshed, in the cellar, in the loft, or in
his own attic room; and the half-breed, Rada, declared she had not seen
him. He could not be at the stables, for they were too far away to be
reached in the time; and there were no signs of him between the house and
the stables. When Mazarine returned to the front of the house, the two
Chinamen also had vanished; there were no signs of them anywhere. Search
did not discover them.

Mingled anger and fear now possessed Mazarine. He would search no
longer. No doubt the other two Chinamen had joined Li Choo in his
hiding-place, wherever it was. Why had the Chinamen come? What were
they after? It did not matter for the moment. What he wanted was
Louise, his bad child-wife, who had broken from her cage and flown from
him. Where would she go? Where, but to Slow Down Ranch? Where, but to
her lover, the circus-rider, the boy with the head of brown curls, with
the ring on his finger and the Cupid mouth! Where would she go but to
the man with whom she had spent the night on the prairie!

Now he believed altogether that she was guilty, that everybody had
conspired to deceive him, that he was in a net of dark deception. Even
the two Chinamen, mysteriously coming and going, had laughed at him like
two heathen gods, and had vanished suddenly like heathen gods.

A weakness came over him, and the skin of his face became creased and