Reivers caught hold of a spear of rock the instant his head came out of water, and held on. He did not try to think or understand at first. Sufficient to know that he was alive and to pump his lungs full of the air they were crying for. He held MacGregor under his left arm, and he rather wondered that he hadn’t let him go in that moment when he went under. MacGregor was beginning to revive, too. Reivers looked around.
There was not much to see. They were in a tiny opening in the rocks, a yard or two in length. It was a duplicate of Moir’s cavern on a miniature scale, except that here the rock walls were not high or impossible to climb. For this space the brook showed itself once more to the sun, then vanished again under the cliffs.
“Is it Heaven?” gasped MacGregor, only half conscious.
“Nearer hell,” laughed Reivers.
He lifted himself and his burden out of the water to a resting-place on a shelf of rock. For a minute or two he sat looking up at the rock walls and the grey sky above them. He looked down at the water, at the spot where they had been spewed from death back into life. And then he leaped upright and laughed, laughed so that the rocks rang with it, laughed so that MacGregor’s senses cleared and he looked at hissaviour in consternation. His laughter was the uncontrollable, heart-free laughter of the man who suddenly sees a great joke upon his enemy.
He smote MacGregor between the shoulder-blades so he gasped and coughed. He tore the straps and harness from his arms, body and legs, tossed him up in the air, shook him and set him down on the rock.
“I’ve got him!” he said at last. “Oh, Shanty Moir, what a surprise you have coming to your own black self!”
MacGregor, with his senses cleared enough to realise that he was alive, and to remember how the miracle had come about, said quietly—
“Man, that was the bravest thing I ever saw a man do.”
“What?”
“Diving into that hole after me.”
“Oh, to —— with that! That’s past. The past doesn’t count—not when the very immediate future is so full of juice and interest as happens to be the case just now. I’ve got Shanty Moir, old-timer. Do you understand? He’s mine and all that he’s got is mine, and he’s going to be surprised. Oh, how surprised he’s going to be!”
MacGregor looked down at the two yards of rushing water, up at the rock walls and then at the jubilant Reivers.
“I dinna see it,” he said dryly.
“Really?” Reivers suddenly became interested in him as if he presented a rare mental problem. “Can’t you make that simple mind of yours work out the simple solution of this problem?”
MacGregor shook his head.
“What I see is this: we’re alive, and that only for the present. We’re in a little hole in the Dead Lands. Happen we climb out of the hole, we have no dogs,food, or weapons. The nearest camp is two good days’ mushing, with good fresh dogs. Too far. If I could manage to stagger five miles I’d surprise myself. There is not so much as a dry match on us. No, I maun say, lad, my simple mind does not see the solution of the problem.”
“Try again, Mac,” urged Reivers. “Make your mind work. What do we need to make our condition blessed among men; what do men need to be well-fitted on the Winter trail? You can make your mind do that sum, can’t you?”
“We need,” replied MacGregor doggedly, “dogs, and food, and fire, and weapons.”
“Correct. And now what’s the next thought that your grey matter produces after that masterpiece?”
“That the nearest place where we may obtain these things is too far away for us to make, unless happen we meet some one on the trail, which is not likely.”
“Pessimism!” laughed Reivers. “Too much caution stunts the possibility of the mind. Interesting demonstration of the fact, with your mind as an example.” He turned and smote with the flat of his hand the stone wall from under which they had just emerged. “What’s the other side of those rocks, Mac?”
“Shanty Moir and his six-shooter.”
“And dogs, and food, and matches, and cartridges, and gold, everything, everything to make us kings of the country, Mac! And they’re ours—ours as surely as if we had ’em in our hands now.”
“I dinna see it,” said MacGregor.
“Pessimism again. How can Moir and his gang get out of their camp?”
“Up-stream, by the creek, of course.”
“Any other way?”
“There’s the way we came—but they do not know that.”
“Correct, and when we’ve plugged up that single exit they can’t get away from us, Mac, and then we’ve got ’em!”
MacGregor’s eyes lighted up, then he grew dour again.
“We have got ’em, if we plug up the river, I see,” he admitted, “but when we have got them, what good does it do us? What are you going to do, then?”
“That’s the surprise, Mac; I won’t tell even you.” He looked swiftly for a way up the rock walls and found one. “The first question is: Do you think you can climb after me up that crevice there?”
“I could climb through hell and back again if it would help in getting Shanty Moir.”
“All right. I can’t quite give you hell, but I’ll give Shanty Moir an imitation of it before he’s much older. Come on. We’ve got some work to do before it gets dark.”
He led the way into the crevice he had marked for the climb up from the hole and boosted MacGregor up before him. It was slow, hard work, but MacGregor’s weak hold slipped often, and he came slipping down upon Reivers’ shoulders. In the end Reivers impatiently pulled him down, took him on his back and crawled up, and with a laugh rolled himself and his burden in the snow on top of the cliffs. A few rods away smoke was rising through the opening above Moir’s camp, and at the sight of it MacGregor’s numbed faculties came to life.
“Lemme go, man!” he pleaded as Reivers caught him as he staggered toward the opening. “It’s my chance, man. I can kill the cur with a rock from up here.”
“Save your strength; I’ve got use for it,” said Reivers. “Can you walk? All right. Come on, then, and don’t try to get near that gap.”
Taking MacGregor by the hand he led the way carefully around the big opening till they came to the opposite side of the mass of rocks, where the creek entered the tunnel by which Moir reached his camp. Crawling and slipping, they made their way down until they stood beside the bed of the stream.
“Now to work, Mac,” said Reivers, and seizing a rock bore it to the tunnel’s mouth and dropped it into the water.
“Aye, aye!” chuckled MacGregor, as he understood the significance of this move. “We’ll wall the curs in.”
For half an hour they laboured. Reivers carried and rolled the heaviest rocks he could move into position across the tunnel, and MacGregor staggered beneath smaller pieces to fill up the chinks. When their work was finished there was a rock wall across the mouth of the tunnel which it would have been almost impossible to tear down, especially from the inside.
It was growing dark when the task was completed, and Reivers nodded in great satisfaction.
“That’ll hold ’em long enough for my purpose, and we just made it in time,” he said. “Now come on up the mountain again, and then for the surprise.”
“The surprise, man?” panted MacGregor as he toiled up the rocks. “What are you going to do? Tell me what’s in your head?”
“Hush, hush!” laughed Reivers, pulling him up to the top. “Your position is that of the onlooker. It would spoil it for you if you knew what was going to happen.”
“An onlooker—me—when it’s a case of getting Shanty Moir? Don’t say that, lad. Don’t leave me out. He’s mine. You know that by all the rights of men and gods it’s my right to get him. Give me my just share of revenge.”
“Shut up!”
They were nearing the brink of the opening. Reivers’ hand covered MacGregor’s mouth as they leaned over and looked down upon the unsuspecting men in the cavern below.
In the shut-in spot night had fallen. On the sand before the dugout Tillie was cooking over a brisk fire, going about her work as calmly as if nothing of moment had happened during the afternoon. Near by, Moir and Joey were packing the dog-sledge and repairing harness, evidently preparing to take the trail after the evening meal. Tammy sat by the fire, holding together with both hands the pieces of his nose which Reivers’ blow had smashed flat on his face.
Reivers scarcely looked at the men, but began to scan the walls for a way to get down. The walls slanted inwardly from the top, and at first it seemed impossible that a man could get safely into the cavern without the aid of a rope. But presently Reivers saw that for thirty feet directly above the large dugout the rocks were ragged enough to afford plenty of holds for hands and feet.
The walls were nearly fifty feet high. If he could reach to the bottom of this rough space he would be hanging with his feet, ten or twelve feet above the cavern floor.
“Good enough,” he said aloud. “It’s a cinch.”
“A cinch it is,” breathed MacGregor softly. “We’ll roll up a pile of rocks and kill ’em like rats in a pit. But you maun leave Shanty to me, lad, I——”
“Shut up!” Reivers thrust the Scotchman back from the brink. “Do you want me to go after the harness for you? I told you that your job was to be the onlooker. I settle this thing with Shanty Moir myself.”
“But man——”
“Moir kicked me. Do you understand? He placedhis dirty foot on me. Do you see why I’m going to do it by myself?”
“Placed his foot on you? God’s blood! What has he done to me—robbed me, made an animal of me, stabbed me with a prod! Who has the better right to his foul life?”
“It isn’t a case of right, but of might, Mac,” chuckled Reivers. “I’ve got the better might. Therefore, will you give me your word that you’ll refrain from interfering with my actions until I’ve paid my debt to Mr. Moir, or must I go back after the harness and strap you up?”
“Cruel——”
“Promise!”
“I promise,” said MacGregor. “But it’s wrong, sore wrong. I protest.”
“All right. Protest all you want to, but do it silently. Not another word or sound out of you now until the job’s done.”
Together they crawled back to the brink above the large dugout and peered down into the darkening cavern. In a flash Reivers had his mackinaw and boots off. The cooking-fire was deserted. No one was in sight. Moir and his men and Tillie were at supper in the dugout, and Reivers’s chance had come. He swung himself silently over the brink and hung by a handhold on the rock.
“Don’t interfere, Mac,” he said warningly. “Not till I’ve paid Shanty Moir for the touch of his foot.”
With a twist of his body he threw his stockinged feet forward and caught toe-holds on the rough surface of the wall. Next he released his right hand and fumbled downward till he found a solid piece of protruding rock. Having tested it thoroughly he let go his holds with both feet and left hand and dropped his full weight into the grip of his right. Above him, MacGregor, with his face glued to the brink of the opening, gasped twice, once because he was sure Reivers was dropping straight to the bottom, and again when his right hand took the shock of his full weight without loosening its grip.
Reivers heard and looked up and smiled. Then he swung his feet inward again, secured another hold, lowered his right hand to another sure grip, and so made his startling way down the inwardly slanting cliff.
At the third desperate drop MacGregor drew back, unable to stand the strain of watching. Had Reivers been able to see on top of the cliff he would have laughed, for the Scotchman was down on his knees in the snow, earnestly praying.
Finally MacGregor summoned up courage to peer down once more. Then he knew his prayers had been answered. Reivers was hanging easily by his hands, directly above the front of the large dugout, and his feet were less than ten feet above the bottomof the cave. MacGregor gave a whoop of thanksgiving and gathered to him an armful of stones.
For a moment Reivers hung there, looking down and appraising the situation. He loosened his hold until his whole weight hung on the ends of his fingers.
“Come out and fight, Shanty!” he bellowed suddenly. “Come out, you cheap cur, and fight like a man!”
Nothing loath Moir came, responding like a wild animal on the instant of the weird challenge from above. Like a wild man he came, six-shooter in hand, tearing the front of the dugout away in his rush, and Reivers dropped and struck him neatly the instant he appeared.
It was a carefully aimed drop. Landing on Moir’s neck, Reivers would have killed him. He had no wish to kill him—yet. He landed on Moir’s shoulders and the six-shooter went flying away as the two bodies crashed together and dropped on the sand with a thud.
Reivers was up first. It was well that he was. Tammy and Joey were only a step behind Moir. Like wildcats they clawed at Reivers and like wildcats they rolled on the ground when his fists met them. Then Moir was up on his feet. His senses were a little dull, but he saw enough of the situation to satisfy him. Before him was something to fight, to rush, to annihilate. And he rushed.
Up on the cliff the maddened MacGregor yelped joyously, a stone in each hand, as Reivers leaped forward to meet the rush and struck. Shanty Moir had expected a grapple, and Reivers’ fist caught him full in the mouth and threw him back on his shoulders a man’s length away.
When Moir arose then, the lower part of his face had the appearance of crushed meat, but he growledthrough the blood and rushed again. Reivers struck, and Moir’s nose disappeared in a welter of blood and gristle. He struck again, but Moir came on and locked him in his huge arms.
Joey and Tammy were up now. Their knives were out. They saw their chance and leaped forward to strike at Reivers’ back. With his life depending upon it, the Snow-Burner swung Moir’s great body around, and Joey and Tammy stayed their hands barely in time to save plunging their knives into the back of their chief.
Growling a wild curse, MacGregor dropped two stones the size of his head. One struck Joey on the shoulder and sent him shrieking with pain into the dugout; the other dropped at Reivers’ feet. With a yell he hurled Moir from him and snatched up the stone. Joey, reading his doom in the Snow-Burner’s eyes, backed away into the brink of the brook. The heavy stone caught him in the chest. Then he struck the water with a splash and was gone.
But Moir was up in the same instant and his arms licked around from behind and raised Reivers off his feet. The hold was broken as suddenly as it was clamped on. They were face to face again, and face to face they fought, trampling the sand and the fire indiscriminately. Each blow from Reivers now splashed blood from Moir’s face as from a soaked sponge, and at each blow MacGregor shouted wildly:
“That for the kick you gave him, Shanty! That for the dirt you did me!”
The dogs, mad with terror, fled up the brook, met the stone wall and came whining back. They cowered, jammering in fright at the terrible combat which raged, minute after minute, before them.
Out of the dugout softly came stealing Tillie. A knife, dropped by Joey or Tammy, gleamed in thelight of the fire. She picked it up. With a smile of great contentment on her face she crept noiselessly toward the struggling men. They were locked in a clinch now, and with the smile widening she moved around behind Moir’s broad back. The knife flashed above her head. Reivers saw it. With an effort he wrenched an arm free and knocked the knife away.
“Keep away!” he roared, springing out of the clinch. “This is between Iron Hair and me.”
Up on the cliff MacGregor groaned. In freeing himself Reivers had hurled Moir to one side, and Moir had dropped with his outstretched hands nearly touching his six-shooter, where it had fallen when Reivers had dropped upon him. Like the stab of a snake his hand reached out and snapped it up.
“Your soul to the devil, Shanty Moir!” shrieked MacGregor and hurled another stone.
His aim was true this time. The stone struck Moir squarely on his big head and drove his face into the sand. He never moved after it.
Reivers looked up. On the brink of the cliff MacGregor on his knees was chanting his war-cry, his thanks that vengeance had not been denied him. Reivers smiled.
“That’s a good song, Mac, whatever it is!” he laughed, when the maddened Scotchman had grown quieter. “But the fact remains that you disobeyed my orders and interfered.”
“Aye! I interfered. I hurled a stone and sent the black soul of Shanty Moir back to his brother the devil!” chanted MacGregor. “But, lad, I did not interfere until you’d paid him in full—until you’d paid double—for the kick he gave you. Three of them there were, and they were armed and you with bare fists! God’s blood! Never since men stood up with fist to fist has there been such fighting. One disabled,and two men dead! Dead you are, you poor pups! And I can tell by the way you lived where you’re roasting now.
“Ah, ah! I ha’ seen a man fight; I ha’ seen what I shall never forget, and, poor stick that I am compared to him, I ha’ e’en had a hand in it myself. Man, man! Would you grudge me a little bite after your belly’s full of battle?”
Reivers spoke quietly and coldly.
“Go down and tear out as much of the stone wall as you can. I’ll take the heavy stones from this side.” He turned to Tillie. “Take the big belt from Iron Hair and give it to me. Then make all ready for the trail. We march to-night.”
And Tillie, as she harnessed the dogs, spat upon Iron Hair, the beaten.
“And now the Snow-Burner has his gold. He has robbed the great Iron Hair in his own camp. Great is the Snow-Burner! Now he has the gold which he longed for. Now he is rich. The white men will bow down to him. Great is the Snow-Burner!”
Tillie crouched beside Reivers as, an hour later, he stood on the edge of the Dead Lands, and triumphantly crooned the saga of his success. The gold belt of Shanty Moir hung heavily over his shoulder, its great weight constantly reminding him of the fortune that it contained. The dogs were held in leash, eager to be quit of the harsh rock-chasms through which they had just travelled, and to strike their lope on a trail over the open country beyond.
MacGregor sat wearily on one side of the sledge. The exertions and excitement of the afternoon had exhausted him in his weakened condition. He sat slumped together, only half conscious of what was going on. In a moment he would be sound asleep.
And Reivers had the gold. He had succeeded. He had the gold, and he had a supply of food and a strong, fresh team of dogs eager for the trail. All that was necessary was to turn the dogs toward the south. Two, three, four days’ travelling and he would strike the railroad. And the railroad ran to tide-water, and on the water steamboats would carry him away to the world he had planned to return to.
It was very simple, as simple as had been Tillie’s scheme for getting rid of Moir. But he couldn’t do it. He didn’t want to do it. He wanted to do just one thing now, above all others, and that was what he set out to do.
He stood down and strapped the belt of gold around MacGregor’s middle. MacGregor was sound asleep now, so he placed him on the sledge and bound him carefully in place. Tillie’s chant died down in astonishment.
“We take the old one with us?” she asked.
“We do,” said Reivers. “Hi-yah! Together there! Mush, mush up!”
To Tillie’s joy he turned the dogs to the northwest, in the direction of the camp of her people. The Snow-Burner was lost to her; she knew that, when he had refused her help with Shanty Moir; but it was something to have him come back to the camp.
Reivers, driving hard and straight all night, brought his team up the river-bed to Tillie’s camp in the morning. MacGregor was out of his head by then, and for the day they stopped to rest and feed. Reivers sat in the big tepee alone with MacGregor and fed him soft food which the old squaws had prepared. In the evening he again tied the old man and the belt of gold to the sledge and hitched up the dogs. Tillie had read her doom in his eyes, but nevertheless she came out to the sledge prepared to follow.
“You do not come any farther,” said Reivers as he picked up the dog-whip.
Tillie nodded.
“I know. With gold the Snow-Burner can be a great man among the white women. Will the Snow-Burner come back—some time?”
“I will never come back.”
“Ah-hh-hh!” Tillie’s breath came fiercely. “Sothere is one white woman, then. If I had known——”
But Reivers was whipping and cursing the dogs and hurrying out of hearing.
MacGregor, clear-headed from the rest and food, but still weak, lifted his head and looked around as the sledge sped over the frozen snow.
“A new trail to me, lad,” he said. “Where to, now?”
“On a fool’s trail,” laughed Reivers bitterly, and drove on.
Next morning MacGregor recognised the land ahead.
“Straight for Dumont’s Camp we’re heading, lad,” he said. “Is it there we go?”
“Yes.”
They came to Dumont’s Camp as night fell. Reivers halted and made sundry enquiries.
“In a shack half ways between here and Fifty Mile,” was the substance of the replies.
“Hi-yah! Mush, mush up!” and they were on the trail again.
At daylight the next day, from a rise in the land, he saw the shack that had been designated. Smoke was rising from the chimney, and a small figure that he knew even at that distance came out, filled a pail with snow and went in again.
Reivers stopped his dogs some distance from the shack. He threw MacGregor, gold belt and all, over his shoulder and went up to the door and knocked. For a second or two he smiled triumphantly as Hattie MacGregor opened the door and stood speechless at what she saw. Then he bowed low, laid his burden on the floor and went out without a word.
The dogs shuddered as they heard him laugh coming back to them.
“Hi-yah, mush!”
He drove them furiously into a gully that shut out the sight of the shack and sat down on the sledge. The dogs whined. It was the time for the morning meal and the master was making no preparations to eat.
“Still, you curs!” The whip fell mercilessly among them and they crouched in terror.
The time went by. The sun began to climb upward in the sky. Still the man sat on the sledge, making no preparations for the morning meal. The memory of the whip-cuts died in the dogs’ minds under the growing clamour of hunger. They began to whine again.
“Still!” The master was on his feet, but the whip had fallen from his hand.
Down at the end of the gully a small figure was coming over the snow. She was running, and her red hair flowed back over her shoulders, and she laughed aloud as she came up to him. The pain was gone from Hattie MacGregor’s lips, and her whole face beamed with a complete, unreasoning happiness, but the pride of her breed shone in her eyes even unto the end.
“Well, well!” sneered Reivers. “Aren’t you afraid to come so near anything that pollutes the air?”
She laughed again. She did not speak. She only looked at him and smiled, and by the Eve-wisdom in the smile he knew that his secret was hers. He felt himself weakening, but the Snow-Burner died hard. He tried to laugh his old, cold laugh, but the ice had been thawed in it.
“What do you want?” he sneered. “I’m not a good enough man for you. Why did you come out here?”
“Because I knew you would not go away again,” she said, “and because now I know you are a good enough man for me.”
“You red-haired trull!” He raised his hand to strike her.
She did not flinch; she merely smiled up at him confidently, contentedly. Suddenly she caught his clenched fist in her hands and kissed it. With a curse Reivers swung around on his dogs.
“Hi-yah! Mush, mush out of here!”
Out of the gully into the open he kicked and drove them. He did not look back. He knew that she was following.
She followed patiently. She knew that there was nothing else for her to do. She had known it the first day she had looked into his eyes. He was her man, and she must follow him.
So she trudged on behind her man as he forced the tired dogs to move. She smiled as she walked, and the wisdom of Eve was in her smile. She had reason to smile, for the Snow-Burner was driving straight toward the little shack.
THE END
THE END