Hattie MacGregor stilled her uncle’s retort with a shake of her golden-red head, crossed to the fireplace and took up a bowl that was simmering there, and approached the bed. Reivers looked at her closely, striving to catch her eye, but she seated herself beside him without apparently paying the slightest attention. She spoke no word, made no sign to welcome him back from his unconsciousness, but merely held a spoonful of the steaming broth up to his lips.
There was a certain dexterity in her movements which told that she had performed this action many, many times before, and there was nothing in her manner to indicate her sensibility of the change in his condition. Reivers opened his mouth to laugh, and the girl dexterously tilted the contents of the spoon down his throat.
“You fool!” he sputtered, half strangling.
He strove to rise, but her round, warm arm held him down. Over by the fireplace Duncan MacGregor slapped his thigh and chuckled deep down in his hairy throat, but on the face of his niece there was only the determined patience of the nurse dealing with a patient not yet entirely responsible for his behaviour.
She was not surprised at his outbreak, Reivers saw. Apparently she had fed him many times just so—he utterly helpless and childish, she capable and calm. Apparently she was determined to sit there, firm and patient, until he was ready to take his broth quietly and without fuss.
Indignantly he raised his hands to take the bowl from her; then he opened his eyes wide in surprise. He was so weak that he could barely lift his arms, and when she offered him a second spoonful he swallowed it without further demur.
“Ah, well, we’ll soon be able to take the trail again,” drawled MacGregor mockingly. “We’re getting strong now; soon we’ll be able to eat with our own hands.”
“Hold tongue, Uncle,” snapped the girl, and continued to feed her patient.
“I suppose I must thank you?” taunted Reivers, when the bowl was empty.
Hattie MacGregor made no sign to indicate that she had heard. She put the bowl away, felt Reivers’ pulse, laid her hand upon his forehead—never looking at him the while—arranged the pillows under his head, tucked him in and without speaking went out. Reivers’ eyes followed her till the door closed behind her.
“The little spitfire!” he growled in grudging admiration; and Duncan MacGregor, by the fire, laughed till the room echoed.
Next morning when she came to feed him Reivers angrily reached for the bowl. He was stronger than the day before, and he held his hands forth without trembling.
“There’s no need of your feeding me by hand any longer,” said he. “I assure you I’ll enjoy my food much better alone than I do with you feeding me.”
The girl seated herself at the bunk-side, holding the bowl out of his reach, and looked him quietly in the eyes. It was the first time she had appeared to notice his return to consciousness, and Reivers smiled quizzically at her scrutiny. She did not smile in return, merely studied him as if he were an interesting subject.
In the grey light of morning Reivers for the first time saw her with eyes cleared of the fever blur. His smile vanished, for he saw that this woman, to him, was different from any woman he ever had known before. And he had known many.
In her wide grey eyes there rode a sorrow that reached out and held the observer, despite her evident efforts to keep it hidden. But the mouth belied the eyes. It was set with an expression of determination, almost superhuman, almost savage. It was as if this girl, just rounding her twenties, had turned herself into a force for the accomplishment of an object. Themouth was harsh, almost lipless, in its set. Yet, beneath all this, the woman in Hattie MacGregor was obvious, soft, yearning.
Many women had had a part in Reivers’ life—far too many. None of them had held his interests longer than for a few months; none of them had he failed to tame and break. And none of them had reached below the hard husk of him and touched the better man as Hattie MacGregor did at this moment. His past experiences, his past attitude toward women, his past manner of life, flashed through his mind, each picture bringing with it a stab of remorse.
Remorse! The Snow Burner remorseful! He laughed his old laugh of contempt and defiance of all the world, but, though he refused to acknowledge it to himself, the old, invincible, self-assured ring was not in it. This girl was not to him what other women had been, and he saw that he could not tame her as he had tamed them.
Strange thoughts rose in his mind. He wished that the past had been different. He actually felt unworthy. Well, the past was past. It had died with him in the river. He was beginning a new life, a new name, a new man. Why couldn’t he? He drove the weak thoughts away. What nonsense! He—Hell-Camp Reivers—getting soft over a woman? Pooh!
“I said I could feed myself,” he snarled. “Give me that bowl. I don’t want you around.”
For reply she dipped the spoon into the food and held it ready.
“Lie down quietly, please,” she said coldly. “This is no time for keeping up your play of being a big man.”
“Give me that bowl,” he commanded.
“Uncle,” she called quietly.
Her big kinsman came lurching in from the other room of the cabin.
“Aye, lass?” said he.
“It looks as if we would have to obey Father Batiste’s directions and feed him by force,” said the girl quietly. “He has come out of the fever, but he hasn’t got his senses back. He thinks of feeding himself. Do you get the straps, Uncle. You recollect Father Batiste’s orders.”
Duncan MacGregor scratched his hairy head in puzzled fashion.
“How now, stranger?” he growled. “Can you no take your food in peace?”
“I can take it without anybody’s help,” insisted Reivers. He knew that the situation was ridiculous, but he saw no way of getting the whip-hand.
“It was the word of the good Father, without whom you would now be resting out in the snow with a cairn of rock over you, that you should be fed so much and so little for some days after your senses come back,” said MacGregor slowly. “I do not ken the right of it quite, but the lass does. The lass—she’ll have her way, I suspect. I can do naught but obey her orders.”
“Get the straps,” commanded the girl curtly.
Reivers glared at her, but she looked back without the least losing her self-possession or determination.
“You’ll pay for this!” he snorted.
“Will you take your food without the straps?” said she.
For a minute their eyes met in conflict.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” snapped Reivers. “Have your silly way.”
“Good. That’s a good boy,” she said softly; and Duncan Roy ran from the room choking.
“You see,” she continued, as he swallowed the firstspoonful, “it isn’t always possible to have your own way, is it? I am doing this only for your own good.”
“Hold your tongue,” he growled. “I’ve got to eat this food, but I don’t have to listen to your talk.”
“Quite right,” she agreed, and the meal was finished in silence.
At noon she fed him again, without speaking a word. Apparently she had given her uncle orders likewise to refrain from talking to Reivers, for not a word did he speak during the day.
In the evening the same silent feeding took place. After she and her uncle had supped, they drew up to the fireplace, where, in silence, Duncan repaired a dog-harness while the girl sewed busily at a fur coat. At short intervals the uncle cast a look toward Reivers’ bunk, then choked a chuckle in his beard, each chuckle bringing a glance of reproof from his niece.
“No, Hattie,” MacGregor broke out finally, “I cannot hold tongue any longer. Company is no’ so plentiful in the North that we can sit by and have no speech. Do you keep still if you wish—I must talk. Stranger, are you going to tell me about yoursel’, as I asked you yestereve?”
“Does her Royal Highness, the Red-Headed Chieftainess, permit me to speak?” queried Reivers sarcastically.
“’Twas your own sel’ told me to hold tongue,” said the girl evenly, without looking up. “I am glad to see you are reasonable enough to give in.”
“Let be, Hattie,” grumbled the old man. “He’s our guest, and we in his debt. Stranger, who are you?”
“Nobody,” said Reivers.
“Ah!” cried the girl. “Now he’s come to his senses, sure enough.”
“Hattie!” said the old man ominously. “I beg pardon for her uncivility, stranger.”
“Never mind,” said Reivers lightly. “Apparently she doesn’t know any better. Speaking to you, sir, I am nobody. I’m as much nobody as a child born yesterday. My life—as far as you’re concerned—began up there on the rocks in the Dead Lands.
“I died just a few days before that—died as effectively as if a dozen preachers had read the service over me. You don’t understand that. You’ve got a simple mind. But I tell you I’m beginning a new life as completely as if there was no life behind me, and as you know all that’s happened in this new life, you see there’s nothing for me to tell you about myself.”
“You died,” repeated the old man slowly. “I’ll warrant you had a good reason.”
“A fair one. I wanted to live. I died to save my life.”
“Speak plain!” growled MacGregor. “You were not fleeing from the law?”
“No—as I told you yesterday. The only law I was fleeing from was the good old one that cheap men make when they become a mob.”
“I tak’ it they had a fair reason for becoming a mob?”
“The best in the world,” agreed Reivers. “They wanted to kill me. Now, why they wanted to do that is something that belongs to my other life—with the other man—has nothing at all to do with this man—with me—and therefore I am not going to tell you anything about it, except this: I didn’t come away with anything that belonged to them, except possibly my life.”
MacGregor nodded sagely as Reivers ended.
“And his own bare life a man has a right to get away with if he can, even though it’s propertyforfeited to others,” he said. “I suppose you have, or had, a name?”
“I did. I haven’t now; I haven’t thought of one that would please me.”
“How would the ‘Woman Tamer’ suit you?” asked the girl, without pausing in her sewing. “You remember you told me one of your specialties was taming spitfires like me?”
Reivers smiled.
“I am glad to see that you’ve become sufficiently interested in me, Miss MacGregor, to select me a name.”
“Interested!” she flared; then subsided and bent over her sewing. “I will speak no more, Uncle,” she said meekly.
“Good!” sneered Reivers. “Your manners are improving. And now, Mr. MacGregor, what about yourselves, and your brother, and a mine, and a man named Moir that I’ve heard you speak of?”
Duncan MacGregor tossed a fresh birch chunk into the fire and carefully poked the coals around it. Outside, the dogs, burrowing in the snow, sent up to the sky their weird night-cry, a cry of prayer and protest, protest against the darkness and mystery of night, prayer for the return of the light of day. A wind sprang up and whipped dry snow against the cabin window, and to the sound of its swishing wail Duncan MacGregor began to speak.
“Little as you’ve seen fit to tell about yourself, stranger,” he said, “’tis plain from your behaviour out on the rocks that you’re no man of that foul Welsh cutthroat and thief, Shanty Moir. For the manner in which you dealt with yon man, we owe you a debt.”
“We owe him nothing,” interrupted the niece. “Had he not interfered, I would have found the way to Shanty Moir.”
“But as how?”
“What matter as how? What matter what happens to me if I could find what has become of my father and bring justice to the head of Shanty Moir?”
MacGregor shook his head.
“We owe you a debt,” he continued, speaking to Reivers, “and can not refuse to tell you how it is with us. It is no pleasant situation we are in, as you may have judged. My brother, father of Hattie, is—or was, we do not know which—James MacGregor, ‘Red’ MacGregor so-called in this land, therefore MacGregor Roy, as is all our breed. You would have heard of him did you belong in this country.
“Ten year ago we built this cabin, he and I, and settled down to trap the country, for the fur here is good. Five year ago a Cree half-breed gave James a sliver of rock to weight a net with, and the rock, curse it forever, was over half gold. The breed could not recall where the rock had come from, save that he had chucked it into his canoe some place up north.
“James MacGregor stopped trapping then. He began to look for the spot where the gilty rock came from. Three years he looked and did not find it. Two years ago Shanty Moir came down the river and bided here, and Moir was a prospector among other things. Together they found it, after nearly two years looking together; for James took this Moir into partnership, and that was the unlucky day of his life.”
MacGregor kicked savagely at the fire and sat silent for several minutes.
“Six months gone they found it,” he continued dully, “in the Summer time. They came in for provisions—for provisions for all Winter. A depositfor two men to work, they said. My brother would not even tell me where they found it. The gold had got into his brain. It was his life’s blood to him. We only knew that it was somewhere up yonder.”
He embraced the whole North with a despairing sweep of his long arms and continued:
“Then they went back, five months, two weeks gone, to dig out the gold, the two of them, my brother, James, and the foul Welsh thief, Shanty Moir. For foul he has proven. In three months my brother had promised he would be back to say all was well with him. We have had no word, no word in these many months.
“But Shanty Moir we have heard of. Aye, we have heard of him. At Fifty Mile, and at Dumont’s Camp he had been, throwing dust and nuggets across the bars and to the painted women, boasting he is king of the richest deposit in the North, and offering to kill any man who offers to follow his trail to his holdings. Aye, that we have heard. And that must mean only one thing—the cut-throat Moir has done my brother to death and is flourishing on the gold that drew James MacGregor to his doom.
“Well,” he went on harshly, “what men have found others can find. We have sent word broadcast that we will find Shanty Moir and his holdings, and that I will have an accounting with him, aye, an accounting that will leave but one of us above ground, if it takes me the rest of my life.”
“And mine,” interjected the girl hotly. “Shanty Moir is mine, and I take toll for my father’s life. It’s no matter what comes to me, if I can bring justice to Shanty Moir for what he has done to my father. My hand—my own hand will take toll when we run the dog to earth.”
In his bunk Reivers laughed scornfully.
“I’ve a good notion to go hunting this Moir and bring him to you just to see if you could make those words good,” said he. “With your own hand, eh? You’d fail, of course, at the last moment, being a woman, but it would almost be worth while getting this Moir for you to see what you’d do. Yes, it would be an interesting experiment.”
It was the girl’s turn to laugh now, her laughter mocking his.
“‘Twould be interesting to see what you would do did you stand face to face with Shanty Moir,” she sneered. “Yes, ’twould be an interesting experiment—to see how you’d crawl. For this can be said of the villain, Shanty Moir, that he does not run from men to get help from women. You bring Shanty Moir in! How would you do it—with your mouth?”
“On second thought it would be cruel and unusual punishment to make any man listen to your tongue,” concluded Reivers solemnly.
MacGregor growled and shook his head.
“There’s no doubt that Shanty Moir of the black heart is a hard-grown, experienced man,” said he. “Henchmen of his—three of them, Welshmen all—came through here while James and he were hunting the mine, and he treated them like dogs and they him like a chieftain. ’Twas one of them you slew with the rock out yon, and the matter is very plain: Shanty Moir has got word to them and they have come to the mine and overpowered my brother James. You may judge of the strong hand he holds over his men when a single one of them dares to raid my camp in my absence and steal the daughter of James MacGregor for his chieftain—a strong, big man. ’Twill make it all the sweeter when we get him. He will die hard.”
“Also—being of a thrifty breed—you won’t feel sorry at getting hold of whatever gold he’s taken out,” suggested Reivers.
“That’s understood,” said MacGregor, and put a fresh chunk on the fire for the night.
Next morning Hattie MacGregor, after she had fed him his morning’s meal, said casually to Reivers:
“You have about six days more to pump my uncle and get all he knows about my father’s mine. In six days you should be strong enough to travel, and so long and no longer do I keep you.”
“Six days?” repeated Reivers. “I may take it into my head to start before.”
“And that’s all the good that would do you,” she replied promptly. “You don’t go from here until you are firm on your feet, and that will be six days, about.”
“Your interest flatters me,” he mocked.
“Interest!” Her laugh was bitter. “No stray, wounded cur even goes from this camp till he’s fit to rustle a living on the trail. I could do no less even for you.”
“And if I should make up my mind and go?”
“I would shoot you if necessary to keep you here till my duty by you is done!”
“You spitfire!” laughed Reivers, hiding the admiration that leaped into his eyes. “And what makes you think I’m going hunting for this alleged mine when I depart from your too warm hospitality?”
“Pooh! ’Tis easy enough to see that you’re that kind—you with your long, hungry nose! I was watchingyou when my uncle babbled away last night. You’ve naught a thing in the world but the clothes you stand in. What would you do but go snooping around when you hear of gold? I see it in your mean eyes. Well, seek all you please. You’re welcome. You’ll not interfere with our quest. In the first place, you have not the heart to stay on the trail long enough to succeed; in the second, you’d back-track quick enough did you once come face to face with Shanty Moir.”
“And you—I suppose this bad man, Shanty Moir, will quail when he sees your red hair? Or perhaps you expect to charm him as you charmed the gentleman who had you tied on the sledge?”
“I do not know that,” she said without irritation. “But I do know that my uncle and I will run Shanty Moir to earth, and that he will pay in full for the wrong he has done.”
“You silly, childish fool!” he broke out. “Haven’t you brains enough to realise what an impossible wild-goose chase you’re on? Since it took your father five years to find the mine, you ought to realise that it’s pretty hard to locate. Since he didn’t find it until this Moir, a prospector, came to help him, you ought to understand that it takes a miner to find it.
“You’re no miner. Your uncle is no miner. You’ve neither of you had the slightest experience in this sort of thing. You wouldn’t know the signs if you saw them. You’ll go wandering aimlessly around, maybe walking over Shanty Moir’s head; because, since nobody has stumbled across his camp, it must be so well hidden that it can’t be seen unless you know right where to look. Find it! You’re a couple of children!”
“Mayhap. But we are not so aimless as you may think. We go to Fifty Mile and to Dumont’s Campand stay. Sooner or later Shanty Moir will come there, to throw my father’s gold over the bars and to worse. It may be a month, a year—it doesn’t make any difference. But I suppose a great man like you has a quicker and surer way of doing it?”
“I have,” said Reivers.
“No doubt. I could see your eyes grow greedy when you heard my uncle tell of gold.”
“Oh, no; not especially,” taunted Reivers. “The gold is an incident. Shanty Moir is what interests me. He seems to be a gentleman of parts. I’m going to get him. I’m going to bring you face to face with him. I want to see if you could make good the strong talk you’ve been dealing out as to what you would do. You interest me that way, Miss MacGregor, and that way only. It will be an interesting experiment to get you Shanty Moir.”
“Thank Heaven!” she said grimly. “We’ll soon be rid of you and your big talk. Then I can forget that any man gave me the name you gave me and lived to brag about it afterward.”
He laughed, as one laughs at a petulant child.
“You will never forget me,” he said. “You know that you will not forget me, if you live a thousand years.”
“I have forgotten better men than you,” she said and went out, slamming the door.
That evening Reivers sat up by the fire and further plied old MacGregor with questions concerning the mine.
“You say that your brother claimed the mine lay to the north,” he said. “I suppose you have searched the north first of all?”
“For a month I have done nothing else,” was the reply. “I have not gone far enough north. My brother James said it lay north from here; and ’twasnorth he and Shanty Moir went when they started on their last trip together, from which my brother did not return or send word.”
“Dumont’s Camp and Fifty Mile, where Moir’s been on sprees; lay to the west.”
“Northwest, aye. Four days’ hard mushing to Fifty Mile. Dumont’s hell-hole’s a day beyond.”
“And you think the mine lies to the north of that?”
“Aye. More like in a direct line north of here, for ’twas so they went when they left here.”
Reivers hid the smile of triumph that struggled on his lips. The Dead Lands were strange country to him, but in the land north of Fifty Mile he was at home. In his wanderings he had spent months in that country in company with many other deluded men who thought to dig gold out of the bare, frozen tundra. He had found no gold there, and neither had any one else. There was no gold up there, could be none there, and, what was more important to him just now, there was no rock formation, nothing but muskeg and tundra. The mine could not be up north.
It must, however, be within easy mushing distance of Fifty Mile and Dumont’s Camp, say two or three days, else Shanty Moir would not have hied himself to these settlements when the need for riot and wassail overcame him.
“You know the ground between here and Fifty Mile, I suppose?” he said suddenly.
“’Tis my trapping-ground,” replied MacGregor.
So the mine couldn’t be east of the settlements. It was to the west or the south.
“Your brother was particularly careful to keep the location of his find secret even from you?”
“Aye,” said MacGregor sorrowfully. “It had gone to his head, he had searched so long, and the find was so big. He took no chances that I might knowit, or his daughter Hattie; only the thief, Shanty Moir.”
And he said that the mine lay to the north. That might mean that it lay to the south—west or south of the settlements, there his search would lie. It was new country to him, and, as MacGregor well knew before he gave him his confidence, a man not knowing the land might wander aimlessly for years without covering those vast, broken reaches. But MacGregor did not know of the Chippewa squaw, Tillie, and her people.
“And now I suppose you will be able to find it soon,” snapped Hattie MacGregor, “now that you have pumped my uncle dry?”
“I will,” said Reivers. “I’ll be there waiting for you when you come along.” And Duncan MacGregor chuckled deeply.
For the remainder of his stay at the cabin, Reivers maintained a sullen silence toward the girl. Had she been different, had she affected him differently, he would have cursed her for daring to disturb him even to this slight extent. But he knew that if she had been different she would not have disturbed him at all. Well, he would soon be away, and then he would forget her.
He had an object again. His nature was such that he craved power and dominance over men, as another man craves food. He would not live at all unless he had power. He had used this power too ruthlessly at Cameron-Dam Camp, and it had been wrested from him. For the time being he was down among the herd. But not for long.
Shanty Moir had a mine some place south or west of the settlements, and the mine yielded gold nuggets and gold dust for Shanty Moir to fling across the bars. Gold spells power. Given gold, Reivers wouldhave back his old-time power over men, aye, and over women. Not merely a power up there in the frozen North, but in the world to which he had long ago belonged: the world of men in dress clothes, of lights and soft rugs, or women, soft-speaking women, shimmery gowns and white shoulders, their eyes and apparel a constant invitation to the great adventure of love.
After all, that was the world that he belonged in. And gold would give him power there, and in that whirl he would forget this red-haired, semi-savage who looked him in the eye as no other woman ever had dared. His fists clenched as his thoughts lighted up the future. The Snow-Burner had died, but he would live again, and he would forget, absolutely and completely, Hattie MacGregor.
On the morning of the sixth day Duncan MacGregor gravely placed before him outside the cabin door a pair of light snowshoes and a grub-bag filled with food for four days. Reivers strapped on the snowshoes and ran his arms through the bagstraps without a word.
“Stranger,” said MacGregor, holding out his hand, “I did not like you when first I saw you. I do not say I like you now. But—shake hands.”
Reivers hurriedly shook hands and tore himself away. He had resolved to go without seeing Hattie, and he was inwardly raging at himself because he found this resolution hard to keep. He laid his course for the nearest rise of land, half a mile away. Once over the rise the cabin would be shut out of sight, and even though he should weaken and look back there would be no danger of letting her see.
Bent far over, head down, lunging along with the cunning strides of the trained snowshoer, he topped the rise and dropped down on the farther side. Therehe paused to rest himself and draw breath, and as he stood there Hattie MacGregor and her dog-team swept at right angles across his trail.
She was riding boy-fashion, half sitting, half lying, on the empty sledge, driving the dogs furiously for their daily exercise. She did not speak. She merely looked up at him as she went past. Then she was gone in a flurry of snow, and Reivers went forth on his quest of power with a curse on his lips and in his heart the determination that no weakening memories of a girl’s wistful eyes should interfere with his aim.
Reivers travelled steadily for an hour at the best pace that was in him. It was not a good pace, for he was far from being in his old physical condition, and the lift and swing of a snowshoe will cramp the calves and ankle-tendons of a man grown soft from long bed-lying, no matter how cunning may be his stride.
He swore a little at first over his slow progress. He was like a wolf, suddenly released from a trap, who desires to travel far, swiftly and instantly, and who finds that the trap has made him lame.
Reivers wanted to put the MacGregor cabin, and the scenes about it, which might remind him of Hattie, behind him with a rush. But the rush, he soon found, threatened to cripple him, so he must perforce give it up. The trail that he had set out to make was not one that any man, least of all one recently convalescent, could hope to cover in a single burst of speed.
He was going to the Winter camp of the people of Tillie, the squaw. The camp lay somewhere in the northwest. How far away he did not know; and it was no part of his plans to arrive at the camp of the Chippewas depleted in energy and resource. The role he had set out to play now called for the character of the Snow-Burner at his best—dominant, unconquerable. Therefore, when he found that his firstefforts at speed threatened to cripple him with the treacherous snow-shoe cramp, he resigned himself to a pace which would have shamed him had he been in good condition. It was poor snow-shoeing, but at the end of an hour he had placed between himself and all possible sight of Hattie MacGregor the first ragged rock-ramparts of the Dead Lands, and he was content.
On the western slope of a low ridge he unstrapped his snow-shoes and sat down on a bare boulder for a rest. His heart throbbed nervously from his exertion and his lungs gasped weakly. But with each breath of the crisp air his strength was coming back to him, and in his head the brains of the Snow-Burner worked as of old. He smiled with great self-satisfaction. He was not considering his condition, was not counting the difficulties that lay in his path. He was merely picturing, with lightning-like play of that powerful mental machinery of his, the desperate nature of the adventure toward which he was travelling.
It was desperate enough even to thrill Hell-Camp Reivers. For probably never did born adventurer set forth of his own free will on a more deadly, more hopeless-looking trail. As he sat on the rock there in the Dead Lands, Reivers was in better condition than on his flight from Cameron-Dam Camp to this extent: the bullet-hole in his shoulder was healed, and, he had recuperated from the fever brought on by exposure and exhaustion. That was all. He was still the bare man with empty hands. He possessed nothing in the world but the clothes he stood in, the food on his back and the gift snow-shoes on his feet.
He had not even a knife that might be called a weapon, for the case-knife that old MacGregor had given him upon parting could scarcely be reckonedsuch. In this condition he was setting forth—first, to find a cunningly hidden mine; second, to take it and keep it for his own from one Shanty Moir, who treated his henchmen like dogs and was looked up to as a chieftain.
The Snow-Burner lived again as he contemplated the possibilities of a clash with Moir. If what the MacGregors had said was true, Shanty Moir was a boss man himself. And as instinctively and eagerly as one ten-pronged buck tears straight through timber, swamp and water to battle with another buck whose deep-voiced challenge proclaims him similarly a giant, so Reivers was going toward Shanty Moir.
He leaped to his feet, with flashing eyes, at the thought of what was coming. Then he remembered his weakened condition and sat down again. For the immediate present, until his full strength returned, he must make craft take the place of strength.
When he was ready to start again, Reivers took his bearings from the sun, it being a clear day, and laid his trail as straight toward the northwest as the formation of the Dead Lands would allow. He slept that night by a hot spring. A tiny rivulet ran unfrozen from the spring southward down into the maze of barren stone, a thread of dark, steaming water, wandering through the white, frozen snow.
Had he been a little less tired with the day’s march Reivers might have paid more attention to this phenomenon that evening. In the morning he awoke with such eagerness to be on toward his adventure that he marched off without bestowing on the stream more than a casual glance. And later he came to curse his carelessness.
Bearing steadily toward the northwest, his course lay in the Dead Lands for the greater part of the day. Shortly before sundown he saw with relief that aheadthe rocks and ridges gave way to the flat tundra, with small clumps of stunted willows dotting the flatness, like tiny islands in a sea of snow.
Reivers quickened his pace. Out on the tundra he hurried straight to the nearest bunch of willows. Even at a distance of several rods the chewed white branches of the willows told him their story, and he gave vent to a shout of relief. The caribou had been feeding there. The Chippewas lived on the caribou in Winter. He had only to follow the trail of the animals and he would soon run across the moccasin tracks of his friends, the Indians.
Luck favoured him more than he hoped for. At his shout there was a crash in a clump of willows a hundred yards ahead and a bull caribou lumbered clumsily into the open. At the sight of him the beast snorted loudly and turned and ran. From right and left came other crashes, and in the gathering dusk the herd which had been stripping the willows fled in the wake of the sentinel bull, their ungainly gait whipping them out of sight and hearing in uncanny fashion.
Reivers smiled. The camp of Tillie’s people would not be far from the feeding ground of the caribou. He ate his cold supper, crawled into the shelter of the willows and went to sleep.
Dry, drifting snow half hid the tracks of the caribou during the night, and in the morning he was forced to wait for the late-coming daylight before picking up the trail. The herd had gone straight westward, and Reivers followed the signs, his eyes constantly scanning the snow for moccasin tracks or other evidence of human beings.
In the middle of the forenoon, in a birch and willow swamp, he jumped the animals again. They caught his scent at a mile’s distance, and Reiverscrouched down and watched avidly as they streaked from the swamp to security.
To the north of the swamp lay the open, snow-covered tundra, where even the knife-like fore-hoof of the caribou would have hard time to dig out a living in the dead of Winter. To the south lay clumps of brush and stunted trees, ideal shelter and feed.
The animals went north. Reivers nodded in great satisfaction. There were wolves or Indians to the south, probably the latter. Accordingly he turned southward. Toward noon he found his first moccasin track, evidently the trail of a single hunter who had come northward, but not quite far enough, on a hunt for caribou.
The track looped back southward and Reivers trailed it. Soon a set of snow-shoe tracks joined the moccasins, and Reivers, after a close scrutiny had revealed the Chippewa pattern in the snow, knew that he was on the right track. The tracks dropped down on to the bed of a solidly frozen river and continued on to the south.
Other tracks became visible. When they gathered together and made a hard-packed trail down the middle of the river, Reivers knew that a camp was not far away, and grew cautious.
He found the camp as the swift Winter darkness came on, a group of half a dozen tepees set snugly in a bend of the river, one large tepee in the middle easily recognisable as that of Tillie, the squaw, chief of the band.
Reivers sat down to wait. Presently he heard the camp-dogs growling and fighting over their evening meal and knew that they would be too occupied to notice and announce the approach of a stranger. Also, at this time the people of the camp would be in their tepees, supping heavily if the hunter’s god had beenfavourably inclined, and gnawing the cold bones of yesterday if that irrational deity had been unkind.
By the whining note in the growls of the dogs, Reivers judged that the latter was the case this evening; and when he moved forward and stood listening outside the flap of the big tepee he knew that it was so. Within, an old squaw’s treble rose faintly in a whining chant, of which Reivers caught the despairing motif:
Black is the face of the sun, Ah wo!The time has come for the old to die. Ah wo, ah wo!There is meat only to keep alive the young. Ah wo!We who are old must die. Ah wo! Ah wo! Ah wo!
Any other white man but Reivers would have shuddered at the terrible, primitive story which the wail told. Reivers smiled. His old luck was with him. The camp was short of meat and the hunters had given up hopes of making a kill.
With deft, experienced fingers he unloosed the flap of the tepee. There was no noise. Suddenly the old squaw’s wail ceased; those in the tepee looked up from their scanty supper. The Snow-Burner was standing inside the tepee, the flap closed behind him.
There were six people in the tepee, the old squaw, an old man, two young hunters, a young girl, and Tillie. They were gathered around the fire-stone in the centre, making a scant meal of frozen fish. Tillie, by virtue of her position, had the warmest place and the most fish.
No one spoke a word as they became aware of his presence. Only on Tillie’s face there came a look in which the traces of hunger vanished. Reivers stood looking down at the group for a moment in silence. Then he strode forward, thrust Tillie to one side and sat down in her place. For Reivers knew Indians.
“Feed me,” he commanded, tossing his grub-bag to her.
He did not look at her as she placed before him the entire contents of the bag. Having served him she retired and sat down behind him, awaiting his pleasure. Reivers ate leisurely of the bountiful supply of cold meat that remained of his supply. When he had his fill he tossed small portions to the old squaw, the old man and the young girl.
“Hunters are mighty,” he mocked in the Chippewa tongue, as the young men avidly eyed the meat. “They kill what they eat. The meat they do not kill would stick in their mighty throats.”
Last of all he beckoned Tillie to come to his side and eat what remained.
“Men eat meat,” he continued, looking over the heads of the two hunters. “Old people and children are content with frozen fish. When I was here before there were men in this camp. There was meat in the tepees. The dogs had meat. Now I see the men are all gone.”
One of the hunters raised his arms above his head, a gesture indicating strength, and let them fall resignedly to his side, a sign of despair.
“The caribou are gone, Snow-Burner,” he said dully. “That is why there is no meat. All gone. The god of good kills has turned his face from us. Little Bear—” to the old man—“how long have our people hunted the caribou here?”
Little Bear lifted his head, his wizened, smoked face more a black, carved mask than a human countenance.
“Big Bear, my father, was an old man when I was born,” he said slowly. “When he was a boy so small that he slept with the women, our people came here for the Winter hunt.”
“Oh, Little Bear,” chanted the hunter, “great was your father, the hunter; great were you as a hunter in your young days. Was there ever a Winter before when the caribou were not found here in plenty?”
The old man shook his head.
“Oh, Snow-Burner,” said the hunter, “these are the words of Little Bear, whose age no one knows. Always the caribou have been plenty here along this river in the Winter. Longer than any old man’s tales reach back have they fed upon the willows. They are not here this Winter. The gods are angry with us. We hunt. We hunt till we lie flat on the snow. We find no signs. There are men still here, Snow-Burner, but the caribou have gone.”
“Have gone, have gone, have gone. Ah wo!” chanted the old squaw.
“Where do you hunt?” asked Reivers tersely.
“Where we have always hunted; where our fathers hunted before us,” was the reply. “Along the river in the muskeg and bush to the south we hunt. The caribou are not there. They are nowhere. The gods have taken them away. We must die and go where they are.”
“We must go,” wailed the old squaw. “The gods refuse us meat. We must go.”
Her chant of despair was heard beyond the tepee. In the smaller tents other voices took up the wail. The women were singing the death song, their primitive protest and acquiescence to what they considered the irrevocable pleasure of their dark gods.
Reivers waited until the last squaw had whined herself into silence. Even then he did not speak at once. He knew that these simple people, who for his deeds had given him the expressive name of Snow-Burner, were waiting for him to speak, and he knew the value of silence upon their primitive souls. Hesat with folded arms, looking above the heads of the two hunters.
“You have done well,” he said, nodding impressively, but not looking at the two young men. “You have hunted as men who have the true hunter’s heart. But what can man do when the gods are against him? The gods are against you. They are not against me. To-morrow I slay you your fill of caribou.”
“Snow-Burner,” whispered one of the hunters in the awe-stricken silence that followed this announcement, “there are no caribou here. Are you greater than the gods?”
Reivers looked at him, and at the light in his eyes the young man drew back in fright.
“To-morrow I give you your fill of meat,” he said slowly. “Not only enough for one day, but enough for all Winter. Each tepee shall be piled high with meat. Even the dogs shall eat till they want no more. I have promised. I alone. Do you—” he pointed at the hunters—“bring me to-night the two best rifles in the camp. If they do not shoot true to-morrow, do not let me find you here when I return from the hunt. And now the rest of you—all of you—go from here. Go, I will be alone.”
They rose and went out obediently, except Tillie who watched Reivers’s face with avid eyes as the young girl left the tepee. Then she crawled forward and touched her forehead to his hand, for Reivers had not bestowed upon the girl a glance.
Presently the hunters came back and placed their Winchesters at his feet. He examined each weapon carefully, found them in perfect order and fully loaded, and dismissed the men with a wave of his arm. Tillie sat with bowed head, humbly waiting his pleasure, but Reivers rolled himself in his blanket and lay down alone by the fire.
“I wish to sleep warm,” he said. “See that the fire does not go out till the night is half gone. Be ready to go with me in the hour before daylight. Have the swiftest and strongest team of dogs and the largest sledge hitched and waiting to bear us to the hunt. Go! Now I sleep.”
The snarling of dogs being put into harness awoke him in the morning, but he lay pretending to sleep until Tillie, having overseen the hitching-up, came in, prepared food over the fire, which had not gone out all night, and came timidly and laid a hand on his shoulder.
It was pitch dark when they went from the tepee. The dogs whined at the prospect of a dark trail, and the hunter who held them plied his whip savagely. With the rifles carefully stowed in their buckskin cases on the sledge, and a big camp-axe, as their whole burden, Reivers immediately took command of the dogs and headed down the river.
“Oh, Snow-Burner!” chattered the frozen hunter in disappointment. “There are no caribou to the south. It is a waste of strength to hunt there.”
“There are no caribou anywhere for you,” retorted Reivers. “For me it does not make any difference where I hunt; the spirits are with me. Stay close to the tepees to-day. If any one follows my trail the spirits will refuse their help. Hi-yah! Mush!”
Under the sting of his skilfully wielded whip the big team whirled down the river, Reivers riding in front, Tillie behind. But they did not go south for long. A few miles below the camp Reivers abruptly swung the dogs off the river-bed and bore westward.
Half a mile of this and he shifted and changedhis course to right angles, straight toward the north.
“And now, mush! —— you! Mush for all that’s in you!” he cried, plying the whip. “You’ve got many miles to cover before daylight. Mush, mush!”
He held straight northward until he left the bush and reached the open tundra at the spot where the caribou the day before had swung away farther north. He knew that the herd, being in a country undisturbed by man, would not travel far from the willows where he had jumped them the day before, and he held cautiously on their trail until the first grey of daylight showed a rise in the land ahead. Here he halted the dogs and crept forward on foot.
It was as he expected. The caribou had halted on the other side of the height of land, feeling secure in that region where no man ever came. Below him he could see them moving, and he realised that he must act at once, before they began their travels of the day.
“Tillie,” he whispered, coming back to the sledge, “as soon as you can see the snow on the knoll ahead do you drive the dogs around there, to the right, and swing to the left along the other side of the knoll. Drive fast and shout loud. Shout as if the wolves had you. There are caribou over the knoll. When the dogs see them let them go straight for the herd. But wait till the snow shows white in the daylight.”
Snatching both rifles from their covers, he ran around the left shoulder of the knoll and ambushed in a trifling hollow. He waited patiently, one rifle cocked and in his hand, the other lying ready at his side. The light grew broader; the herd, just out of safe rifle shot, began milling restlessly.
Suddenly, from around the right of the knoll, came the sharp yelp of a dog as Tillie’s leader, rounding the ridge, caught scent and sight of living meat ahead. The caribou stopped dead. Then bedlam broke looseas the dogs saw what was before them. And the caribou, trembling at the wolf-yells of the dogs, broke into their swift, lumbering run and came streaking straight past Reivers at fifty yards’ distance.
Reivers waited until the maddened beasts were running four deep before him. Then the slaughter began. No need to watch the sights here. The crash of shot upon shot followed as quickly as he could pump the lever. There were ten shots in each rifle, and he fired them all before the herd was out of range. Then only the hideous yelps of the maddened dogs tore the morning quiet. A dozen caribou, some dead, some kicking, some trying to crawl away, were scattered over the snow, and Reivers nodded and knew that his hold on Tillie’s people was complete.
The dogs were on the first caribou now, snarling, yelping, fighting, eating, for the time being as wild and savage as any of their wolf forebears. Tillie, spilled from the sledge in the first mad rush of the team, came waddling up to Reivers and bowed down before him humbly.
“Snow-Burner, I know you are only a man, because I alone of my people have seen you among other white men,” she said. “Yet you are more than other men. Snow-Burner, I have lived among white people and know that the talk of spirits is only for children. But how knew you that the caribou were here?”
“The meat is there,” said Reivers, pointing at his kill. “Your work is to take care of it. The axe is on the sledge. Cut off as many saddles and hind-quarters as the dogs can drag back to camp. The rest we will cache here. To your work. Do not ask questions.”
He reloaded and put the wounded animals out of their misery, each with a shot through the head, and sat down and watched her as she slaved at her butcher’s task. Tillie had lived among white people, had beento the white man’s school even, but Reivers knew he would slacken his hold on her if he demeaned himself by assisting her in her toil.
When the dogs had stayed their hunger he leaped into their midst with clubbed rifle and knocked them yelping away from their prey. When they turned and attacked him he coolly struck and kicked till they had enough. Then with the driving whip he beat them till they lay flat in the snow and whined for mercy.
By the time Tillie had the sledge loaded and the rest of the kill cached under a huge heap of snow, it was noon, and the dogs started back with their heavy load, open-mouthed and panting, their excitement divided between fear of the man who had mastered them and the odour of fresh blood that reeked in their avid nostrils.
That night in the camp at the river bend the Indians feasted ravenously, and Reivers, sitting in Tillie’s place as new-made chief, looked on without smiling.
“Oh, Snow-Burner!” said the oldest man at last. “What is it you want with us? Our furs? Speak. We obey your will.”
“Furs are good,” replied Reivers, “when a man has nothing else, but gold is better, and the gold that another man has is best of all.”
The old man cackled respectfully.
“Oh, Snow-Burner! Do you come to us for gold? Do you think we would sit here without meat if we had gold? No, Snow-Burner. What we have you can have. Your will with the tribe from the oldest to the youngest is our law. We owe you our lives. The strength of our young men is yours; the wisdom of our old heads is yours. But gold we have not. Do not turn your frown upon us, Snow-Burner; you must know it is the truth.”
“Since when,” said Reivers sternly, “has my friend, old Little Bear, dared say that the Snow-Burner has the foolishness of a woman in his head? Do you think I come seeking gold from you? No. It is the strength of your young men and the wisdom of your old heads that I want. I seek gold. You shall help me find it.”
Little Bear raised his arms and let them fall in the eloquent Indian gesture of helplessness.
“White men have been here often to seek for gold. The great Snow-Burner once was one of them. They have digged holes in the ground. They have taken the sand from creek bottoms. Did the Snow-Burner, who finds caribou where there are none, find any gold here? No. It is an old story. There is no gold here.”
Reivers leaned forward and spoke harshly.
“Listen, Little Bear; listen all you people. There is gold within three days’ march from here. Much gold. Another man digs it. You will find it for me. I have spoken.”
Silence fell on the tepee. The Indians looked at one another. Little Bear finally spoke with bowed head.
“We do the Snow-Burner’s will.”
Nawa, the youngest and strongest of the hunters, turned to Reivers respectfully.
“Oh, Snow-Burner, Nawa serves you with the strength of his leg and the keenness of his eyes. Nawa knows that the Snow-Burner sees things that are hidden to us. Our oldest men say there is no gold here. Other white men say there is no gold here. The Snow-Burner says there is gold near here.
“The Snow-Burner sees what is hidden to others. Nawa does not doubt. Nawa waits only the Snow-Burner’s commands. But Nawa has been to the settlements at Fifty Mile and Dumont’s Camp. He has heard the white men talk. They talk there of a man who carries gold like gunpowder and gold like bullets, instead of the white man’s money.
“Nawa has talked with Indians who have seen this man. They call him ‘Iron Hair,’ because his hair is black and stiff like the quills of a porcupine. Oh, Snow-Burner, Nawa knows nothing. He merely tells what he has heard. Is this the man the Snow-Burner, too, has heard of!”
Reivers looked around the circle of smoke-blackened faces about the fire. No expression betrayed what was going on behind those wood-like masks, but Reivers knew Indians and sensed that they were all waiting excitedly for his answer.
“That is the man,” he said, and by the complete silence that followed he knew that his reply had caused a sensation that would have made white men swear. “What know you of Iron Hair, Nawa?”
“Oh, Snow-Burner,” said Nawa dolefully, “our tribe knows of Iron Hair to its sorrow. Two moons ago the big man with the hair like a porcupine was at Fifty Mile for whisky and food. He hired Small Eyes and Broken Wing of our tribe to haul the food to his camp, a day’s travelling each way, so he said. The pay was to be big. Small Eyes and Broken Wing went. So much people know. Nothing more. The sledges did not come back. Small Eyes and Broken Wing did not come back. So much do we know of Iron Hair. Nawa has spoken.”
“Once there were men in these tepees,” said Reivers, looking high above Nawa’s head. “Once there were men who would have gone from their tepees to follow to the end the trail of their brothers who go and do not come back. Now there are no men. They sit in the tepees with the women and keep warm. Perhaps Small Eyes and Broken Wing were men and did not care to come back to people who sit by their fires and do not seek to find their brothers who disappear.”
“We have sought, oh, Snow-Burner,” said Nawa hopelessly. “Do not think we have only sat by our fires. We sought to follow the trail of Iron Hair out of Fifty Mile——”
“How ran the trail?” interrupted Reivers.
“Between the north and the west. We went to hunt our brothers. But a storm had blotted out thetrail. Iron Hair had gone out in the storm. Who can follow when there is no trail to see?”
“Once,” resumed Reivers in the tone of contempt, “there were strong dog-drivers and sharp eyes here. They would have found the camp of Iron Hair in those days.”
“Our dogs still are strong, our young men drive well, our eyes are sharp even now, Snow-Burner,” came Nawa’s weary reply. “We searched. Even as we searched for the caribou we searched for the camp of Iron Hair. We found no camp. There is no white man’s camp in this country. There is no camp at all. We searched till nothing the size of a man’s cap could be hidden. The white men from Dumont’s Camp and Fifty Mile have searched for the gold which white men are mad for. They found nothing. At the settlements the white men say, ‘This man must be the devil himself and go to hell for his gold, because his camp certainly is not in this world where men can see it with their eyes.’”
“And the caribou were not in this world, either?” mocked Reivers.
Nawa shook his head.
“White men, too, have looked for the camp of Iron Hair.”
“Many white men,” supplemented old Little Bear. “White men always look when they hear of gold. They find gold if it is to be found. The earth gives up its secrets to them. Snow-Burner, they could not find the place where Iron Hair digs his gold.”
“Nawa and his hunters could not find the caribou,” said Reivers.
There was no reply. He had driven his will home.
“Oh, Snow-Burner,” said Nawa, at last, “as Little Bear has said, we do your will.”
“Good;” Reivers rose and towered over them. “Mywill at present is that you go to your tepees. Sleep soundly. I have work for you in the morning.”
He stood and watched while they filed, stooped over, through the low opening in the tepee wall. They went without question, without will of their own. A stronger will than theirs had caught them and held them. From hence on they were wholly subservient to the superior mentality which was to direct their actions. Reivers smiled. Old MacGregor had felt safe in telling about the mine; a strange man had no chance to find it. But MacGregor did not know of Tillie’s people.
Reivers suddenly turned toward the fire. Tillie was standing there, arrayed in buckskin so white that she must have kept it protected from the tepee smoke in hope of his coming. At the sight of her there came before Reivers’ eyes the picture of Hattie MacGregor’s face as she had looked up at him when he was leaving the MacGregor cabin. The look that came over his face then was new even to Tillie.
“You, too, get out!” he roared, and Tillie fled from the tepee in terror.
In the big tepee Reivers rolled on his blankets and cursed himself for his weakness. What had happened to him? Was he getting to be like other men, that he would let the memory of an impudent, red-haired girl interfere with his plans or pleasures? Had he not sworn to forget? And yet here came the memory of her—the wide grey eyes, the suffering mouth, the purity of the look of her—rising before his eyes like a vision to shame him.
To shame him! To shame the Snow-Burner! He understood the significance of the look she had given him, and which had stood between him and Tillie. Womanhood, pure, noble womanhood, was appealing to his better self.
His better self! Reivers laughed a laugh so ghastly that it might have come from a bare skull. His better self! If a man believed in things like that he had to believe in the human race—had to believe in goodness and badness, virtue and sin, right and wrong, and all that silly, effeminate rot. Reivers didn’t believe in that stuff. He knew only one life-law, that of strength over weakness, and that was the law he would live and die with, and Miss Hattie MacGregor could not interfere.
With his terrible will-power he erased the memory of her from his mind. He did not erase the resentmentat his own weakness. On the contrary, the resentment grew. He would revenge himself for that moment of weakness.
There were two ways of finding Moir and the mysterious mine. One—the way he had first planned to follow—was to scatter his Indians, and as many others as he could bribe with caribou meat, over the country lying to the south of Fifty Mile, where he knew the mine must be. Moir, or his men, must show themselves sooner or later. In time the Indians would find Moir’s camp.
But there was also a shorter and surer way—a shameful way. Moir, by the talk he had heard of him, came to Fifty Mile and Dumont’s Camp for such whisky and feminine company as might be found. He had even sent one of his henchmen to steal Hattie MacGregor. Such a move proved that Moir was desperate, and by this time, by the non-appearance of the would-be-kidnapper, the chief would know that his man was either killed or captured, and that no hope for a woman lay in that quarter. Moir’s next move would be to come to Fifty Mile and Dumont’s, or to send a man there, to procure the means of salving his disappointment. And Reivers had two attractive women at his disposal, Tillie, and the young girl who was nearly beautiful. Thus did Reivers overcome his momentary weakness. The black shamefulness of his scheme he laughed at. Then he went to sleep.
He gave his orders to Tillie early next morning.
“Have this tepee and another one loaded on one sledge,” he directed. “Have a second sledge loaded with caribou meat. Do you and the young girl prepare to come with me. We are going on a long journey. You will both take your brightest clothes.”
He waited with set jaws while his orders were obeyed. No weakness any more. There was onlyone law, the strong over the weak, and he was the strong one.
A call from Tillie apprised him that all was ready, and he strode forth to find Nawa, the young hunter, waiting with the two women ready for the trail.
“How so?” he demanded. “Did I say aught about Nawa?”
“Oh, Snow-Burner,” whispered Tillie, “Neopa is to be Nawa’s squaw with the coming of Spring. They wish to go together.”
“And I do not wish them to go together,” said Reivers harshly. “Give me that rifle.” He took the weapon from Nawa’s hands. “Do you stay here and eat caribou meat and grow fat against the coming of Spring, Nawa.”
“Snow-Burner,” said Nawa, a flash of will lighting his eyes for the moment, “does Neopa come back to me?”
“Perhaps,” said Reivers, cocking the rifle. “But if you try to follow you will never come back. Is it understood?”
Nawa bowed his head and turned away. Neopa made as if to run to him, but Reivers caught her brutally and threw her upon the lead sledge. He had resolved to travel the way of shame, no matter what the cost to others.
“Mush! Get on!” he roared at the dogs, and with the rifle ready and with a backward glance at Nawa, he drove away for Fifty Mile and Dumont’s Camp.