A day after Reivers drove out of the Indian camp, Dumont’s Camp had something to talk about. A half-witted, crippled-up squaw-man went through with a couple of squaws, and the youngest of the squaws was a beaut’! The old bum hadn’t stopped long, just long enough to trade a chunk of caribou meat for a bottle of hooch, but long enough, nevertheless, to let the gang get a peek at the squaws.
Dumont’s Camp opined that it was a good thing for the old cripple that he hadn’t stayed longer, else he might have found himself minus his squaws, especially the young one. But Dumont’s Camp would have been mightily puzzled had it seen how the limp and stoop went out of the squaw-man’s body the moment he had left their camp behind, how the foolish leer and stuttering speech disappeared from his mouth, and how, straight-backed and stern-visaged, he threw the bottle of hooch away in contempt and hurried on toward Fifty Mile.
Reivers had played many strange parts in his tumultuous life, and his squaw-man was a masterpiece. Fifty Mile had its sensation early next morning. The half-witted, crippled-up squaw-man with the two extremely desirable squaws came through, stopped for another bottle of hooch, and drove on and made camp just outside the settlement.
“He certainly was one soft-headed old bum,” saidJack Raftery, leaning on the packing-case that served as bar in his logcabin saloon. “Yes, men, he certainly is bumped in the bean and locoed in his arms. Gimme that chunk o’ meat there for a bottle o’ hooch. ’Bout fifty pounds, it’ll weigh. I’d give ‘im a gallon, but he grins foolish and says: ‘Bottle. One bottle.’ ‘Drag your meat in,’ says I. Well, gents, will you b’lieve he couldn’t make it. No, sir; paralysed in the arms or something.
“That young squaw o’ his did the toting. A beaut’? Gents, there never was anything put up in a brown hide to touch it. An’ that locoed ol’ bum running ’round loose with it. Tempting providence, that’s what he is, when he comes parading ‘round real men-folks with skirts like them. Shouldn’t wonder if something’d happen to him one o’ these cold days. Looks like he might ‘a’ been an awful good man in his day, too. Well built. Reckon he’s been used mighty rough to be locoed and crippled up the way he is.”
“I reck-ong,” drawled Black Pete, who ran the games at Raftery’s when there was any money in sight. “I reck-ong too mebbe he get handle more rough some tam ef he’s hang ‘round long wid dem two squaw. Tha’ small squaw’s too chic, she, to b’long to ol’ bum lak heem.”
The assembled gents laughed. Had they seen the “ol’ bum” at that moment their laughter would have been cut short. Reivers, in a gully out of sight of the settlement, had thrown away his hooch, pitched camp, tethered the dogs and made all secure with a swiftness and efficiency that belied the characterisation Black Pete had applied to him. He had the two tepees set up far apart, the dogs tied between them, and Tillie and Neopa had one tepee, and Reivers the other, alone.
Having made camp, Reivers knew what the boyswould expect of him in his character of sodden squaw-man. Having resolved to use the most shameful means in the world to achieve his end, he played his base part to perfection.
“Do you take this chunk of meat,” he directed Tillie, “and go down to the saloon and get another bottle of hooch. Yes, yes; I know I have destroyed one bottle. You are not to ask questions but to obey my commands. Go down and trade the meat for hooch. Do not stop to speak to the white men. Come, back at once. Go!”
But down in Raftery’s the assemblage had no hint of these swift changes, and they laughed merrily at Black Pete’s remarks.
“What d’you reckon his lay is, Jack?” asked one.
“Booze,” replied Raftery instantly. “Nothing else. When you see a man who’s sure been as good a man in his day as this relic, trailing ’round with squaw folks, you can jest nacherlly whittle a little marker for him and paint on it, ‘’Nother white man as the hooch hez got.’ Sabbe? I trace him out as some prospector who’s got crippled up and been laying out ’mongst the Indians with a good supply of the ol’ frost-bite cure ’longside of ’im. Nothin’ to do but tuh hit the jug offen enough to keep from gettin’ sober and remembering what he used to was. Sabbe? Been layin’ out sucking the neck of a jug till his ol’ thinker’s got twisted.
“I’ve seen dozens of ’em. You can’t fool me when I see one, and I saw him when he was comin’ through the door. Ran out o’ hooch and was afraid he’d get sober, so he comes down here to get soaked up some more. Brings his load o’ meat ‘long to trade in, an’ these two brown dolls to make sure in case the caribou have been down this way, which they ain’t. Bet the drinks against two bits that he’ll be chasin’ one o’ thesquaws down here for another bottle before an hour’s gone. They all do. I’ve seen his kind before.”
Black Pete took the bet.
“Because I’m onlucky,moi, lately, an’ I want to lose this bet,” he explained.
Raftery laughed homerically.
“What’s on you’ chest, Jack?” demanded one of his friends.
“I was just thinking,” gurgled the saloonist, “what ’ud happen in case this stiff gent, Iron Hair, was to run in ’bout this time.”
“By Gar!” laughed Pete. “An’ Iron Hair, he’s just ’bout due.”
At that moment Tillie came waddling in, laid down her bundle of meat before Raftery and said—
“One bottle.”
“What’d I tell you?” chuckled Raftery, handing over the liquor. “Boss him get laid out, eh?” he said to Tillie.
But Tillie did not pause for conversation. She whipped the bottle under her blanket and waddled out without a word.
“Well, I’m a son-of-a-gun!” proclaimed Raftery. “That ol’ bum has got ’em well trained, anyhow.”
Black Pete pulled his beard reflectively.
“Come to theenk,” he mused aloud, “dere was wan rifle on those sledge. I theenk mebbe I no go viseet thees ol’ bum, he’s camp, teel she’s leetle better acquaint’ weethmoi.”
And Fifty Mile talked. It talked to all who came in from the white wastes of the country around. It talked in its tents. It talked while trifling with Black Pete’s games of no-chance. It talked around Raftery’s bar. It talked so loudly that men heard it up at Dumont’s Camp.
From Fifty Mile and Dumont’s the talk spread up and down the trails, and even out to solitary cabins and dugouts where there were no trails. Wherever men were to be found in that desolate region the talk of Fifty Mile soon made its way. And the talk was mainly of the young squaw, of the old crippled-up squaw-man, and that she was of a beauty to set men’s heads a-whirling and make them murder each other for her possession.
Men meeting each other on the trails asked three questions in order:
“Where you traveling? How’s your tobacco? Heard about the beaut’ of a little squaw down to Fifty Mile?”
Men travelling in the direction of the settlements bent their steps toward Fifty Mile, even though it lay far out of their course. Men travelling in the opposite direction passed the news to all whom they bespoke. Of those who came to the settlement, many strolled casually up the gully where the squaw-man had his camp. And all of them strolled down againwith nothing to brag about but a drink of hooch and a mouthful of talk with the squaw-man.
“I don’t quite follow that gent’s curves,” summed up Jack Raftery, speaking for the gang. “He gets enough hooch here to keep any human gent laid out twenty-six hours out of the twenty-four, but somehow whenever you come moseying up to his camp he’s on his pins, ready to give you a drink and a lot of locoed talk. Yessir, he sure is locoed until he needs a guardian, but for one I don’t go to do no rushing of his lady-folks, not while he’s able to stand on his pins and keep his eyes moving. Gents, there’s been one awful stiff man in his day, and his condition goes to show what booze’ll do to the best of ’em, and ought to be a warning to us all. Line up, men; ’bout third drink time for me.”
“There is sometheeng about heem,” agreed Black Pete, “I don’t know what ‘tees, but there is sometheeng that whispairs to me, ‘Look out!’”
While Fifty Mile thus debated his character, Reivers lay in his tepee, carefully playing the shameful part he had assumed. He knew that by now the news of his arrival, or rather the arrival of Neopa and Tillie, had been bruited far and wide around the settlements. Soon the news must come to the ears of the man for whose benefit the scheme had been arranged.
Shanty Moir, being what he was, would become interested when he heard the descriptions of Neopa, and, also because he was what he was, he would waste no time, falter at no risks, stop at nothing when his interest had been aroused. Reivers had only to wait. Moir would come. The only danger was that Hattie and her uncle might come before him.
On the third day after the squaw-man’s arrival, Fifty Mile had a second sensation. That morning, as Reivers, staggering artistically, came out ofRaftery’s house of poison, he all but stumbled over a sledge before the door. With his assumed grin of idiocy growing wider, he examined the sledge carefully, next the team which was hitched to it, then lifted his eyes to the man and woman that stood beside the outfit. At the first glance he had recognised the sledge, and he needed the time thus gained to recover from the shock.
“Hello, Mac, ol’ timer!” he bellowed drunkenly at Duncan MacGregor. “Come have a drink with me.”
MacGregor looked at him dourly, disgust and anger on his big red face. Hattie, at his side, looked away, her lips pressed tightly together to control the anger rising within her. She had gone deadly pale at the first sight of Reivers; now the red of shame was burning in her cheeks.
“I shook hands with you, stranger, when you left our roof,” said MacGregor gruffly. “I do not do so now. I thought you were a man.”
“I never did!” snapped Hattie, still looking away. “I knew it was not a man.” Something like a sob seemed to wrench itself from her chest in spite of her firm lips. “I knew it was—just what it is.”
Suddenly she flared around on Reivers, her face wan with mingled pain, shame and anger.
“Now you are doing just what you are fit for. I’ve heard. Living on your squaws! And you dared to talk big to me—to a decent woman. Blood of my father! You dared to talk to me at all! Drive on, Uncle. We’ll go on to Dumont’s. We’ll get away from this thing; it pollutes the air. Hi-yah, Bones! Mush, mush, mush!”
Reivers leered and grinned foolishly—for the benefit of the onlookers—as the sledge went on out of sight.
“See?” he said boastfully. “I used to know whitefolks once. Yes sir; used to know lot of ’em. Don’t now. Only know Indians. S’long, boys; got to go home.”
All that day he sat alone in his tepee. Tillie came to him at noon with food and he cursed her and drove her away. In the evening she came to him again, and again Reivers ordered her not to lift the flap on his tepee.
Tillie by this time was fully convinced that the Snow-Burner had gone mad. Else why had he repulsed all her advances? Why had he refused to look at the young and attractive Neopa? And now he even spurned food. Yes, the Snow-Burner had gone mad, as white men sometimes go mad in the North; but she was still his slave. That was her fate.
Reivers sat alone in his tepee, once more fighting to put away the face of Hattie MacGregor as it rode before his eyes, a burning, searing memory. He was not faltering. The shame for him, because he was a white man, because she had once had him under her roof, that Hattie MacGregor had suffered as she saw him now, did not swerve him in the least from the way he was going.
He had decided to do it this way. That was settled. The shame and degradation of his assumed position he had reckoned and counted as naught in the game he was playing. Any means to an end. These same men who were despising him for a sodden squaw-man would bow their heads to him when the game was won. And he would win it, the memory of the face of Hattie MacGregor would not halt him in the least. Rather it would spur him on. For when the game was won, he would laugh at her—and forget.
For the present it was a little hard to forget. That was why he sat alone in the tepee and swore at Tillie when she timidly offered to bring him food.
So the red-headed girl thought that of him, did she—that he was living on his squaws? Well, let her think it. What difference did it make? She thought he was that base, did she? All right. She would pay for it all when the time came.
Reivers roused himself and strode outdoors. His thoughts persisted in including Hattie MacGregor in their ramblings as he sat in the tepee, and he felt oppressed. What he needed was to mingle with other men. He’d forget, then. He condemned the company that was to be found at Raftery’s, but his need for distraction drove him and, assuming the stoop, limp and leer of the sodden squaw-man, he slumped off down the gully to the settlement.
It was a clear, starlit night, and as he slumped along he mused on what a fine night it would be for picking out a trail by the stars. As he approached Raftery’s he saw and heard evidences of unusual activity in the bar. A team of eight dogs, hitched to an empty sledge, was tied before the door. Within there was sound of riot and wassail. Over the sound of laughter and shuffling feet rose a voice which drowned the other noises as the roar of a lion drowns the chirping of birds, a voice that rattled the windows in a terrifying rendition of “Jack Hall.”
Oh, I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said;I killed a man ’tis said, so ’tis said.I kicked ‘is bloody head, an’ I left ‘im lyin’ dead;Yes, I left ‘im lyin’ dead —— ’is eyes!
Reivers opened the door and strode in silently and unobserved. He made a base, contemptible figure as, stooped and shuffling, a foolish leer on his face, he stood listening apologetically to the song. The broad back of the singer was turned toward him. As thesong ended Raftery’s roaming eye caught sight of Reivers.
“Ah, there he is; here he is, Iron Hair. There’s the man with the squaws I was telling you about.”
The man swung around, and Reivers was face to face with the man he sought, Shanty Moir.
Reivers’ tumultuous scheme of life often had led him into situations where his life had hung on his ability to play artistically the part he had assumed. But never had his self-control been put to such a test as now, when he faced Shanty Moir.
Had he not prepared himself for a shock, his surprise must surely have betrayed him, for even the Snow-Burner could not look upon Shanty Moir without amazement. To Reivers, the first impression that came was that he was looking at something as raw and primitive as the sources of life itself.
Shanty Moir had little or nothing in common with the other men in the room. He was even shaped differently. He belonged, so it seemed to Reivers, to the age of the saber-tooth tiger, the long-haired mammoth, and a diet of roots and raw flesh.
There was about him the suggestion of man just risen to the dignity of an upright position. His body was enormous—longer, wider, denser than a man’s body should be; the legs beneath it short and bowed. There was no neck that could be seen. His arms seemed to begin close up to the ears, and ran downward in curves, like giant calipers, the hands even with the knees.
The head fitted the body, squat and enormous, the forehead running abruptly back from the brows, and the face so flat and bony that the features seemedmerely to dent it. The brow-bones came down and half hid the small eyes; the nose was small, but a pair of great nostrils ran back in the skull; the mouth was huge, yet it seemed small, and there was more of the head below it than above.
Iron Hair was well nicknamed. His hair was probably three inches long, and it stood out straight from his head—black, wiry, menacing. Reivers, with his foolish grin growing larger on his face, appraised Moir with considerable admiration. Here was the real thing, the pure, unadulterated man-animal, unweakened, untouched by effeminising civilisation. This man knew no more law or conscience than the ancient cave-tiger, whose only dictates sprang from appetite.
Reivers had rejected morals because it pleased him to run contrary to all the rest of the world; this man never knew that right or wrong existed. What his appetites told him to take he took as a matter of course. And it was written in his face that his appetites were as abnormally powerful as was he.
Reivers had been a leader of men because his mind was stronger than the minds of the men with whom he had dealt. This man was a leader because of the blind, unintelligent force that was in him. And inwardly the fighting man in Reivers glowed at the prospects of the Titanic clash that would come between them.
Shanty Moir as he looked from under his bony brows saw exactly what Reivers wished him to see: a drunken broken squaw-man, so weak that he could not possibly be the slightest source of trouble. Being primitive of mind he listed Reivers at once as helpless. Having done this, nothing could alter his opinion; and Reivers had gained the vantage that he sought.
Moir threw back his head and laughed, softlyand behind set teeth, when his quick inspection of Reivers was ended.
“So that’s tuh waster who’s got tuh squaws ‘at hass tuh camp upset,” he said languidly. “Eh, sonnies! Art no men among ye that ye have not gone woman-stealing by this? Tuh waster does not look hard to take a young woman from.”
Reivers broke into an apologetic snigger.
“Don’t you try to steal my two kids, mister,” he whined. “You’d be mighty sorry for your bargain if you did.”
“How so, old son?” demanded Moir with a tolerant laugh.
“Them kids—if you was to steal them without my permission—one or both of ’em—they’d make you wish you’d never seen ’em—‘less I was along,” chuckled Reivers.
“Speak it up, old son,” said Moir sharply. “What’s behind thy fool’s words?”
“Them kids—they’d die if they was took away from me,” replied Reivers seriously. “And they’d take the man who stole ’em to the happy hunting ground along with ’em.” He winked prodigiously. “Lots of funny things in this ol’ world, mister. You wouldn’t think to look at me that those two kids wouldn’t want to live if I wasn’t with ’em, but that’s the fact. I wasn’t always what I’m now, mister. Once—well, I was different once—and them kids will just nacherlly manage to poison the first man who touches ’em—unless I give the word.”
The men of Fifty Mile looked at one another, and Black Pete shuddered.
“The ol’ moocher sure has got ’em trained, Iron Hair,” said Raftery. “He’s locoed, but those squaws look up to him like a little tin god, and that’s no lie.”
“Poison?” repeated Moir doubtingly. “Art a medicine man, old son?”
Reivers shook his head loosely.
“Not me, mister, not me,” he chuckled. “It’s something Indian that I don’t sabbe. But there’s a couple graves ’way up where we came from, and they hold what’s left of a couple of bad men who raided my camp and stole my kids. I don’t know how it happened, mister. The kids come back to me the same night, and the two bad men were stiff and black—as black as your hair, mister, after the first kiss.”
“The kiss of Death,” chimed in Black Pete, crossing himself. “I have heard of eet.Sacré!I am the lucky dog,moi.”
Shanty Moir nodded. He, too, had heard of the method by which Indian women of the North on rare occasions revenge themselves upon the brutal white men who steal them from their people. Having often indulged in that thrilling sport himself, Moir was well versed in the obstacles and dangers to be met in its pursuit. Being crafty, with the craft of the lynx that eschews the poisoned deer carcass, he had thus far managed to select his victims from the breed of squaws that do not seriously object to playing a Sabine part; and he had no intention of decreasing his caution now, although what men had spoken of Neopa had fired his blood.
“Ho, ho! I see how ’tis, old son,” he said with a grin of appreciation. “Dost manage well for a waster.”
He suddenly drew his hand from his mackinaw pocket and held it out, opened, toward Reivers. Two jagged nuggets of dull gold the size of big buckshot jiggled on his palm, and Moir laughed uproariously as Reivers, at the sight of them, bent forward,rubbing his hands together, apparently frantic with avarice.
“Eh—hey!” drawled Moir, closing his fist as Reivers’ fingers reached for the gold. “I thought so. ’Tis tub gold thy wants, eh, old sonny? Well, do thee bring me tuh cattle to look at and we’ll try to bargain.”
“Come up to my camp,” chattered Reivers, eying the fist that contained the nuggets. He was anxious to get out of the bar. He had no fear that the primitive Moir would be able to see any flaw in his acting, but Black Pete and Jack Raftery were less primitive, and he knew that they had not quite accepted him for the weakling that he pretended to be. “Come and visit me. Buy a bottle of hooch and we go up to my camp.”
Moir tossed one of the nuggets across the bar to Raftery.
“Is’t good for a round, lad?” he laughed.
Raftery cunningly hefted the nugget and set out the bottles.
“Good for two,” he replied.
Moir tossed over the second nugget.
“Then that’s good for four,” said he. “Do ye boys drink it up while I’m away to tuh camp of old sonny here. A bottle, Raftery. Now, sonny, do thee lead on, and if I’m not satisfied I’ll wring thy neck to let thee know my displeasure.”
Reivers led the way to his tepee and bade Moir wait a moment by the fire, while he spoke to Tillie. “Dress yourself and Neopa in your newest,” he commanded. “Then do you both come in to me, bringing food for two men.”
“What’s wrong, sonny?” laughed Moir, seeing Reivers come under the door flap alone. “Hast lost the whip over thy cattle?”
“They’re getting some grub ready,” replied Reivers fawningly. “They’ll be here in a minute. Let’s have a drink out of that bottle, mister. That’s the stuff.”
He tipped the bottle to his lips and lowered the burning liquor in a fashion that made even Moir open his eyes in admiration.
“Takest a man-sized nip for a broken waster, sonny,” he chuckled, and measuring with his fingers on the bottle a drink larger than Reivers’ he tossed it gurgling down his hairy throat. Reivers took the bottle from his hand.
“I always take an eye-opener before my real drink,” said Reivers, and, measuring off twice the amount that Moir had taken, he drank it off like so much water.
The fiercest liquor made was to Reivers only a mild stimulant. On his abnormal organisation it merely had the effect of intensifying his characteristics. When he wished to drink whisky he drank—out of full-sizedwater tumblers. When he did not wish to drink he put liquor from him with contempt. Now he handed the bottle back to Moir. The latter looked at him and at the bottle, a trifle puzzled but not dismayed. Reivers had apparently unconsciously passed the challenge to him, and it was not in his nature to play second to any man in a drinking bout.
“Shouldst have taken all thee wanted that time, sonny,” said Moir, and finished the bottle.
“No more?” muttered Reivers vacantly.
“Gallons!” replied Moir. “Whisky enough to drown you dead—if your women satisfy.”
“Look at them,” said Reivers as the door-flap was flung back. “Here they are.”
Tillie came in first. She was dressed in white buckskin, her hair hanging in two thick braids down her shoulders. Neopa followed, and the wistfulness that had come into her face from thinking of Nawa made her the more interesting in Shanty Moir’s eyes.
A glance from Neopa’s fawn-like eyes at the big man whom Reivers had brought home with him, and then her eyes sought the ground and she trembled. Tillie looked at Moir with interest. Save for the Snow-Burner, she had never seen so masterful a man. She looked at Reivers and saw that he was not watching her. So she smiled upon Moir slyly. She was the Snow-Burner’s slave; his will was her law. But since he refused to notice her smiles it would do no harm to smile upon a man like this Iron Hair—just a little, when the Snow-Burner was not looking.
Moir read the smile wrong and spoke sharply to Reivers.
“Take the young one outside for two minutes. I’ve a word to say to this one.”
To his surprise Reivers rose without demur, thrust Neopa out before him, and dropped the flap.
“Listen,” whispered Moir swiftly in her own tongue to Tillie, “we will put his man out of the way. It is easily done. Then you will go with me, you and the young one, and you will be first in my tepee and the young one your slave. Speak quickly. We will be on the trail in an hour.”
Still smiling invitingly, Tillie shook her head.
“The Snow-Burner is the master,” she said seriously. “I will slay the man who does him harm. I can not do what he does not wish. I can not go away from him.”
“But when he is dead, fool, he can have no wish.”
The smile went from Tillie’s full lips and she took a step toward the opening.
“Stop,” laughed Moir softly. “I merely wished to know if you are a true woman. All right, old sonny!” he called. “Come on in.”
“I takest off cap to you, lad,” he continued as Reivers and Neopa re-entered. “Hast got thy squaws fair buffaloed.” His eyes ran over the shrinking Neopa in cruel appraisal. “Now, old sonny, out with it. What’s thy idea of tuh bargain?”
Reivers looked longingly toward the empty whisky bottle.
“Said enough,” laughed Moir. “Shall have all tuh hooch thy guts can hold.”
Reivers shook his head, a sly grin appearing on his lips.
“Hooch is good,” said he, “but gold is better.”
“Go on,” said Moir sullenly.
“You’ve got gold,” continued Reivers. “I saw it. You’ve got lots of gold; I’ve heard them talk about you down at Raftery’s. You want us to go with you when you go back to your camp, don’t you?”
Moir nodded angrily.
“I want the women,” he said brutally. “I might be able to use you, too.”
Reivers cackled and rubbed his hands.
“You’ve got to use me if you’re going to have the women,” he chuckled. “You know that by this time, don’t you, mister?”
Again Moir’s black head nodded in grudging assent.
“What then?” he demanded.
“I’m a handy man around a camp, mister,” whined Reivers. “You got to take me along if you take the women, but I can be a help——”
“Canst cook?” snapped Moir suddenly.
“Heh, heh! Can I cook?” Reivers rubbed his hands. “I’m an old—I used to be an old sour-dough, mister. Did you ever see one of the old-timers who couldn’t cook?”
“Might use thee then,” said Moir. “My fool of a cook has gone. Sent him after a woman for me, and he hasn’t come back. Happen he got himself killed, tuh fool. Wilt kill him myself if he ever shows up without tuh woman. Well, then, if that’s settled—what’s tuh bargain?”
Reivers appeared to struggle with indecision. In reality the situation was very clear to him. Moir had listed him as a weakling; therefore he had no fear of taking him to the mine. Once there, Moir would be confident of winning the loyalty of the two women from their apparently helpless master. And as it was apparent that the man whom Reivers had slain with a rock had been Moir’s cook, it was probable that he was sincere in his offer to use Reivers in that capacity.
“In the Spring,” said Reivers in reply to Moir’s question, “me and my two kids go north again, back among their own people.”
“In the Spring,” growled Moir, “canst go to —— forall of me. I’ll be travelling then myself. Speak out, sonny. How much?”
“Plenty of hooch for me all Winter,” Reivers leered with drunken cunning.
“I said plenty,” retorted Moir. “What else?”
“Gold,” said Reivers, rubbing his hands. “Gold enough to buy me hooch for all next Summer.”
Moir smiled at the miserable request of the man he was dealing with. His eyes ran over the plump Tillie, over Neopa, the supple child-woman.
“Done,” he laughed. “And now, old son, break up thy camp while I load my sledge with hooch. Be ready to travel when I come back. I’ll bring plenty of liquor, but none to be drinked till we’re on the trail. Wilt travel fast and far to-night, I warn thee. But willst have a snug berth in my camp when we get there. Yes,” he laughed as he hurried out, “wilt not be able to tear thyself away.”
Under Reivers’ sharp orders—given in a way that would have startled Moir had he heard—Tillie and Neopa hurriedly packed the dog-sledges with their belongings, harnessed the dogs and hooked them to the traces.
“Oh, Snow-Burner,” said Neopa timidly, “do we go back to Nawa?”
“In good time,” said Reivers. “For the present, you have only to obey my wishes. Get on the first sledge.”
With bowed head the girl took the place directed, and Reivers turned to find Tillie smiling craftily at his elbow.
“Snow-Burner,” she said softly, “this is the man, Iron Hair, who digs the gold which you want. We go to rob him. I understand. You play at drinking to fool Iron Hair. It is well. Tillie will help the Snow-Burner. We will kill Iron Hair and take his gold. Then the Snow-Burner will come with Tillie to her tepee?”
Reivers looked at her, and for the first time he felt a revulsion against the base part he was playing. Would he return with Tillie to her tepee when this affair was over? Would he go on with his old way of living, the base part of him triumphant over the better self? The strange questions rapped like trip-hammers on Reivers’ conscience.
“Get on the sledge!” he growled, choked with anger.
She did not stir. He struck her cruelly. Tillie smiled. That was like the Snow-Burner of old; and she waddled to her appointed place without further question.
Up the gulch from Raftery’s came Moir quietly leading his dogs, the sledge well loaded with cases of liquor.
“Wilt have a kiss first of all,” he laughed excitedly, and catching Neopa in his arms tossed her in the air, kissed her loudly on her averted cheeks and set her back on the sledge. “Now, old son, follow and follow quietly. When Iron Hair travels he wants no Fifty Mile gang on his trail. Say nothing, but keep me in sight. Heyah, mush, mush!”
Out of the gully he led the way swiftly and silently to the open country beyond the settlement. There he circled in a confusing way, bearing northward. After an hour he began circling again, doubling on his trail to make it hard for any one to follow, but finally Reivers knew by the stars that the course lay to the south. Another series of false twists in the trail, then Moir struck out in determined fashion on a straight course, east and a trifle south from Fifty Mile.
Reivers, silently guiding his dogs in the tracks made by Moir, breathed hard as he read the stars. By the pace that Moir was setting it seemed certain that he now was making for his camp in a direct line. But if so, if this trail were held, it would take them back toward the Dead Lands, straight into the country that was Duncan MacGregor’s trapping-ground. Could the mine be in that region. If so, how could it have escaped the notice of the old trapper?
It was well past midnight when Reivers saw the team ahead disappear in a depression in the groundand heard Moir’s voice loudly calling a halt. By the time Reivers came up with his two sledges Moir had unhitched his dogs on the flat of a frozen river-bed and was hurriedly dragging a bottle from one of the cases on his sledge.
“Hell’s fire, old son; unhook and camp. The liquor’s dying in me, and I had just begun to feel good.”
“I was wondering,” gasped Reivers in assumed exhaustion. “I was wondering how much farther you were going before you opened a bottle.”
“Have your squaws get out tuh grub,” ordered Moir, jamming down the cork. “And now you ‘n’ me, wilt see who drinks t’other off his feet.”
For reply Reivers promptly gulped down a drink that would have strangled most men.
“Good enough,” admitted Moir. “Here’s better, though.” And he instantly improved on Reivers’ record.
The first bottle was soon emptied—a quart of raw, fiery hooch—and a second instantly broached.
The food was forgotten by Moir; the women were forgotten. His primitive mind was obsessed with the idea of pouring more burning poison down his throat than this broken-down waster who dared to drink up to him. Bolt upright he sat, laughing and singing, never taking his eyes off Reivers, while drink after drink disappeared down their throats.
No movement of Reivers escaped Moir’s vigilant watch for signs of weakness. As Reivers gave no apparent sign of toppling over he grew enraged.
“Hell’s fire! Wilt sit here till daylight if thou wilt,” he roared. “Drink on there! ’Tis thy turn.”
Tillie and Neopa got food ready from the grub-bag and sat waiting patiently; the dogs ceased moving, bedded down in the snow and went to sleep; and still the contest went on.
Finally Reivers discerned the slight thickening of speech and the glassy stare in his opponent’s eyes that he had been waiting for. Then, and not until then, did he begin to betray apparent signs of failing.
“Sh-sh-shtrong liquor, m-m-mishter,” he stuttered. “Awful sh-sh-shtrong liquor.”
Moir cackled in drunken triumph.
“’Tish bear’s milk, old shon. ’Tish made for men. Drink, —— ye, drink again!”
Reivers drank, drank longer and heavier than he had yet done.
“There; take the mate of that, mister, and you’ll know you been drinking,” he stammered.
Moir’s throat by this time had been burned too raw to taste, and his sight was too dulled to measure quantities. He tipped the bottle up and drained it. The dose would have killed a normal man. To Shanty Moir it brought only an inclination to slumber. His head fell forward on his breast.
With a thick-tongued snarl he sat up straight and looked at Reivers. Reivers hiccoughed, swayed in his seat, and collapsed with a drunken clatter.
Moir smiled. He winked in unobserved triumph. Then the superhuman strength with which he had fought off the effects of the liquor snapped like a broken wire, and he pitched forward on his face into the snow.
Reivers stood up, looked down at his fallen rival and yawned.
“Body,” he mused, “but for a hard head, there lies you.”
He bent cautiously over Moir. The Welshman lay with his face half buried in the crusted snow, his lungs pumping like huge bellows, and the snow flying in gusts from around his nostrils at every expulsion of breath. Reivers laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. There was no movement.
“Hey, mister,” he called.
The undisturbed breathing showed that the words had not penetrated to the clouded consciousness. Deliberately Reivers turned the big man over on his back. Moir lay as stiff and dead as a log. With swift, deft hands Reivers searched him to the skin, looking for a trail-map, a mark or a sign of any kind that might indicate the location of Moir’s mine. He was not greatly disappointed when he failed to find anything of the sort; he had hardly expected that an experienced pirate like Shanty Moir would travel with his secrets on his person.
Next he considered the dogs. It was barely possible that the dogs knew the way to the mine. If they had travelled the way before, they would know when they were on the home-trail, and if so they would travel thither if given their heads, even thoughtheir master lay helplessly bound on the sledge. Then at the mine, a sudden surprise, and probably a second of sharp work with the rifle on Moir’s henchmen.
Reivers stepped eagerly over to where Moir’s team lay sleeping. He swore softly when he saw them. Moir had traded his tired team for a fresh outfit at Fifty Mile, and the new dogs were as strange to this trail as Reivers himself.
His triumph over Moir in the drinking bout had been in vain. There was no march to be stolen, even with Moir lying helpless on the snow. He would have to go through with it as he had planned. Tillie and Neopa must be the means by which he would obtain his ends.
He suddenly looked over to the sledge where the two women were patiently waiting with the food they had prepared. Tillie, squat and stolid, was sitting as impassive and content as a bronze figure at the door of the shelter tepee which she had erected, but Neopa sat bowed over on the end of the sledge, her head on her folded arms, her slim figure shaking with silent sobs.
“Put back the food and go to your blankets,” he commanded harshly. “Stop that whining, girl, or you will have something to whine for.”
He waited until his orders had been obeyed and the women were in the tepee. Then he unrolled his blanket and lay down on the snow.
He did not sleep. He knew that he would not. For all through the day, during his dealing with Moir, on the night trail under the clean stars, his mind had been fighting to shut out a picture that persisted in running before his eyes. Now, alone in the star-lit night, with nothing to occupy him, the picture rushed into being, vivid and living. He could not shut itout. He could not escape it. It was the picture of Hattie MacGregor as he had seen her that morning with the pain and scorn upon her young, fine face. Her voice rang in his ears, the burning words as clear as if she stood by his side:
“I knew it was not a man. Living on your squaws! And you dared to talk to me—a decent woman!”
Reivers cursed and lay looking straight up at the white stars. From the tepee there came a sound that brought him up sitting. He listened, amazed and puzzled. It was Neopa sobbing because she had been torn from her young lover, Nawa, and in the plaint of her pain-racked tones there was something which recalled with accursed clearness the rich voice of Hattie MacGregor.
It was probably an hour after he had lain down that Reivers rose up and quietly hooked his strongest dogs to a sledge.
“Tillie! Neopa! Come out!” he whispered, throwing open the flap of the little tepee.
Neopa came, wet-faced and haggard, her wide-open eyes showing plainly that there had been no sleep for her that night. Tillie was rubbing her eyes sleepily, protesting against being wakened from comfortable slumber.
Reivers pointed northward up the river bed.
“Up there, on this river, one day’s march away, is the camp of your people, which we came from,” he whispered. “Do you both take this team and drive rapidly thither. Hold to the river-bed and keep away from the black spots where the water shows through the snow. Do not stop to rest or feed. You should reach your people in the middle of the afternoon. Then do you give Nawa this rifle. Tell him to shoot any white man who comes after you. Now go swiftly.”
Neopa looked at him with her fawn-like eyes large with incredibility and hope.
“Snow-Burner! Do you let me go back to Nawa?” she whispered.
“Get on the sledge,” he commanded. “Do as I’ve told you, or you’ll hear from me.”
As emotion had all but paralysed the young girl he forced her to a seat on the sledge and thrust the whip into her hand, then turned to Tillie. Tillie was making no move to approach the sledge.
“Did you hear what I said?” he demanded.
Tillie smiled strangely.
“Has the Snow-Burner become afraid of Iron Hair?” she asked.
“So little afraid that I no longer need you to help me in this matter,” retorted Reivers.
The shrewd squaw shook her head.
“How will the Snow-Burner find Iron Hair’s gold how? Iron Hair will not take the Snow-Burner to his camp alone. It is not the Snow-Burner that Iron Hair wants. It is a woman. Has the Snow-Burner given up the fight to get the gold which he wants so much? He knows he can not reach Iron Hair’s camp—alone.”
“Then I will not reach it at all. Get on the sledge.”
Tillie smiled but did not move.
“The Snow-Burner at last has become like other white men. He wishes to do what is right.” She pointed at the snoring Moir. “He would not be so weak.”
While Reivers looked at her in amazement the squaw stepped forward, straightened out the dogs, kicked them viciously and sent the sledge, bearing Neopa alone, flying up the river-bed.
“To send Neopa back to Nawa is well and good,” she said, returning to Reivers. “She would weep forNawa all day and night, and would grow sick and die on our hands. But there is no Nawa waiting for Tillie. Tillie is tired of her tepee with no man in it. Iron Hair has smiled upon me, Snow-Burner. I will smile upon him. His smile will answer mine as the dry pine lights up when the match is touched to it. I have looked in his eyes and know. He will forget Neopa. Tillie will help the Snow-Burner rob Iron Hair. Is it well?”
“Get back to your blankets,” commanded Reivers. “If you wish it, we will let it be so. Sleep long. Do not stir until you hear that Iron Hair has awakened.”
Shanty Moir stirred when the first rays of the morning sun, glancing off the snow, struck his eyes. He rose like a musk-ox lifting itself from its snow wallow, with mighty heaves and grunts, and looked around.
He was blear-eyed and puffed of face, his throat was raw and burning from the unbelievable amount of hooch he had swallowed in the night, but his abnormal organisation had thrown off the effects of the alcohol and he was cold sober. His first move was to cool his throat with handfuls of snow, his second to step over and regard the apparently paralysed Reivers with a look of mingled triumph and contempt.
“Eh, old sonny! Would a drinked with Shanty Moir, wouldst ’ee?” he chuckled. “Happen thee got thy old soak’s skin filled to overflow that time. Get up, you waster!” he commanded, stirring the prostrate form with a heavy foot “Up with you!”
Reivers did not stir, but he put that touch of the foot down as something extra that Moir would have to pay for. He was apparently lying steeped in the depths of drunken slumber, and he wished to drive the impression firmly into Shanty Moir’s mind that he had been dead to the world all night. Hence he did not interrupt his snoring as Moir’s foot touched him.
“Laid out stiff!” laughed Moir.
He reached down, lifted Reivers’ head from thesnow and let it fall heavily. Still Reivers made no sign of awakening. Moir looked at him for a moment, then slily tiptoed toward the shelter tepee and threw up the flap. The next instant a bellow of rage shattered the morning quiet. Like a maddened bear Moir was back at Reivers, cuffing, kicking, cursing, commanding that he wake up.
Reivers awoke only in degree. Not until Moir had opened a new bottle of hooch and poured a drink down his throat did he essay to sit up and open his eyes.
“Wha’ smatter? Can’t a man shleep?” he protested. “Wha’ smatter with you?”
“Matter!” bellowed Moir. “Plenty of matter, you old waster. Where’s the young lass, eh? Where’s the girl gone? Look in the tepee and see what’s the matter. You told me you had the trulls buffaloed. What’s become of the young girl?”
It was some time before Reivers appeared to understand. Finally he stumbled to his feet and started toward the tent, met Tillie as she stepped out rubbing her eyes, and recoiled drunkenly.
“Neopa? Where is she?” muttered Tillie. “She slept near the door. Now she is gone.”
She had let her shiny black hair fall loosely over her shoulders and now she threw it back, looked straight at Moir and smiled.
“Neopa gone?” demanded Reivers thickly. “She can’t be; she wouldn’t dare.”
“Dare, you fool? Look there.” Moir pointed to the hollows where the missing dog team had lain and to the tracks that ran straight and true up the river bed. “She’s run away. Been gone half a night. Well, what have you got to say?”
Reivers turned with a scowl on Tillie, but Tillie was comfortably plaiting her thick hair.
“Neopa has run away—back to our people,” she said with a smile, as she turned back into the tepee. “Tillie does not run away,” she added as she disappeared.
Moir sat down on a sledge and cursed Reivers steadily for five minutes, but at every few words his eyes would stray back to the tepee which hid Tillie.
“We’ll go after her,” said Reivers. “We’ll bring her back.”
“Go after her!” snorted Moir. “She has half a night’s start on us. She’ll reach her people before we could get her. Do you think I want half the country following my trail.”
“I’ll go after her alone then,” insisted Reivers.
“Will you?” Moir’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I think not. Let me tell thee something, old son: he who goes this far on the home trail with Shanty Moir goes all the way. Understand? You’ll come with me or you’ll be wolf-meat out here on the snow. No; there’ll be no following of that kid. She’s gone. The other one’s here. There is no telling what tale the kid will spin when she meets people, or who will be down here looking for our trail. Therefore we are going to travel and travel quick. Have the squaw get food in a hurry. Get your dogs together. We’ll be on the trail in half an hour.”
Moir was masterful and dominant now. It was evident that he was more worried over the possibility of some one hearing of his whereabouts through Neopa than he was over the girl’s escape. He gave Reivers a second drink of liquor, since he seemed to need it to fully awaken him, and set about making ready for the trail.
“Eat plenty,” he commanded, when Tilly served the cold meat and tea. “The next meal you have will be about sundown.”
He tore down the tepee, packed the sledges and had the outfit ready for the start in an amazingly short while.
“Now, old son,” he said quietly, pointing to the rifle that lay uncovered on top of his sledge, “do ’ee take good look at her. She’s a good old Betsy and I’ve knocked o’er smaller men than you at the half mile. Do you keep well up with me on the trail I’ll be making this day and there’ll be no trouble. Try any tricks and the wolves will have whiskey-soaked meat to feed on. There’s no turning back now. He who comes this far with Shanty Moir goes all the way.”
“You can’t lose me, mister,” stammered Reivers. “I want that money for hooch for next Summer like you promised.”
“Wilt get more than you bargained for, old son,” laughed Moir. “Yes, more than you ever dreamed of. Hi-yah! Buck! Bugle! Mush; mush up!”
Moir made no pretence at hiding his trail when he started this time. Apparently he reasoned that the damage was done. If any one wished to trail him after hearing Neopa’s story they would have no trouble in finding his tracks, despite any subterfuge he might attempt. He went straight forward, as a man who has nothing to fear if he can but reach his fastness, and Reivers’ wonderment grew as the trail held straight toward the rising sun.
The course was parallel to the one he had taken westward from MacGregor’s cabin to Tillie’s encampment. If it held on as it was going it would lead straight into the heart of the Dead Lands, and within half a day’s travel of the MacGregor home. Was it possible that the mine lay in the Dead Lands? Duncan MacGregor made this territory his trapping-ground. How could his brother’s find have escaped his trained outdoor eyes?
The next instant Reivers was cursing himself for a blind fool. There was no trapping in the Dead Lands. There was no feed there. Except for a stray wolf-cave, fur-bearing beasts would shun those barren rocks as a desert, and Duncan MacGregor, being a knowing trapper, might trap around it twenty years without venturing through after a first fruitless search for signs.
The mine was in the Dead Lands, of course. It was as safely hidden there as if within the bowels of the earth. And he, Reivers, had probably been within shooting distance of it during his two days’ wandering in that district. The man whom he had killed with the rock had undoubtedly been hurrying with Hattie MacGregor straight to his chief’s fastness.
It was noon when the ragged ground on the horizonhead told Reivers that his surmises were correct and that they were hurrying straight for the Dead Lands. An hour of travel and the jagged formation of the rock country was plainly distinguishable a little over a mile ahead. Then Moir for the first time that day called a halt. When Reivers caught up with him he saw that Moir held in each hand a small pouch-like contrivance of buckskin, pierced near the middle with tiny holes and equipped with draw-strings at the bottom.
“Come here, lass,” he beckoned to Tillie. “Must hide that smiling mouth of thine for the present.”
With a laugh he threw the pouch over the squaw’s head, pulled the bottom tightly around her neck, and tied the strings securely.
“The same with thee, old son,” he said, and treated Reivers in the same summary manner. “You see, I do not wish to have to put you away,” he explained genially, “and that I would do if by chance thy eyesshould see the way to Shanty Moir’s mine. One or two men have been unlucky enough to see it. They will never be able to tell the tale.” He skilfully searched the pair for hidden weapons, but Reivers had expected this and carried not so much as a knife. “All right. Keep in my steps, old son. Presently thou’ll get wet. Do not fear. Wilt not let ’ee come to harm. Neither thee nor tuh squaw. I have use for you both. Come now; I’ll go slow.”
The buckskin pouch pierced only by the tiny air-holes, masked Reivers’ eyes in a fashion that precluded any possible chance of sight. He knew instinctively that Moir was turning. First the turn was to the left. Then back to the right. Then in a circle, and after that straight ahead.
Presently the feel of a sharp rock underfoot told him that they had entered the Dead Lands. He stumbled purposely to one side of the trail and bumped squarely against a solid wall of stone. Next he tried it on the opposite side with the same result. Moir was leading the way through a narrow defile in the rocks.
Suddenly there came to Reivers’ ears the sound of running water, the lazy murmur of a small brook. Almost at the same instant came the splash of Moir and his dogs going into the stream and Moir’s laughing:
“Wilt get a little wet here, old son. But follow on.”
Fumbling with his feet Reivers found the stream and stepped in. To his surprise the water was warm. Warm water? Where had he seen warm water recently in this country? His thoughts leaped back with a snap. There was only one open stream to be found thereabouts, and that was the brook that came fromthe warm springs by which he had camped on his way to Tillie’s.
“Warm water!” laughed Moir. “Wilt find all snug in my camp. Aye, as snug as in a well-kept jail.”
The stream was knee-deep, and by the pressure of the water against the back of his legs Reivers knew that they were going down-stream. Presently Moir spoke again.
“Now, if you value the tops of your heads, do you duck as low as you can. Duck now, quick; and do you keep that position till I tell you to straighten up.”
Reivers and Tillie ducked obediently. Suddenly the tiny light that had come through the air-holes of their masks was shut out. The darkness was complete. Reivers thrust his hand above his bowed head and came in contact with cold, clammy rock. No wonder it had taken MacGregor and Moir two years to find the mine, since the way to it lay by a subterranean river!
The light reappeared, but it was not the sunny light that had come through the air-holes before they had entered the river tunnel. It was grey and dead, as the light in a room where the sunshine does not enter.
“Now you can lift your heads,” laughed Moir. “Come to the right. Up the bank. Here we are.”
He jerked Reivers out of the water roughly, and roughly pulled the sack from his head. Reivers blinked as the light struck his eyes. Moir treated him to a generous kick.
“Welcome,” he hissed menacingly. “Welcome to the camp of Shanty Moir.”
Reivers’ first impression was that he was standing in a gigantic stockade. The second that he was on the floor of a great quarry-pit. Then, when the situation grew clear to him, he stood dumfounded.
The camp of Shanty Moir lay in what would have been a solid rock cave but for the lack of a roof. It was an irregular hollow in the strange formation of the Dead Lands, perhaps fifty yards long and thirty yards wide at its greatest breadth. The hollow was surrounded completely by ragged stone walls about fifty feet in height. These walls slanted inward to a startling degree. Thus while the floor of the strange spot was thirty yards wide, the opening above, through which showed the far-away sky, could scarcely have been more than half that width. The brook ran through the middle of the chasm, entering the upper end by a tunnel five feet in height and disappearing in the solid wall of rock at the lower end by a similar opening.
On each side of the narrow stream, and running back to the rock walls, was a floor of smooth river-sand. Beneath an overhanging ledge on the side where Reivers stood were the rude skin fronts of two dugouts. A tin smoke-stack protruded from the larger of the two habitations; the other, which was high enough only to admit a man stooping far over, was merely a flap of hide hanging down from the rock.
On the beach at the other side of the creek a fire burned beneath a great iron pan, the wood smoke filling the chasm with its pungent odour. Behind the fire a series of tunnels ran down in the sand under the cliffs. From the tunnel immediately behind the fire came a thin spiral of sluggish smoke, and Reivers knew that this tunnel was being worked and that the fire was being used to thaw the frozen earth.
A man who resembled Moir on a small scale was at work at the thawing-pan, breaking the hard earth with his fingers and tossing it into a washing-pan at his side. He stood now with a chunk of frozen sand in his hand, and at sight of Reivers and Tillie he tossed the sand recklessly into the air and whooped.
“Ha! Hast done well this time, Shanty,” he cried in an accent similar to theirs. “Hast made tuh life endurable. A new horse for me and a woman for ’ee. ’Tis high time. Since Blacky went off and did not come back, and tuh two Indians tried to flee, we’ve had but one horse to do with. Now wilt have two. Wilt clean up in a hurry now, and live in tuh meanwhile.”
Shanty Moir laughed harshly.
“How works tuh old Scot jackass to-day?” he called.
The man across the creek shook his head.
“He’s never tuh horse he was when we first put him in harness,” he chuckled. “Fell twice in his tracks to-day, he did, and lay there till Joey gave him an inch of tuh prod. Has been a good beastie, the Scot has, Shanty, but ’tis in my mind tuh climate does not ‘gree with him. Scarce able to pull his load. In tuh mines at home we knocked such worn beasties in the head and sent them up o’ tuh pit.”
Moir laughed again.
“Hast a quaint way o’ putting things, Tammy,” hesaid. “But I mind when ponies were scarce we used them till they crawled their knees raw. ’Tis plenty o’ time to knock old horse-flesh in tuh head when tuh job’s done.”
They laughed together. Evidently this was a well-liked camp joke.
“’Tis a well-coupled animal ’ee have there, Shanty,” said the humourist across the water, with a jerk of the head at Reivers. “Big in tuh bone and solid around tuh withers. Yon squaw is a solid piece, too. Happen they’re broke to pull double?”
“Unbroke stock, Tammy,” drawled Moir leisurely. “Gentleman, squaw-man, waster. But breaking stock’s our specialty, eh, Tammy?”
A muffled shout floated up from the mouth of the smoking pit before Tammy could reply. Instantly there followed a dull moan of pain: Moir and Tommy laughed knowingly.
“Here comes sample of our work,” said Tammy, nodding toward the tunnel. “Poor Joey! Has to use tuh prod to start him with each load now.”
A grating, shuffling sound now came from the mouth of the tunnel. Following it appeared the head of a man. And Reivers needed only one glance at the emaciated countenance to know that he was looking upon the father of Hattie MacGregor.
“Giddap, Scotch jackass!” roared Moir in great good humour. “Pull it out o’ there. That’s tuh horse. Pull!”
The man came painfully, an inch at a time, out of the pit, and looked across the creek at Shanty Moir. Behind him there dragged a rough wooden sledge loaded with lumps of earth. The man was hitched to this load by a harness of straps that held his arms helpless against his sides. No strait-jacket ever held its victim more utterly helpless than the contrivancewhich now held James MacGregor in toils as a beast of burden. A contrivance of straps about the ankles held his legs close together.
So short were the traces by which the sledge was drawn that MacGregor could not have stood upright without having lifted the heavy load a foot or more from the ground. He made no attempt to stand so, but hung half-bowed against the harness, his eyes gleaming through the matted red hair over his brows straight at Shanty Moir.
It was the eyes that drew and held Reivers’ attention to the face, rather than to the man’s terrible situation. James MacGregor, helpless beast of burden to his tormentors that he was, was not beaten. The same clean-cut nose, mouth and chin that Reivers remembered so well in the daughter were apparent in the father’s pain-marked face. The eyes gleamed defiance. And they were wide and grey, Reivers saw, the same as the eyes that haunted him in memory’s pictures of the girl who had not feared his glance.
“Shanty Moir,” spoke MacGregor in a voice weak but firm, “when the devil made you he cursed his own work. He cursed you as a misbegotten thing not fit for hell. The gut-eating wolverine is a brave beast compared to you. Skunks would run from your company. You think you have done big work. You fool! You cannot rob me of what belongs to me and mine; you cannot kill me. As sure as there is a God in Heaven, He will let me or mine kill you with bare hands.”
Moir and his man laughed in weary fashion, as if this speech were old to them, and Reivers was amazed at an impulse within him to throw himself at Shanty Moir’s throat. He joined foolishly in the laughter to hide his confusion. What had he to do with such impulses? What business had he having anyfeeling for the poor enslaved man before him? He had come to Moir’s camp for one purpose: to get the gold mined there, to get a new start in life. Was it possible that he was growing weak enough to experience the feeling of pity, the impulse to help the helpless? Nonsense! He laughed loudly. His plan was one in which silly impulses of this nature had no part, and he would go through with it to the end.
“Well brayed, Scots jackass,” said the man at the thawing-pan casually. “Now pull tuh load over here. Giddap-pull!”
MacGregor leaned weakly against the harness, but the sledge had lodged and his depleted strength was insufficient to budge it.
“Oh ho! Getting lazy, eh?” came from the tunnel, and a thin-faced man came out, a short stick with a sharp brad in his hands. “Want help, eh? Well, here ’tis,” he chuckled, and drove the brad into MacGregor’s leg.
Again the strange impulse to leap to the tortured man’s rescue, to kill his tormentor without reckoning the price or what might come after, stirred itself in Reivers’ breast, and again he joined in the laughter to pass it off.
MacGregor started as the iron entered his flesh and the movement loosened the sledge. With weak, faltering steps he drew the load alongside the fire, where Tammy proceeded to transfer the frozen chunks of earth to the thawing-pan.
“Eh, hah! New cattle?” said the man with the prod when he espied Reivers and Tillie. “Cow and bull.”
“Cow—and an old ox, Joey,” laughed Moir. “Has even burnt his horns off with hooch, and wilt go well in the harness when he’s broke.”
“’Tis time,” said Joey. “Tuh Scots jackass’ll soon drop in his tracks.”
“Not until I’ve paid you out in full, you devils,” said MacGregor quietly. “I’ll give you an hour of living hell for every prod you’ve given me, you poor cur.”
Joey approached him and unhooked the traces from his harness with an air that told how well he was accustomed to such threats.
“Must call it a day, Shanty,” he said, loosening the straps that bound MacGregor’s hands so the forearms were free while the upper arms remained bound tightly to his sides. “Old pit’s full o’ smoke.” In bored sort of fashion he kicked MacGregor into the creek. “To your stable, jackass. Day’s done.”
MacGregor, tripped by the traps about his ankles, fell full length in the water, floundered across, and crawled miserably out of sight behind the skin front of the smaller dugout. Moir and his two henchmen watched him, jeering and laughing. At a sign the two on the other side of the creek came across and drew close to their chief.
“And now, old son,” snarled Moir, swinging around on Reivers like a flash, “now, you slick waster—now we’ll attend to ’ee.”