Chapter XXV: Gold!

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. The mouth 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 first spoonful, "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 property forfeited 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 deposit for 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.