Chapter XXVI: The Look in a Woman's Eyes

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 watching you 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 Camp and 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 'twas north 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 know it, 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 would have 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. There he 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.