Chapter XXXII: The Scorn of a Pure Woman

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 again with 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 of Raftery'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 white folks 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 the song 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.