Chapter XXXV: The Test of the Bottle

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 ground and 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.