Chapter XXXVI: The Snow-Burner Begins to Weaken

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 though their 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 it out. 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 for Nawa 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."