Chapter XLIII: "the Penalty of a White Man's Mind"

"Oh, Snow-Burner!" It was Tillie who came, bearing the evening food, and Reivers crept out on the sand to meet her. "Oh, Snow-Burner," she whispered quietly, "I am weary of this camp. The air is bad, and the country is not open. It is in my heart to poison Iron Hair as soon as the Snow-Burner says we are ready to go from this place."

Reivers stared at her. A short while ago he would not have been shocked in the slightest degree to have heard this--to her, natural speech--fall from Tillie's lips. But of late another woman, another kind of woman, had been in his thoughts, and Tillie's words left him speechless for the moment.

The squaw continued placidly--

"The Snow-Burner comes here after gold?"

"Yes."

"And when he has the gold we go away?"

"Yes."

"Good. The pig, Iron Hair, wears a great belt of buckskin about his middle. The gold is in there, much of it. I will poison him to-night, and we will take the belt and go away from here in the morning."

Reivers made no reply. Here was success offered him without so much as a move of his hand. He need have no part in it, none at all. Tillie would bring him the gold belt. That was what he had come for; and hitherto he had never let anything in the world stand between him and the gratification of his desires. Yet he hesitated.

"Is there more gold here than Iron Hair wears in his belt?" asked Tillie.

Reivers shook his head.

"Then why wait?" Her whisper was full of amazement. "It is not like the Snow-Burner. Was there ever a man who could make him do his will? And yet now the Snow-Burner labours for Iron Hair like a woman."

"Like a woman?" He repeated her bold words in surprise, while she sat humbly awaiting the careless, back-hand blow which knocked her rolling on the sand. "And was that hand like the hand of a woman?" he asked.

Tillie picked herself up with a gleam of hope in her eyes. It was long since the Snow-Burner had struck her strongly.

"Oh, Snow-Burner!" she whispered proudly as she crawled back to his side. "Why do we wait? It is all ready. The Snow-Burner knows where the gold is that he came for. Tillie will do her share. The sleep-medicine is sewed in the corner of my blanket. There is enough to kill this big pig, Iron Hair, and his men three times over. Will not the Snow-Burner give the sign for Tillie to put the sleep-medicine in their food? Then they will sleep and not awaken, and the Snow-Burner and Tillie can go away with the gold. Was it not so that the Snow-Burner wished to do?"

Reivers nodded. That was what he wished.

It was very simple. Only a nod. After that--the sleep-medicine, the tasteless Indian poison, the secret of which Tillie possessed, and which she would have used on a hundred men had Reivers given the word.

Yes, it was very simple--except that he could not forget Hattie MacGregor. The memory of her each hour had grown clearer, more torturing. Because of it he had taken the killing load of work from her father's shoulders; because of it he was growing weak. He swore mutteringly as he thought of it. He had permitted her memory to soften him, to make a boy of him. But now he was himself again. Tillie's words had done their work. He turned toward the squaw, and she saw by the look in his eyes that the Snow-Burner at last was going to give the fatal sign.

"To-night," she pleaded. "Let it be to-night. It is a bad camp here. The air is not good. Iron Hair is a pig. Let me give the sleep-medicine to-night; then we go from here in the morning--together."

She crept closer to him, slyly smiling up at him; and suddenly Reivers flung her away with a movement of loathing and sprang up, tall and straight.

"No," he said quietly, "not to-night." And Tillie crouched at his feet.

"Snow-Burner," she whispered, "I hear Iron Hair and his men talk. They go away soon. They take the gold with them. Does not the Snow-Burner want the gold?"

Reivers looked down upon her. He was standing up, stiff and proud, as he should stand, but as he had not stood since he had begun to play at being a drunken squaw-man.

"I do not want you to help me get the gold," he said slowly. "I do not want you to give Iron Hair the sleep-medicine, to-night, or any night. I will take the gold from Iron Hair without your help. I have spoken."

He stood looking down at her, and Tillie, looking up at him, once more was reminded that he was a white man and that the vast gulf between them never might be bridged. Wearily, hopelessly, she rose to her feet.

"The Snow-Burner has spoken; I have heard," she whispered, and went humbly back into the large dugout.

Reivers laughed a small laugh of bitterness as he heard the flap drop behind her. He threw his head far back and gazed up at the slit of starlit sky that showed above the mouth of the cavern, and for once in his life he felt the common insignificance of human-kind alone in the vast scheme of Nature. He was weak; he had thrown away the easy way to success; he had let the memory of Hattie MacGregor's face, flaring before his eyes in the instant that Tillie thrust her lips up to his, beat him.

He threw up his great arms and held them out, tense and hard as bars of living steel. He felt of his shoulders, his biceps, his chest, his legs, and he laughed sardonically.

"Body, you're just as superior to other men's bodies as you ever were," he mused. "Yes, Body, you're just as fit to rend and prey on others as ever. But you're handicapped now. You're not permitted to do things as you used to do them. Body, you're paying the penalty of being burdened with a white man's mind."

MacGregor looked up as Reivers re-entered the dugout bearing the evening food. A tiny fire in one corner lighted up the room and by its flickering flames he saw Reivers' face.

"Blood o' God!" whispered the old man in awe. "What's come over you, man?"

He rose on his elbow and peered more closely.

"Man--man--you ha' not overcome Shanty Moir? You have not finished him without letting me----"

Reivers laughed.

"What are you talking about? Do I look as if I'd been fighting?"

MacGregor studied him seriously.

"I donno," said he slowly. "I donno that you look as if you had been fighting. But you come in with your head high up, and the look in your eyes of a man who has conquered. That I do know. Tell me, lad, what's taken place wi' you outside?"

"None of your business," snapped Reivers. "Here's your supper." And he returned to his side of the dugout to sit down to think.

He was on his mettle now. He had put to one side the easy, certain way to success that Tillie had offered. Success was not to be so easy as he had thought. Thus far it had been easy. He had met Moir, he had won his way into the mine, he had learned where the gold was hidden, all as he had planned. Remained to get the gold and get safely away. The time to do it in was short.

Reivers' experienced miner's eyes had told him that the pocket was perilously near to being mined out. Any day, any hour now, and the pay-streak which they were following might end in barren dirt. That would be the end of his opportunity. Moir and his men would waste no time in the Dead Lands after making their cleanup. They would pack and travel at once, southward, to the railroad. They would not permit even so harmless an individual as a sodden squaw-man to trail them. Hence, Reivers knew that he must find or make his opportunity without waste of time and strike the instant it was found or made.

He had been unable to find an opportunity that first day. Moir in his camp was a different man from Moir on the trail. He was the boss man here, and Reivers granted him ungrudged admiration for it. Liquor was his master on the trail; here he was master of it. His treatment of Joey and Tammy in the morning had explained his attitude on that question too clearly to make it worth while to attempt to entice him into a bout at drinking. Moir was boss here, boss of himself and others, and he always had his six-shooter handy to prove it.

Tammy and Joey wore knives at their hips, but no guns. Moir's 30.40 rifle hung carelessly on a nail near the door of his dugout. This had puzzled Reivers at first. Would a bad man like Moir be so simple as to leave his rifle where any one might lay hands on it, and carry a six-shooter in a manner to provoke a gun-fight? When he was ordered to carry a pail of water to the dugout Reivers managed to take a careful look at the rifle, and the puzzle was explained. The breech-block had been taken out and the fine weapon was no more deadly than any club eight pounds in weight.

His respect for Moir had increased with this discovery. Evidently Moir was not so thick-headed after all. He took no chances. The only effective shooting-iron in camp was his six-shooter and, with this he was thoroughly master of the situation.

In the first hour Reivers had noticed that Moir had a system of guarding himself. It was the system of the primitive fighting man and it consisted solely of: let no man get at your back. At no time, whether in the mine, at the washing-pans, in the open, or in the dugout did Moir permit any one to get behind him. He made no distinction. In the pit he stood with Joey before him. At the pans he worked behind Tammy. When the others grouped together he whirled as smoothly as a lynx if any one made to pass in his rear. Even when he sat at ease in the dugout with Tillie he placed his back against the bare stone wall at the rear of the room. So much Reivers had seen during his first day in the camp.

"Does he sleep soundly at night?" he asked suddenly.

"Who?" asked MacGregor.

"Moir, of course."

"Soundly?" The Scotchman gritted his teeth. "Aye as soundly as a lynx lying down by its kill in a wolf country."

Reivers smiled a grim smile. There was no chance, then, of rushing Shanty Moir in his sleep. It would be harder to get the gold and get away than he had expected. In fact, the difficulties of it presented quite a problem. He liked problems, did the Snow-Burner, and his smile grew more grim as he rolled himself in his blankets and lay down to wait, dream-tortured by pictures of Hattie MacGregor, for the coming of daylight of the day in which he had resolved to force the problem to solution.