“It’s got to be settled to-night, Nance. This game is up here, up for
ever. The redcoat police from Ottawa are coming, and they’ll soon be
roostin’ in this post; the Injuns are goin’, the buffaloes are most
gone, and the fur trade’s dead in these parts. D’ye see?”
The woman did not answer the big, broad-shouldered man bending over her,
but remained looking into the fire with wide, abstracted eyes and a face
somewhat set.
“You and your brother Bantry’s got to go. This store ain’t worth a
cent now. The Hudson’s Bay Company’ll come along with the redcoats, and
they’ll set up a nice little Sunday-school business here for what they
call ‘agricultural settlers.’ There’ll be a railway, and the Yankees’ll
send up their marshals to work with the redcoats on the border, and--”
“And the days of smuggling will be over,” put in the girl in a low
voice. “No more bull-wackers and muleskinners ‘whooping it up’; no
more Blackfeet and Piegans drinking alcohol and water, and cutting each
others’ throats. A nice quiet time coming on the border, Abe, eh?”
The man looked at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not
been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life
as it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to
it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of
the life, and the only white woman in this whole West country. It was
not in the words, but in the tone, that Abe Hawley found something
unusual and defamatory.
“Why, gol darn it, Nance, what’s got into you? You bin a man out West,
as good a pioneer as ever was on the border. But now you don’t sound
friendly to what’s been the game out here, and to all of us that’ve been
risking our lives to get a livin’.”
“What did I say?” asked the girl, unmoved.
“It ain’t what you said, it’s the sound o’ your voice.”
“You don’t know my voice, Abe. It ain’t always the same. You ain’t
always about; you don’t always hear it.”
He caught her arm suddenly. “No, but I want to hear it always. I want
to be always where you are, Nance. That’s what’s got to be settled
to-day--to-night.”
“Oh, it’s got to be settled to-night!” said the girl meditatively,
kicking nervously at a log on the fire. “It takes two to settle a thing
like that, and there’s only one says it’s got to be settled. Maybe it
takes more than two--or three--to settle a thing like that.” Now she
laughed mirthlessly.
The man started, and his face flushed with anger; then he put a hand on
himself, drew a step back, and watched her.
“One can settle a thing, if there’s a dozen in it. You see, Nance,
you and Bantry’s got to close out. He’s fixing it up to-night over at
Dingan’s Drive, and you can’t go it alone when you quit this place. Now,
it’s this way: you can go West with Bantry, or you can go North with
me. Away North there’s buffalo and deer, and game aplenty, up along the
Saskatchewan, and farther up on the Peace River. It’s going to be all
right up there for half a lifetime, and we can have it in our own way
yet. There’ll be no smuggling, but there’ll be trading, and land to get;
and, mebbe, there’d be no need of smuggling, for we can make it, I know
how--good white whiskey--and we’ll still have this free life for our
own. I can’t make up my mind to settle down to a clean collar and going
to church on Sundays, and all that. And the West’s in your bones too.
You look like the West--”
The girl’s face brightened with pleasure, and she gazed at him steadily.
“You got its beauty and its freshness, and you got its heat and cold--”
She saw the tobacco-juice stain at the corners of his mouth, she became
conscious of the slight odour of spirits in the air, and the light in
her face lowered in intensity.
“You got the ways of the deer in your walk, the song o’ the birds in
your voice; and you’re going North with me, Nance, for I bin talkin’
to you stiddy four years. It’s a long time to wait on the chance, for
there’s always women to be got, same as others have done--men like
Dingan with Injun girls, and men like Tobey with half-breeds. But I
ain’t bin lookin’ that way. I bin lookin’ only towards you.” He laughed
eagerly, and lifted a tin cup of whiskey standing on a table near. “I’m
lookin’ towards you now, Nance. Your health and mine together. It’s got
to be settled now. You got to go to the ‘Cific Coast with Bantry, or
North with me.”
The girl jerked a shoulder and frowned a little. He seemed so sure of
himself.
“Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else,” she said
quizzically. “There’s always four quarters to the compass, even when Abe
Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I’m not
going West with Bantry, but there’s three other points that’s open.”
With an oath the man caught her by the shoulders, and swung her round to
face him. He was swelling with anger. “You--Nick Pringle, that trading
cheat, that gambler! After four years, I--”
“Let go my shoulders,” she said quietly. “I’m not your property. Go and
get some Piegan girl to bully. Keep your hands off. I’m not a bronco
for you to bit and bridle. You’ve got no rights. You--” Suddenly she
relented, seeing the look in his face, and realising that, after all,
it was a tribute to herself that she could keep him for four years
and rouse him to such fury--“but yes, Abe,” she added, “you have some
rights. We’ve been good friends all these years, and you’ve been all
right out here. You said some nice things about me just now, and I
liked it, even if it was as if you learned it out of a book. I’ve got
no po’try in me; I’m plain homespun. I’m a sapling, I’m not any
prairie-flower, but I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like.
I’m a bit of hickory, I’m not a prairie-flower--”
“Who said you was a prairie-flower? Did I? Who’s talking about
prairie-flowers--”
He stopped suddenly, turned round at the sound of a footstep behind him,
and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who
was digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a
refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but
well made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden
by his rough clothes.
“Je-rick-ety! How long have I slept?” he said, blinking at the two
beside the fire. “How long?” he added, with a flutter of anxiety in his
tone.
“I said I’d wake you,” said the girl, coming forwards. “You needn’t have
worried.”
“I don’t worry,” answered the young man. “I dreamed myself awake, I
suppose. I got dreaming of redcoats and U. S. marshals, and an ambush
in the Barfleur Coulee, and--” He saw a secret, warning gesture from the
girl, and laughed, then turned to Abe and looked him in the face. “Oh, I
know him! Abe Hawley’s all O. K.--I’ve seen him over at Dingan’s Drive.
Honour among rogues. We’re all in it. How goes it--all right?” he added
carelessly to Hawley, and took a step forwards, as though to shake
hands. Seeing the forbidding look by which he was met, however, he
turned to the girl again, as Hawley muttered something they could not
hear.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“It’s nine o’clock,” answered the girl, her eyes watching his every
movement, her face alive.
“Then the moon’s up almost?”
“It’ll be up in an hour.”
“Jerickety! Then I’ve got to get ready.” He turned to the other room
again and entered.
“College pup!” said Hawley under his breath savagely. “Why didn’t you
tell me he was here?”
“Was it any of your business, Abe?” she rejoined quietly.
“Hiding him away here--”
“Hiding? Who’s been hiding him? He’s doing what you’ve done. He’s
smuggling--the last lot for the traders over by Dingan’s Drive. He’ll
get it there by morning. He has as much right here as you. What’s got
into you, Abe?”
“What does he know about the business? Why, he’s a college man from the
East. I’ve heard o’ him. Ain’t got no more sense for this life than a
dicky-bird. White-faced college pup! What’s he doing out here? If you’re
a friend o’ his, you’d better look after him. He’s green.”
“He’s going East again,” she said, “and if I don’t go West with Bantry,
or South over to Montana with Nick Pringle, or North--”
“Nancy--” His eyes burned, his lips quivered.
She looked at him and wondered at the power she had over this bully of
the border, who had his own way with most people, and was one of the
most daring fighters, hunters, and smugglers in the country. He was
cool, hard, and well-in-hand in his daily life, and yet, where she was
concerned, “went all to pieces,” as someone else had said about himself
to her.
She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex. “You go now, and come
back, Abe,” she said in a soft voice. “Come back in an hour. Come back
then, and I’ll tell you which way I’m going from here.”
He was all right again. “It’s with you, Nancy,” he said eagerly. “I bin
waiting four years.”
As he closed the door behind him the “college pup” entered the room
again. “Oh, Abe’s gone!” he said excitedly. “I hoped you’d get rid of
the old rip-roarer. I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I
don’t really need to start yet. With the full moon I can do it before
daylight.” Then, with quick warmth, “Ah, Nancy, Nancy, you’re a
flower--the flower of all the prairies,” he added, catching her hand and
laughing into her eyes.
She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered. His boldness,
joined to an air of insinuation and understanding, had influenced her
greatly from the first moment they had met two months ago, as he was
going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy way in which he had
talked to her, the extraordinary sense he seemed to have of what was
going on in her mind, the confidential meaning in voice and tone and
words had, somehow, opened up a side of her nature hitherto unexplored.
She had talked with him freely then, for it was only when he left her
that he said what he instinctively knew she would remember till they
met again. His quick comments, his indirect but acute questions,
his exciting and alluring reminiscences of the East, his subtle yet
seemingly frank compliments, had only stimulated a new capacity in her,
evoked comparisons of this delicate-looking, fine-faced gentleman with
the men of the West by whom she was surrounded. But later he appeared to
stumble into expressions of admiration for her, as though he was carried
off his feet and had been stunned by her charm. He had done it all
like a master. He had not said that she was beautiful--she knew she was
not--but that she was wonderful, and fascinating, and with “something
about her” he had never seen in all his life, like her own prairies,
thrilling, inspiring, and adorable. His first look at her had seemed
full of amazement. She had noticed that, and thought it meant only that
he was surprised to find a white girl out here among smugglers, hunters,
squaw-men, and Indians. But he said that the first look at her had made
him feel things-feel life and women different from ever before; and he
had never seen anyone like her, nor a face with so much in it. It was
all very brilliantly done.
“You make me want to live,” he had said, and she, with no knowledge of
the nuances of language, had taken it literally, and had asked him if
it had been his wish to die; and he had responded to her mistaken
interpretation of his meaning, saying that he had had such sorrow he had
not wanted to live. As he said it his face looked, in truth, overcome
by some deep inward care; so that there came a sort of feeling she had
never had so far for any man--that he ought to have someone to look
after him. This was the first real stirring of the maternal and
protective spirit in her towards men, though it had shown itself amply
enough regarding animals and birds. He had said he had not wanted to
live, and yet he had come out West in order to try and live, to cure the
trouble that had started in his lungs. The Eastern doctors had told him
that the rough outdoor life would cure him, or nothing would, and he had
vanished from the college walls and the pleasant purlieus of learning
and fashion into the wilds. He had not lied directly to her when he said
that he had had deep trouble; but he had given the impression that he
was suffering from wrongs which had broken his spirit and ruined
his health. Wrongs there certainly had been in his life, by whomever
committed.
Two months ago he had left this girl with her mind full of memories of
what he had said to her, and there was something in the sound of the
slight cough following his farewell words which had haunted her ever
since. Her tremendous health and energy, the fire of life burning so
brightly in her, reached out towards this man living on so narrow a
margin of force, with no reserve for any extra strain, with just enough
for each day’s use and no more. Four hours before he had come again with
his team of four mules and an Indian youth, having covered forty miles
since his last stage. She was at the door and saw him coming while he
was yet along distance off. Some instinct had told her to watch that
afternoon, for she knew of his intended return and of his dangerous
enterprise. The Indians had trailed south and east, the traders had
disappeared with them, her brother Bantry had gone up and over to
Dingan’s Drive, and, save for a few loiterers and last hangers-on, she
was alone with what must soon be a deserted post; its walls, its great
enclosed yard, and its gun-platforms (for it had been fortified) left
for law and order to enter upon, in the persons of the red-coated
watchmen of the law.
Out of the South, from over the border, bringing the last great smuggled
load of whiskey which was to be handed over at Dingan’s Drive, and then
floated on Red Man’s River to settlements up North, came the “college
pup,” Kelly Lambton, worn out, dazed with fatigue, but smiling too, for
a woman’s face was ever a tonic to his blood since he was big enough to
move in life for himself. It needed courage--or recklessness--to run the
border now; for, as Abe Hawley had said, the American marshals were on
the pounce, the red-coated mounted police were coming west from Ottawa,
and word had winged its way along the prairie that these redcoats were
only a few score miles away, and might be at Fort Fair Desire at any
moment. The trail to Dingan’s Drive lay past it. Through Barfleur
Coulee, athwart a great open stretch of country, along a wooded belt,
and then, suddenly, over a ridge, Dingan’s Drive and Red Man’s River
would be reached.
The Government had a mind to make an example, if necessary, by killing
some smugglers in conflict, and the United States marshals had been
goaded by vanity and anger at one or two escapes “to have something for
their money,” as they said. That, in their language, meant, “to let the
red run,” and Kelly Lambton had none too much blood to lose.
He looked very pale and beaten as he held Nance Machell’s hands now, and
called her a prairie-flower, as he had done when he left her two months
before. On his arrival but now he had said little, for he saw that she
was glad to see him, and he was dead for sleep, after thirty-six hours
of ceaseless travel and watching and danger. Now, with the most perilous
part of his journey still before him, and worn physically as he was,
his blood was running faster as he looked into the girl’s face, and
something in her abundant force and bounding life drew him to her. Such
vitality in a man like Abe Hawley would have angered him almost, as it
did a little time ago, when Abe was there; but possessed by the girl, it
roused in him a hunger to draw from the well of her perfect health, from
the unused vigour of her being, something for himself. The touch of her
hands warmed him, in the fulness of her life, in the strong eloquence
of face and form, he forgot she was not beautiful. The lightness passed
from his words, and his face became eager.
“Flower, yes, the flower of the life of the West--that’s what I mean,”
he said. “You are like an army marching. When I look at you, my blood
runs faster. I want to march too. When I hold your hand I feel that
life’s worth living--I want to do things.”
She drew her hand away rather awkwardly. She had not now that command
of herself which had ever been easy with the men of the West, except,
perhaps, with Abe Hawley when--
But with an attempt, only half-meant, to turn the topic, she said: “You
must be starting if you want to get through to-night. If the redcoats
catch you this side of Barfleur Coulee, or in the Coulee itself,
you’ll stand no chance. I heard they was only thirty miles north this
afternoon. Maybe they’ll come straight on here to-night, instead of
camping. If they have news of your coming, they might. You can’t tell.”
“You’re right.” He caught her hand again. “I’ve got to be going now. But
Nance--Nance--Nancy, I want to stay here, here with you; or to take you
with me.”
She drew back. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Take me with
you--me--where?”
“East--away down East.”
Her brain throbbed, her pulses beat so hard. She scarcely knew what to
say, did not know what she said. “Why do you do this kind of thing? Why
do you smuggle?” she asked. “You wasn’t brought up to this.”
“To get this load of stuff through is life and death to me,” he
answered. “I’ve made six thousand dollars out here. That’s enough to
start me again in the East, where I lost everything. But I’ve got to
have six hundred dollars clear for the travel--railways and things; and
I’m having this last run to get it. Then I’ve finished with the West, I
guess. My health’s better; the lung is closed up, I’ve only got a little
cough now and again; and I’m off East. I don’t want to go alone.”
He suddenly caught her in his arms. “I want you--you, to go with me,
Nancy--Nance!”
Her brain swam. To leave the West behind, to go East to a new life
full of pleasant things, as this man’s wife! Her great heart rose, and
suddenly the mother in her as well as the woman in her was captured by
his wooing. She had never known what it was to be wooed like this.
She was about to answer, when there came a sharp knock at the door
leading from the backyard, and Lambton’s Indian lad entered. “The
soldier--he come--many. I go over the ridge; I see. They come quick
here,” he said.
Nance gave a startled cry, and Lambton turned to the other room for his
pistols, overcoat, and cap, when there was the sound of horses’ hoofs,
the door suddenly opened, and an officer stepped inside.
“You’re wanted for smuggling, Lambton,” he said brusquely. “Don’t stir!”
In his hand was a revolver.
“Oh, bosh! Prove it,” answered the young man, pale and startled, but
cool in speech and action. “We’ll prove it all right. The stuff is
hereabouts.” The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook
language. She saw he did not understand. Then she spoke quickly to
Lambton in the same tongue.
“Keep him here a bit,” she said. “His men haven’t come yet. Your outfit
is well hid. I’ll see if I can get away with it before they find it.
They’ll follow, and bring you with them, that’s sure. So if I have luck
and get through, we’ll meet at Dingan’s Drive.”
Lambton’s face brightened. He quickly gave her a few directions in
Chinook, and told her what to do at Dingan’s if she got there first.
Then she was gone. The officer did not understand what Nance had said,
but he realised that, whatever she intended to do, she had an advantage
over him. With an unnecessary courage he had ridden on alone to make his
capture, and, as it proved, without prudence. He had got his man, but he
had not got the smuggled whiskey and alcohol he had come to seize. There
was no time to be lost. The girl had gone before he realised it. What
had she said to the prisoner? He was foolish enough to ask Lambton, and
Lambton replied coolly: “She said she’d get you some supper, but she
guessed it would have to be cold--What’s your name? Are you a colonel,
or a captain, or only a principal private?”
“I am Captain MacFee, Lambton. And you’ll now bring me where your outfit
is. March!”
The pistol was still in his hand, and he had a determined look in
his eye. Lambton saw it. He was aware of how much power lay in the
threatening face before him, and how eager that power was to make itself
felt, and provide “Examples”; but he took his chances.
“I’ll march all right,” he answered, “but I’ll march to where you tell
me. You can’t have it both ways. You can take me, because you’ve found
me, and you can take my outfit too when you’ve found it; but I’m not
doing your work, not if I know it.”
There was a blaze of anger in the eyes of the officer, and it looked
for an instant as though something of the lawlessness of the border
was going to mark the first step of the Law in the Wilderness, but
he bethought himself in time, and said quietly, yet in a voice which
Lambton knew he must heed:
“Put on your things-quick.”
When this was accomplished, and MacFee had secured the smuggler’s
pistols, he said again, “March, Lambton.”
Lambton marched through the moonlit night towards the troop of men who
had come to set up the flag of order in the plains and hills, and as he
went his keen ear heard his own mules galloping away down towards
the Barfleur Coulee. His heart thumped in his breast. This girl, this
prairie-flower, was doing this for him, was risking her life, was
breaking the law for him. If she got through, and handed over the
whiskey to those who were waiting for it, and it got bundled into the
boats going North before the redcoats reached Dingan’s Drive, it would
be as fine a performance as the West had ever seen; and he would be six
hundred dollars to the good. He listened to the mules galloping, till
the sounds had died into the distance, but he saw now that his captor
had heard too, and that the pursuit would be desperate.
A half-hour later it began, with MacFee at the head, and a dozen
troopers pounding behind, weary, hungry, bad-tempered, ready to exact
payment for their hardships and discouragement.
They had not gone a dozen miles when a shouting horseman rode furiously
on them from behind. They turned with carbines cocked, but it was Abe
Hawley who cursed them, flung his fingers in their faces, and rode on
harder and harder. Abe had got the news from one of Nancy’s half-breeds,
and, with the devil raging in his heart, had entered on the chase.
His spirit was up against them all; against the Law represented by the
troopers camped at Fort Fair Desire, against the troopers and their
captain speeding after Nancy Machell--his Nonce, who was risking her
life and freedom for the hated, pale-faced smuggler riding between the
troopers; and his spirit was up against Nance herself.
Nance had said to him, “Come back in an hour,” and he had come back to
find her gone. She had broken her word. She had deceived him. She had
thrown the four years of his waiting to the winds, and a savage lust
was in his heart, which would not be appeased till he had done some evil
thing to someone.
The girl and the Indian lad were pounding through the night with ears
strained to listen for hoof-beats coming after, with eyes searching
forward into the trail for swollen creeks and direful obstructions.
Through Barfleur Coulee it was a terrible march, for there was no road,
and again and again they were nearly overturned, while wolves hovered
in their path, ready to reap a midnight harvest. But once in the open
again, with the full moonlight on their trail, the girl’s spirits rose.
If she could do this thing for the man who had looked into her eyes as
no one had ever done, what a finish to her days in the West! For they
were finished, finished for ever, and she was going--she was going East;
not West with Bantry, nor South with Nick Pringle, nor North with Abe
Hawley, ah, Abe Hawley, he had been a good friend, he had a great heart,
he was the best man of all the western men she had known; but another
man had come from the East, a man who had roused something in her never
felt before, a man who had said she was wonderful; and he needed someone
to take good care of him, to make him love life again. Abe would have
been all right if Lambton had never come, and she had meant to marry Abe
in the end; but it was different now, and Abe must get over it. Yet she
had told Abe to come back in an hour. He was sure to do it; and, when
he had done it, and found her gone on this errand, what would he do? She
knew what he would do. He would hurt someone. He would follow too. But
at Dingan’s Drive, if she reached it before the troopers and before Abe,
and did the thing she had set out to do; and, because no whiskey could
be found, Lambton must go free; and they all stood there together, what
would be the end? Abe would be terrible; but she was going East, not
North, and when the time came she would face it and put things right
somehow.
The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious eyes and mind, yet
dawn came, and there had fallen no sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The
ridge above Dingan’s Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was
no sign of her pursuers. At Red Man’s River she delivered her load of
contraband to the traders waiting for it, and saw it loaded into the
boats and disappear beyond the wooded bend above Dingan’s.
Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother Bantry, and was carried,
fainting, into Dingan’s Lodge. A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers
and Lambton came. MacFee grimly searched the post and the shore, but
he saw by the looks of all that he had been foiled. He had no proof of
anything, and Lambton must go free.
“You’ve fooled us,” he said to Nance sourly, yet with a kind of
admiration too. “Through you they got away with it. But I wouldn’t try
it again, if I were you.”
“Once is enough,” answered the girl laconically, as Lambton, set free,
caught both her hands in his and whispered in her ear.
MacFee turned to the others. “You’d better drop this kind of thing,”
he said. “I mean business.” They saw the troopers by the horses, and
nodded.
“Well, we was about quit of it anyhow,” said Bantry. “We’ve had all we
want out here.”
A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when there burst into the
group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley, on foot.
He looked round the group savagely till his eyes rested on Nance and
Lambton. “I’m last in,” he said in a hoarse voice. “My horse broke its
leg cutting across to get here before her--” He waved a hand towards
Nance. “It’s best stickin’ to old trails, not tryin’ new ones.” His eyes
were full of hate as he looked at Lambton. “I’m keeping to old
trails. I’m for goin’ North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day and
hash-and-clothes people ain’t come yet.” He made a contemptuous gesture
toward MacFee and his troopers. “I’m goin’ North--” He took a step
forward and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Nance. “I say I’m goin’ North.
You comin’ with me, Nance?” He took off his cap to her.
He was haggard, his buckskins were torn, his hair was dishevelled, and
he limped a little; but he was a massive and striking figure, and MacFee
watched him closely, for there was that in his eyes which meant trouble.
“You said, ‘Come back in an hour,’ Nance, and I come back, as I said I
would,” he went on. “You didn’t stand to your word. I’ve come to git it.
I’m goin’ North, Nance, and I bin waitin’ for four years for you to go
with me. Are you comin’?”
His voice was quiet, but it had a choking kind of sound, and it struck
strangely in the ears of all. MacFee came nearer.
“Are you comin’ with me, Nance, dear?”
She reached a hand towards Lambton, and he took it, but she did not
speak. Something in Abe’s eyes overwhelmed her--something she had
never seen before, and it seemed to stifle speech in her. Lambton spoke
instead.
“She’s going East with me,” he said. “That’s settled.”
MacFee started. Then he caught Abe’s arm. “Wait!” he said peremptorily.
“Wait one minute.” There was something in his voice which held Abe back
for the instant.
“You say she is going East with you,” MacFee said sharply to Lambton.
“What for?” He fastened Lambton with his eyes, and Lambton quailed.
“Have you told her you’ve got a wife--down East? I’ve got your history,
Lambton. Have you told her that you’ve got a wife you married when you
were at college--and as good a girl as ever lived?”
It had come with terrible suddenness even to Lambton, and he was too
dazed to make any reply. With a cry of shame and anger Nancy started
back. Growling with rage and hate, Abe Hawley sprang toward Lambton, but
the master of the troopers stepped between.
No one could tell who moved first, or who first made the suggestion,
for the minds of all were the same, and the general purpose was
instantaneous; but in the fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace,
was on his hands and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful, but not
interfering, the master of the troopers saw him set adrift in a canoe
without a paddle, while he was pelted with mud from the shore.
The next morning at sunrise Abe Hawley and the girl he had waited for so
long started on the North trail together, MacFee, master of the troopers
and justice of the peace, handing over the marriage lines.