"MY DAMN PRETTY LI'L' HIGH-STEPPIN' SQUAW"
The man on the stool was Whaley.
One glance at the girl and one at West's triumphant gargoyle grin was
enough. He understood the situation better than words could tell it.
To Jessie, at this critical moment of her life, even Whaley seemed a
God-send. She pushed across the room awkwardly, not waiting to free
herself of the webs packed with snow. In the dusky eyes there was a
cry for help.
"Save me from him!" she cried simply, as a child might have done. "You
will, won't you?"
The black eyebrows in the cold, white face drew to a line. The
gambler's gaze, expressionless as a blank wall, met hers steadily.
"Why don't you send for your friend Morse?" he asked. "He's in that
business. I ain't."
It was as though he had struck her in the face. The eyes that clung to
his we're horror-filled. Did there really live men so heartless that
they would not lift a hand to snatch a child from a ferocious wolf?
West's laughter barked out, rapacious and savage. "She's mine, jus'
like I said she'd be. My damn pretty li'l' high-steppin' squaw."
His partner looked at him bleakly. "Oh, she's yours, is she?"
"You bet yore boots. I'll show her--make her eat outa my hand,"
boasted the convict.
"Will you show McRae too--and all his friends, as well as the
North-West Mounted? Will you make 'em all eat out of your hands?"
"Whadjamean?"
"Why, I had a notion you were loaded up with trouble and didn't need
to hunt more," sneered the gambler. "I had a notion the red-coats were
on your heels to take you across the plains to hang you."
"I'll learn 'em about that," the huge fugitive bragged. "They say
I'm a killer. Let it ride. I'll sure enough let 'em see they're good
guessers."
Whaley shrugged his shoulders and looked at him with cold contempt.
"You've got a bare chance for a getaway if you travel light and fast.
I'd want long odds to back it," he said coolly.
"Tha's a heluva thing to tell a friend," West snarled.
"It's the truth. Take it or leave it. But if you try to bull this
through your own way and don't let me run it, you're done for."
"How done for?"
The gambler did not answer. He turned to Jessie. "Unless you want your
feet to freeze, you'd better get those duffles off."
The girl took off her mits and tried to unfasten the leggings after
she had kicked the snowshoes from her feet. But her stiff fingers
could not loosen the knots.
The free trader stooped and did it for her while West watched him
sulkily. Jessie unwound the cloth and removed moccasins and duffles.
She sat barefooted before the fire, but not too close.
"If they're frozen I'll get snow," Whaley offered.
"They're not frozen, thank you," she answered.
"Whadjamean done for?" repeated West.
His partner's derisive, scornful eye rested on him. "Use your brains,
man. The Mounted are after you hot and heavy. You know their record.
They get the man they go after. Take this fellow Beresford, the one
that jugged you."
The big ruffian shook a furious fist in the air. "Curse him!" he
shouted, and added a dozen crackling oaths.
"Curse him and welcome," Whaley replied. "But don't fool yourself
about him. He's a go-getter. Didn't he go up Peace River after Pierre
Poulette? Didn't he drag him back with cuffs on 'most a year later?
That's what you've got against you, three hundred red-coats like him."
"You tryin' to scare me?" demanded West sullenly.
"I'm trying to hammer some common sense into your head. Your chance
for a safe getaway rests on one thing. You've got to have friends in
the Lone Lands who'll hide you till you can slip out of the country.
Can you do that if the trappers--friends of McRae, nearly all of
'em--carry the word of what you did to this girl?"
"I'm gonna take her with me." West stuck doggedly to his idea. He knew
what he wanted. His life was forfeit, anyhow. He might as well go
through to a finish.
From where she sat before the great fire Jessie's whisper reached
Whaley. "Don't let him, please." It was an ineffective little wail
straight from the heart.
Whaley went on, as though he had not heard. "It's your deal, not mine.
I'm just telling you. Take this girl along, and your life's not worth
a plugged nickel."
"Hell's hinges! In two days she'll be crazy about me. Tha's how I am
with women."
"In two days she'll hate the ground you walk on, if she hasn't killed
herself or you by that time."
Waves of acute pain were pricking into Jessie's legs from the pink
toes to the calves. She was massaging them to restore circulation and
had to set her teeth to keep from crying.
But her subconscious mind was wholly on what passed between the men.
She knew that Whaley was trying to reëstablish over the other the
mental dominance he had always held. It was a frail enough tenure, no
doubt, likely to be upset at any moment by vanity, suspicion, or heady
gusts of passion. In it, such as it was, lay a hope. Watching the
gambler's cold, impassive face, the stony look in the poker eyes, she
judged him tenacious and strong-willed. For reasons of his own he was
fighting her battle. He had no intention of letting West take her with
him.
Why? What was the motive in the back of his mind? She acquitted the
man of benevolence. If his wishes chanced to march with hers, it was
because of no altruism. He held a bitter grudge against Angus McRae
and incidentally against her for the humiliation of his defeat at the
hands of Morse. To satisfy this he had only to walk out of the house
and leave her to an ugly fate. Why did he not do this? Was he playing
a deep game of his own in which she was merely a pawn?
She turned the steaming duffles over on the mud hearth to dry the
other side. She drew back the moccasins and the leggings that the heat
might not scorch them. The sharp pain waves still beat into her feet
and up her limbs. To change her position she drew up a stool and sat
on it. This she had pushed back to a corner of the fireplace.
For Bully West was straddling up and down the room, a pent volcano
ready to explode. He knew Whaley's advice was good. It would be
suicide to encumber himself with this girl in his flight. But he had
never disciplined his desires. He wanted her. He meant to take her.
Passion, the lust for revenge, the bully streak in him that gloated at
the sight of some one young and fine trembling before him: all these
were factors contributing to the same end. By gar, he would have what
he had set his mind on, no matter what Whaley said.
Jessie knew the fellow was dangerous as a wounded buffalo bull in a
corral. He would have his way if he had to smash and trample down
any one that opposed him. Her eyes moved to Whaley's black-browed,
bloodless face. How far would the gambler go in opposition to the
other?
As her glance shifted back to West, it was arrested at the window.
The girl's heart lost a beat, then sang a paean of joy. For the
copper-colored face of Onistah was framed in the pane.