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."