The Snow-Burner

CHAPTER XXXIX—JAMES MACGREGOR’S STORY

The element of surprise would be on his side, but his right shoulder still was weak from the old bullet-wound. With his terrible ability to use his feet he calculated that he could drop Moir and Tammy with broken bones as they rushed him. To do that he would have to drop to his back, and Joey, the third man, wore a long skinning-knife on his hip. No, if he began to fight he would never get what he had come after. He wiped his mouth furtively and swayed from the knees up.

“I want some hooch, mister, that’s what I want,” he whined shakily. “You promised you’d give me a drink when we got here, you know you did. Haven’t had a drop since morning. I wouldn’t ‘a’ come if I’d known you were going to treat me like this.”

Then he did the best acting of his life. He jumped sideways and shuddered; he frantically plucked imaginary bugs off his coat sleeve; he stepped high as if stepping over something on the ground; his eyes and face muscles worked spasmodically.

“O-ooh! Gimme a drink,” he begged. “Please gimme a drink. I gotta have it.”

The grins faded from the faces before him. They knew full well the signs of incipient delirium tremens. Tammy laughed dryly.

“Hast brought home more than an old ox and a cow, Shanty,” he said. “Hast brought a whole menagerie. Yon stick’ll have tuh Wullies in a minute if he’s not liquored.”

Reivers dropped to his knees, shuddering, his arms shielding his eyes from imaginary beasts of the bottle.

“Take ’em away, boys,” he pleaded. “Kill the big ones, let the little ones go.”

With a snarl Moir leaped to his sledge and knocked the neck off a bottle of hooch.

“Drink, you scut!” he growled. “I’ll have dealings with you when you’re sobered up.”

Reivers drank and began to doze. Moir kicked him upright.

“Get into the shed with t’other jackass,” he commanded, propelling him toward the dugout into which MacGregor had crawled. “And in tuh morning you go to work, e’en though snakes be crawling all o’er ’ee.”

A faintly muttered curse greeted Reivers as he crawled into the dugout.

“You poor curs! What do you want with me now?” came MacGregor’s voice from a corner of the tiny room. “You skunk——”

“Easy, MacGregor Roy,” whispered Reivers quietly. “It’s not one of the ‘skunks.’”

“MacGregor Roy!” By the light that entered by a slit in the skin-flap Reivers could see the Scotchman painfully lifting his head from his miserable bunk, as he hoarsely repeated his own name. “MacGregor Roy! Who are you, stranger, to call James MacGregor by his family name?”

“I’m the man that Shanty Moir brought in this afternoon,” whispered Reivers.

“I know, I know,” gasped MacGregor weakly. “But men do not call me MacGregor Roy. James MacGregor they call me, unless—unless——”

“Unless they have the ‘Roy’ straight from the lips of your daughter, Hattie.”

For a full minute MacGregor sat stricken speechless.

“Man, man! Speak!” The unfortunate man came wriggling over and laid his hands pleadingly on Reivers. “Don’t play with me. Is my daughter Hattie alive and well?”

“Very much alive,” replied Reivers, “and as well as can be expected of a girl who is worrying her heart out over why her father doesn’t return or send her word.”

“Have they no’ guessed—has no’ my brother Duncan guessed by this time?” gasped MacGregor. “Can not they understand that I must be dead or held captive since I do not return? Speak, man, tell me how ’tis with them!”

Reivers waited until the poor man had become more quiet before replying to him.

“You’d better quiet down a little MacGregor,” he whispered then. “You can’t tell when your friends might be listening, and it wouldn’t do either of us any good if they heard what we’re saying.”

“True,” said the old man more quietly. “I’m acting like an old woman. But for three months I’ve been trapped like this, and my head fairly swims when I hear you speak of Hattie. How come you to know of her?”

Reivers related briefly that he had been ill and had been cared for at the MacGregor cabin.

“And my little Hattie is well? No harm came to her from the black devil they sent to steal her? You must know, man, they taunted me by sending——”

“I know,” interrupted Reivers; and he told how he had disposed of the kidnapper.

“You—you did that?” MacGregor clutched Reivers’s hand. “You saved my little Hattie?”

“None of that,” snapped Reivers, snatching away his hand. “I did nothing for your little Hattie. Why should I? What is your Hattie to me? I simply put that black-beard out of business because I needed food and he had it on the sledge.”

“Yet you’re not one of the gang here—now? You are no’ anything but a friend of me and mine?”

“A friend?” sneered Reivers. “I’ll tell you, Mac: I’m here as my own friend, absolutely nothing else.”

“But Hattie—and my brother Duncan—they understand about me now.”

“They know you’re either dead or worse,” was the reply. “And they’re at Dumont’s Camp now, waiting for Moir to come there on a spree, when they expect to trail him back to this camp.”

MacGregor nodded his head weakly.

“Aye. Taken the trail for revenge. No less could be expected. Please Heaven, they’ll soon win here. And James MacGregor will not forget what he owes you, stranger, for the help you gave his daughter, when the time of reckoning comes with Moir and his poor curs.”

Reivers laughed coldly under his breath.

“You speak pretty confidently, old-times, for a man who’s trussed up the way you are.”

“God willna let this dog of a Moir have his will with me much longer,” said the Scot firmly. “It isna posseeble.”

“‘This dog of a Moir’ must be a better man than you are,” taunted Reivers. “He fooled you and trapped you as soon as you’d found this mine.”

“Did he?” MacGregor flared up. “Shanty Moir a better man than me? Hoot, no! He fooled me, yes, for I didna know that he’d got word to these three hellions of his that the mine was here. I trusted him; he was my pardner. And when we returned with proveesions for the Winter the three devils were waiting for us, just inside the wall, where the creek comes through. Shanty Moir alone never could ha’ done it. The three of them jumped on me from above. I had no chance. Then they strapped me.

“They’ve kept me strapped ever since. I’m draft beast for them. Twice a day they feed me. And between whiles Shanty Moir taunts me by playing before my eyes with the dust and nuggets that are half mine.”

“Oh, well, it doesn’t look to me as if there’d be enough gold here to bother about,” said Reivers casually. “It’s nothing but a little freak pocket by the looks of it.”

“So it is. A freak pocket. It could be nothing else in this district. ’Twas only by chance we found it, exploring the creek in here out of curiosity. ’Twas in the bowels of the warm spring up yon, where the creek starts, that the pocket was originally. The spring boiled it out into the creek, and the creek washed it down here in its bed of sand. The sand lodged here, against these rock walls. There’s about a hundred feet of the sand, running down under the cliffs, and it’s all pocket. Not a rich pocket, as you say, but Shanty Moir is filthy with nuggets and dust now, and there’ll be some more in the sand that’s left to work over.

“Not a bonanza, man, but a good-sized fortune. ‘Twould be enough to send my Hattie to school. ’Twould give her all the comforts of the world. ’Twould make folk look up to her. And Shanty Moir, the devil’s spawn, has it in his keeping.”

“And he’ll probably see that it continues in his keeping, too,” yawned Reivers.

“Never!” swore MacGregor, rising to the bait. “Shanty Moir did me dirt too foul to prosper by it, and I’m a better man than he is, besides. The stuff will come into my hands, where it belongs, some way. I dinna see just how for the present. But the stuff, and my revenge I will have. E’en shackled as I am I’ll have my revenge, though it’s only to bite the windpipe out of Shanty Moir’s throat like a mad dog.”

“Huh!” Reivers was lying face down on some blankets, apparently but little interested. “And suppose you do get Shanty Moir? What good will that do you? I’ll bet Shanty’s got the gold hid where nobody could find it without getting directions from him. Suppose you get him. Suppose you get all three of ’em. Shanty Moir being dead, the nuggets and dust probably’d be as completely lost as they were before you two boys found the pocket in the first place.”

For a long time MacGregor sat in his corner of the dugout without replying. Reivers could see that at times he raised his head, even opened his mouth as if to speak, then sank back undecided. At last he hunched himself forward inch by inch to the front of the dugout and lifted the flap.

The light of day had gone from the cavern. On the sand before the larger dugout blazed a brisk cooking-fire. In the confined space the light from its flames was magnified, reflecting from rock-wall and running water, and illuminating brightly the miserable hole in which Reivers and MacGregor lay.

MacGregor held up the flap for several minutes, studying Reivers, and though Reivers looked back with the look in his eyes that made most men quail, the old man’s sharp grey eyes studied him unruffled, even as the eyes of his daughter had done before.

“By the Big Nail, ’tis a man’s man!” muttered MacGregor, dropping the flap at last. “How in the name of self-respect did the likes of you fall prey to the cur, Shanty Moir?”

“Self-respect?” sniggered Reivers. “Did you notice me out there when you were laying your curse on Moir?”

“Aye. You were far gone in liquor then—by the looks of you. You’ll mind I say ‘by the looks of you.’ You are not in liquor now. That’s what puzzled. A man does not throw off a load of hooch so quickly. You were playing at being drunk. Now, why might that be?”

“To enable me to get into his hole and leave Moir thinking I’m a drunken squaw-man without brains or nerve enough to do anything but sponge for hooch.”

“Aye? And your reason for that?”

“My reason for that?” Reivers laughed under his breath. “Why, did you ever hear of a more popular reason for a man risking his throat than gold? I heard the story of this deal from your brother Duncan and your daughter. I need—or rather, I want money. Shanty Moir had won over you and had gold. I came to win over Moir and get the gold away from him. Isn’t that simple?”

“Simple and spoken well,” said MacGregor calmly. “Will you answer me one question: Did you serve notice on my brother Duncan that you were out on this hunt?”

“I did.”

“Fair enough again. A man has a right to take trail and do what he can if he speaks out fair. I take it you hardly calculated to find me here alive?”

“No, I didn’t think Moir was such an amateur as to take any chances.”

“Ah, he needed a draft beast, lad; that’s why I’m alive, and no other reason. And finding me here alive, does it alter your plans any?”

“Only a trifle. You see, I’d made up my mind to bring Moir and your daughter Hattie face to face to see if she could make good on her big talk of taking revenge for putting you out of business. Now that I see you’re still alive—well, I won’t let any little foolishness like that interfere with the business I’ve come on.”

“I mean about the gold, man?”

Reivers looked at his questioner in surprise.

“About the gold?” he repeated.

“Yes. Finding me, the rightful owner of half of the gold, here, alive and hoping to win back with my share to my daughter Hattie—does it make any change in your plans?”

Reivers chuckled softly.

“Not in the slightest,” he replied. “I came to get the stuff that’s come out of this mine. Take a look at me. Do I look like a soft fool who’d let anything interfere with my plans?”

MacGregor looked and shook his head, puzzled.

“I dinna understand ye, mon,” he said. “I canna make you out. By the look of you I’d be wishful to strike hands with you as one good man to another; but your talk, man, is all wrong, all wrong. Half of the stuff that’s been taken out of this mine—Shanty Moir’s half—I have made up my mind shall be yours for the strong blow you dealt to save my Hattie from black shame. Will you na’ strike hands on a partnership like that between us?”

Reivers yawned.

“Why should I? You’re ‘all in.’ You can’t help me any. I’ll have to do the job of getting the gold away from Moir. I came here to get it all. I don’t want any help, and I certainly won’t make any unnecessary split.”

“Man,” whispered MacGregor in horror, “is there naught but a piece of ice where your heart should be? Do you not understand it’s for a poor, unprovided girl I’m talking? A man you might rob; but have you the coldness in your heart to rob my little, unfortunate Hattie?”

“‘Little, unfortunate Hattie!’” mocked Reivers. “Consider her robbed already. What then?”

“A word to Shanty Moir and you’re as good as dead,” retorted MacGregor hotly.

Reivers’ long right arm shot out and terrible fingers clutched MacGregor’s throat. The old man wriggled and gasped and tried to cry out, but Reivers held him voiceless and helpless and smiled.

“One word to Shanty Moir, and—you see?” he said, releasing his hold. “Then your little, unfortunate Hattie would be robbed for sure.”

“Man—man—what are you, man or devil?” gasped MacGregor.

“Devil, if it suits you,” said Reivers. “But, remember, I’ll manage to be within reach of you when Shanty Moir’s about, and I rather fancy Moir would be glad to have me put you out of business. Now listen to me. I’ve no objection to your getting out of here alive—if you can. I’ve no objection to your getting your revenge on Moir, if you can, provided that none of this interferes with my getting what I came after. You know now what I can and will do if necessary. Your life lies right there.” He opened and closed his right hand significantly. “Well, I’ll trade you your life for a little information. Where does Shanty keep his gold?”

MacGregor ceased gasping. He began to laugh. He leaned over and laughed. He rocked from side to side.

“Man, man! Do you not know that? That proves you’re only human!” he chuckled. “You came out here, like a lamb led to slaughter, to find where Shanty Moir keeps his gold. You were on the trail with Shanty. You had him where it was only one man to one. Well—well, the joke is too good to keep: Shanty Moir, day and night, wears a big buckskin belt about the middle of him, and the gold—the gold is in the belt!”

CHAPTER XL—THE WHITE MAN’S SENTIMENT

With a snarl the great dog leaped again, his bared fangs flashing in the night. The snarl died in a choke. Reivers’ long arms flashed out and his fingers caught the dog by the throat so swiftly and surely that not another sound came from between its teeth. It was a big, strong dog and it died hard, but out there on the sand Reivers sat, silently keeping his hold till the last sign of life had gone from the brute’s body. Not a sound rose to attract attention from the larger dugout.

When the animal was quite dead Reivers crawled forward and untied the chain that held it to a rock. Noiselessly he crawled farther on and noiselessly slipped the carcass into the brook. The brisk current caught it and dragged it down. Reivers waited until he saw the thing disappear into the dark tunnel at the lower end of the cavern, then returned to the dugout and quietly lay down on his blankets.

“God’s blood!” gasped MacGregor and sat silent.

“Well,” yawned Reivers, “our friend Moir is short one dog.”

“You crazy fool!” MacGregor was grinding his teeth. “Ha’ you no’ thought of what Shanty Moir will do when he finds what you’ve done to his watch-dog?”

“What I have done?” Reivers laughed his idiotic squaw-man’s laugh. “D’you suppose a poor old bum like me could throttle a man-eater like that beast? You’ll be the one to be blamed for it. Why should I touch Moir’s dog? Moir and I came here together, chummy as a couple of thieves.”

“You would not—you could not do that? You could not put it on me? Man, they’d drop me in the river after the beast, if you got them to believe it.”

“Well?” said Reivers gently.

The Scot bit his lip and grew crafty.

“Well,” he said, “there’d be only you left then to do the dirt-hauling for Shanty Moir.”

Reivers nodded appreciatively.

“You deserve something for that, Mac,” said he.

He lay silent for a few minutes. Then he chuckled suddenly as if he had thought of a good joke.

“Watch me closely now, Mac,” he ordered, “and if you ever feel like speaking that word to Moir, I’ll holler at you worse than this.”

He rolled himself to the front of the dugout, and suddenly there rang out in the cavern such a shriek of terror as stopped the blood in the veins of all who heard. Twice Reivers uttered his horrible cry. Then he began to shout drunkenly:

“Take him off, take him away! Oh, oh, oh! Big dog coming out of the river. Take him away. Big dog swimming in the river. Take him away. Help, help!”

Shanty Moir got to the front of the little dugout in advance of the others. He came with a six-shooter in his hand, and the gun covered Reivers, huddled up on the sand, as steadily as if held in a vise. But Reivers observed that Moir stopped well out of reach.

“What tuh ——!” roared Muir, as he noted the absence of the watch-dog. “What devil’s work——”

“The dog!” chattered Reivers. “Big dog; big as a house. Came out of the river. Tried to jump on me. Jumped back into the river. Swimming—swimming out there.”

Shanty Moir swung the muzzle of his six-shooter till it pointed straight at Reivers’s forehead. He did not step forward, but remained well out of reach.

“Steady, old son,” he said quietly, “steady, or this’ll go off.”

Under the influence of the threat Reivers pretended to come back to his senses.

“Gimme a drink, mister,” he pleaded. “I’m seeing things. I was sure there was a big dog out there. I’d ‘a’ sworn I saw him jump into the river. Now I see there isn’t, but gimme a drink—quick!”

“Bring tuh old sow a cup of hooch, Joey,” snapped Moir over his shoulder. “Wilt see about this.” He turned the weapon on the cowering MacGregor. “Speak quick, Scotch jackass, or I pull trigger. What’s been done here; where’s Tige?”

“Was it a real dog?” cried Reivers before MacGregor could reply. “I saw something—he went into the river.”

“Speak, you!” said Moir to the Scotchman. “Speak quick.”

“He’s telling you straight,” replied MacGregor, with a nod toward Reivers. “The dog went into the river. I saw him go down, out of sight.”

“Out of sight,” muttered Reivers, swallowing the drink which Joey had brought him. “So it was a real dog, was it? He jumped at me, and then he jumped back, and I guess he broke his chain, because he went into the river and never came out.”

Moir stepped over and examined the rock from which Reivers had slipped the dog’s chain.

“Tammy,” he said quietly. Tammy came obediently, stopping a good two paces away from Moir.

“See that?” said Moir, pointing at the rock. Tammy nodded.

“You tied Tige out for tuh night, Tammy?”

“Yes, but——”

“And you tied so well tuh beast got loose, and into tuh river and is lost.”

“Shanty, I swear——”

“Swear all you want to, lad,” said Moir and dropped him cold with a light tap on the jaw.

“Pick him up.” Moir’s moving revolver had seemed to cover every one present, but now the muzzle hesitated on Joey. “Carry him into tuh shack.”

As Joey obeyed Moir stepped back toward the little dugout, but stopped well out of reach of a possible rush.

“Old son,” he said slowly, and the gun barrel pointed at Reivers’ right eye, “old son, if you yell again tonight let it be your prayers, because you’ll need ’em. Dost hear? I suspect ’twas thy yelling scared Tige into the river. Wouldst send thee down after him, only I’ve use for you in tuh pits. Crawl in and lie still if wouldst live till daylight, —— you. Wilt pay for the loss of Tige, I warn you that.”

He turned away and Reivers fell back on his blankets chuckling boyishly. He was in fine fettle. The Snow-Burner was coming back to his old form, and in the delight of the moment’s difficulties he had temporarily lost the softening memories that had disturbed him of late.

“How was it, old-timer?” he laughed. “Could you pick any flaw in it?”

MacGregor shook his head in wonder.

“I had a man go fey on me once, up on the Slave Lake trail,” he said slowly. “He let go just such yells as came from your mouth now. I’m thinking no man could yell so lest he’s fey himself, or has travelled wi’ auld Nickie and stole some of his music.”

“Quite so. Exactly the impression I wished to create,” said Reivers. “I thank you for your compliment, but your analysis is all wrong. Complete control of your vocal organs, that’s all. You see I wished to let out just such a yell. It was rather hard, because my vocal organs never had made such a sound before, and they protested. I forced them to do it.

“The man with the superior mind can force his body to do anything. Understand, Mac? It’s the superior mind that counts. If you’d had a mind superior to Moir’s you’d be top dog here, with Moir fetching bones for you. As it is, you’re doing the fetching, and Moir’s growing fat. And here I come along, with a mind superior to Moir’s, and I’m going to be top dog now and gobble the whole proceeds of your squabbling. The mind, Mac, the grey stuff in the little bone-box at the top of your neck, that’s all that counts. Nothing else. And I’ve got the best grey matter in this camp, and I’m going to be top dog as a matter of course.”

MacGregor flared up hotly.

“You say, that’s all that counts?” he said. “D’you mean to tell me to my face that after I’d struck hands with a man to be my partner, as I did with Shanty Moir, that I’d turn on him and play him the scurvy trick he played me, just because I could? Well, if you say that, mon, you lie, and I throw the word smack in your teeth. Go back on my hand-shake, just to be top dog and get the bones! God’s blood! There’s other things better than bones, and there’s other things that count besides a superior mind. How many times do you suppose I could have shot Shanty Moir after we’d found this mine?”

“Not once. You didn’t have it in you. You couldn’t do it. If you could you’d have been the superior man, and you’re not.”

MacGregor thought it over.

“You’re right, mon, I couldn’t do it. I thank God I couldn’t. I’d rather be the slave I am at present than be able to do things like that.”

“Sentiment, Mac; foolish, unreasonable sentiment.”

“Sentiment!” MacGregor spoke hotly, then suddenly subsided. “Yes, you’re right, lad,” he admitted after awhile. “It’s naught but sentiment. I see now. It’s the kind of sentiment that white men die for, and that makes them the boss men of the world. Well, lad, I am sorry to hear you talk as if ’twas only your skin was white. But I do not see you top dog of this camp yet. I’ll warrant Shanty Moir didn’t allow you to slip a gun or knife into camp. And did you notice the little tool he had in his hand?”

“A six-shooter,” said Reivers. “A crude weapon compared to a good mind, MacGregor.”

“Aye? I’m glad to hear you say so, lad, for I’ve only a mind, such as it is, left me for a weapon, and I’m quite sure I must overcome the six-gun in Shanty’s hand ere I ever win back to lay eyes on my daughter Hattie.”

“Your daughter Hattie!” Reivers sat up, jarred out of his composure. “You forget your daughter Hattie; you hear, MacGregor? And now shut up. There’s been enough yawping to-night; I want to sleep.”

He rolled himself tightly in his blankets. MacGregor crawled miserably to his corner and huddled down to sleep as best he could in his cruel shackles. The dugout grew as still as a tomb. Faint sounds came from the place where Moir and his men were living, but as the night grew older these ceased, and a silence as complete and primitive as it knew before man bent his steps thither fell over the isolated cavern.

Reivers did not sleep. MacGregor’s last words had done the work. “My daughter Hattie.” Hattie with the clean, pure face of her. Hattie with the wide grey eyes; with the look of pain upon her. Curse MacGregor! What business had he mentioning that name? Reivers had forgotten, or thought he had. He was himself again. And then this old fool—curse him! Curse the whole MacGregor tribe. And especially did he curse himself for being weak and foolish enough to permit such trifles to interfere with his sleep.

He dozed away toward daylight and dreamed that Hattie MacGregor was looking at him. The hard look on her face had softened a little, and she said she was glad he had sent Neopa back to her lover, Nawa.

“—— you, get out of there!”

In his half-waking Reivers fancied it was his own voice driving the picture from his mind.

“Get out, beasts, and get out quick!”

It was Shanty Moir’s voice and he was calling to MacGregor and Reivers to get up.

CHAPTER XLI—SHANTY MOIR—TEMPERANCE ADVOCATE

Out of the corner of his eye Reivers saw that MacGregor was eying the cup of liquor wistfully. Moved by an impulse that was strange to him he took a small drink and held out the cup to his companion. As MacGregor eagerly reached for it Moir’s gun crashed out and the cup flew from Reivers’s hand.

“Tuh motto of this camp is, ‘No treating,’” chuckled Moir. “Hooch is good on tuh trail. We’re on tuh job now. You get liquor, old son, because ’tis medicine to you, and any hooch drinked here, I must prescribe.”

Across the creek, Tammy, at work building a fire under the thawing-pan, heard his chief’s words and growled faintly.

“Yes, and ’ee prescribe terrible small doses, too, Shanty,” he muttered. “A good thing can be over-played. Hast no reason for refusing Joey and me a nip before starting work this morning.”

Moir, moving like a soft-footed lynx, was across the creek and behind Tammy before the latter realised what was coming. From his position Moir now dominated the whole camp, and a sickly smile appeared on Tammy’s mouth.

“Aw, Shanty!” he whined. “Didst only mean it for a joke. Can take a joke from an old chum, can’t ’ee, Shanty?”

“Get into tuh pit, Tammy,” said Moir quietly, pointing with his gun to the tunnel where sounds indicated that Joey already was at work.

“Aw, Shanty——”

“Get in!”

Slack-jawed with terror Tammy crawled into the dark tunnel.

“Eh, Joey, ma son!” called Moir down the pit-mouth.

“Aye?” came back the answer.

“Dost ’ee, too, think ’ee should have a drink this morn’?”

“Aye, Shanty,” replied the unsuspecting Joey.

“Have a hot one, then!” roared Shanty and kicked a blazing log from Tammy’s fire into the pit.

A mingling of shrieks and protests greeted its arrival.

“Aw, Shanty! Blood of tuh devil, chief! Canst not take a joke?”

“Am taking it now, ma sons,” laughed Moir, and kicked more brands down the tunnel.

Gasping and choking from the smoke that filled the tiny pit, Joey and Tammy essayed to crawl out. Bang! went Moir’s six-shooter and they hastily retreated. The tunnel was filled with smoke by this time. Down at the bottom, choking coughs and cries told that the two unfortunate men were being suffocated. Moir waited until the faintness of the sounds told how far gone the men were. Then he motioned to Reivers with his revolver. The smoke was leaving the pit by this time.

“Step down and drag ’em out, old son,” he said. “Come now, no hanging back. Tuh trigger on this gun is filed down so she pulls very light.”

Reivers obeyed, climbing into the pit as if trembling with fear, and toiling furiously as he dragged the unconscious men out, though he could have walked away with one under each arm.

“Throw water on ’em. Splash ’em good.”

Ten minutes later Joey and Tammy were sitting up, coughing and sneezing, and trying their best to make Moir believe they had only been joking.

“Good enough, ma sons; so was I,” chuckled Moir. “Now back to tuh job, and if ever you doubt who’s top man here you’ll stay in tuh pit till you’re browned well enough to eat. Dost hear me?”

“Aye, Shanty,” said the two men humbly, and hurried back to their tasks.

“And now, jackass and old ox, step over here and get into tuh harness,” commanded Moir.

He continued to hold the gun in his hand and motioned to the sledge near the thawing-pan. High side-boards had been placed on the sledge, making it capable of holding twice its former load, and a looped rope supplemented the traces to which MacGregor was so ignominiously hitched.

“Take hold of the rope, old son,” directed Moir.

He did not approach as MacGregor resignedly led the way to the sledge. Tammy turned from his thawing-pan to hitch the Scotchman to his traces and to strap down his hands. Moir stood back, the gun in his hand, dominating all three.

“Now into tuh pit; Joey’s got a load waiting,” he commanded. “And one whine out of you, old ox, and you get the prod. Hi-jah! Giddap!”

CHAPTER XLII—THE SNOW-BURNER WORKS FOR TWO

He obeyed Joey meekly when ordered, with curses and insults, to load the sledge. He could have throttled Joey down there in the mine without a sound coming up to warn those above of what was happening, but Moir’s conduct of the morning had made an impression upon Reivers. A man who kept himself out of reach, who kept his six-shooter pointed at you all the time, and who could shoot tin cups out of your moving hand, was not a man to be despised.

The first hour of work that day convinced Moir and his henchmen that their original unflattering estimate of Reivers was correct. Even a close observer, regarding him during that period of probation, would have seen nothing to indicate that he was anything but what Shanty Moir had judged him to be. A miserable, broken-down squaw-man, without a will of his own, and only one ambition—to clamour for as much liquor as possible—that was the character that Reivers played perfectly for the benefit of Moir and his two men.

At first, they kept an eye on him, watching to see if by any chance the old fool might be dangerous. They discovered that he would be dangerous if turned loose—to their supply of liquor. Beyond that he had, apparently, not a single aim in the world. His physical weakness, they soon discovered, was exactly what was to be expected of a whisky bloat. He was able to help haul the sledge-loads of frozen earth up the incline of the shaft, and that was all. Even that left him puffing and trembling.

“Is an old ox, as ’ee said, Shanty, with even tuh horns burnt off him by tuh hooch,” said Joey, after the first few loads. “Keep a little o’ tuh liquor running down his throat each day and he’ll be a good draft beast to us. Nothing to fear o’ him. Didst well when ’ee picked him out, chief.”

They stopped watching him. He was harmless. Which was exactly the frame of mind which Reivers had worked to create.

MacGregor alone knew how cleverly Reivers was playing his part, and he regarded his new companion in misery with greater awe and swore beneath his breath in unholy admiration. He had excellent opportunity to appreciate Reivers’s ability to play the part of a weakling, for the Snow-Burner, when not observed, caught his free hand in MacGregor’s traces and pulled the full weight of the heavy sledge as if it had been a boy’s plaything.

“Eh, mon!” gasped the weakened Scotchman in relief. “I begin to comprehend now. ’Tis a surprise you’re planning for Shanty Moir. Oh, aye! ’Tis a braw joke. But you maun l’ave me finish him, man; ’tis my right. And I thank you and will repay you well for the favour you are doing me in my present bunged-up condition.”

“Favour your eye!” snapped Reivers. “It’s easier to pull the whole thing than to have you dragging on it. Don’t think I’m doing it for your sake. You’ll have a rude awakening, my friend, if you’re building any hopes on me.”

“I dinna understand you,” said MacGregor with a shake of his head. “You’re different from any man I ever met. But at all events, you’ve made the loads lighter, and I think I must have perished soon had you not done so.”

“Shut up!” hissed Reivers irritably. “I tell you I’m doing it because it’s easier for me.”

His attitude toward the old man was brutally domineering when they were alone and openly abusive when they were in the presence of Moir or the others. He showered foul epithets upon him, pretended to shoulder the greater part of the work on him, and abused him in a fashion that won the approval of the three brutes over them.

“Make him do his share, old sonny,” roared Moir. “Wilt have tuh prod? Joey, give him tuh prod so he can poke up tuh jackass when he lags back.”

“Don’t need no prod,” boasted Reivers. “I can handle him without any prod. Come on, pull up there, you loafer. Think I’m going to do it all?”

MacGregor on such occasions would hold his head low to hide the gleam in his eyes and the grin that strove for room on his tightly pressed lips. His harness was hanging slack; Reivers took more of the load upon himself with every curse that he uttered.

All through the day it was Reivers’ strength that pulled the heavy sledge up the dirt incline of the tunnel, and at night, when the day’s work was done, and MacGregor, tottering feebly toward his bunk, fell helpless through the dugout’s flap, Reivers picked him up, laid him down gently and placed his own blanket beneath his head.

“God bless you, lad!” whispered MacGregor.

“Shut up!” hissed Reivers. “I don’t want any talk like that.”

He looked down at the prostrate man for a moment. Then with a muttered curse he unloosened the straps that bound MacGregor’s arms to his sides and hurled himself over to his own side of the shack. He was very angry with himself. Pity and succour for the helpless had never before been a part of his creed. Why should he trouble about MacGregor?

“I’ll have to strap you up again in the morning,” he flung out suddenly, “but it won’t hurt to have your hands free for the night. Shut up—lay still! I hear somebody coming.”

CHAPTER XLIII—“THE PENALTY OF A WHITE MAN’S MIND”

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.

CHAPTER XLIV—THE MADNESS OF “HELL-CAMP” REIVERS

“You poor, misbegotten spawn,” said MacGregor, quietly beginning to eat, eyeing them one after the other. “I’ll live to spit on the shamed corpses of the lot of you.”

As the day’s work began, Reivers started to calculate each move that he and Moir made with a view to discovering the opportunity he was looking for. All that he wished was a chance to rush Shanty without giving the latter an opportunity to use his gun.

The odds of three to one against him, and Joey and Tammy armed with knives, he accepted as a matter of course. But a six-shooter in the hands of a man who could use one as Shanty Moir could was a shade too much even for him to venture against. The manner in which Moir had shot up the tin cup the morning before proved how alert and sure was his trigger-finger. To make the suspicion of a move toward him, with the gun in his hand, would have spelled instant ruin.

As he watched now, Reivers saw that Moir was more vigilant than ever. He kept far away from the pit-mouth. The gun either was in his hand or hanging ready in the holster. And when Reivers saw the first load of sand he understood why.

The pay-streak had paid out. They were winnowing the drippings of dust washed down from the pocket now, and this job soon would be done. Moir was not taking any chances of losing at this stage of affairs. The fortune was in his grasp; he would break camp and be off in the same hour that the sand began to run low-grade.

He took no part in the work to-day. He merely stood and watched. And Reivers watched back, and the hours passed, and the short day began to draw to a close, and still not the slightest chance to rush Shanty Moir and live had presented itself.

As the early twilight began to creep down into the cavern, the ugly grins with which Joey and Tammy regarded MacGregor began to increase. Suddenly Tammy, washing a pan of sand in the brook, threw up both hands.

“Not a trace in the last load, Shanty!” he shouted.

“All out!” came Moir’s bellow, as if he had been waiting for the signal.

Joey and Tammy threw down their tools and came over and stood behind Reivers and MacGregor who came up dragging a loaded sledge behind them.

“Take that load down yonder!” ordered Moir, pointing to the black tunnel into which the creek disappeared in leaving the cavern.

Tammy and Joey followed, grinning, two paces behind the sledge. Moir, gun in hand, walked ten feet behind them.

“Whoa!” he laughed when Reivers and MacGregor had drawn up against the cliff beside the stream’s exit. “You can unhitch tuh old jackass now, ma sons. Then over with it quick.”

With a yelp Tammy and Joey tore loose MacGregor’s traces. They held him between them, and in his bound and weakened condition he was unable to struggle or turn around.

Before Reivers could move they had hurled MacGregor into the deep water in the tunnel. He sank like a stone and the current sucked him in.

“Good-by, MacGregor of the big boasts!” laughed Moir, but he laughed a trifle too soon.

In the instant that the current bore MacGregor into the darkness of the tunnel his face bobbed up above the waters. He looked up, and looked straight into Reivers’s eyes. It was not a look of appeal; it was the same look that had been in the eyes of Hattie MacGregor the day when Reivers had left her cabin.

Then Hell-Camp Reivers felt himself going mad. He hit Tammy so hard and true that he flew through the air and struck against Moir. The next instant Reivers was diving like a flash into the black water, groping for MacGregor, while the current swept him into the total darkness.

He heard the bullet from Moir’s revolver strike the water behind him in the instant that his hands found MacGregor; heard mocking laughter as he pulled the old man’s head above water; then the current whirled him and his burden away. It whisked him downstream with a power irresistible. It threw him from side to side against the ragged rock walls. It sucked him and the load he bore down in deep whirlpools and spewed them up again.

He bumped his head against the stone roof of the tunnel and swore. The roof was a scant foot above the water. He put his hand up. The roof was getting closer to the water with every yard. Soon there was only room for their upturned faces above the water.

Reivers laughed heartily. So this was to be the end! The joke was on him. After all he had gone through, he was to drown like a silly fool through a fool’s impulse.

Presently roof and water came together. For a moment Reivers fought with his vast strength, holding his own for an instant against the current, hanging on to the last few seconds of life with a fury of effort. The current proved too strong. It sucked them under; the water closed above them. They were whirled and buffeted to the last breath of life in them, and then suddenly their heads slipped above water and they were looking straight up at the gray Winter sky.