PART TWO: THE SUPERMAN

## CHAPTER XXII--THE CHEATING OF THE RIVER

"It's got him! The river's got him. He's drowned! 'Hell-Camp' Reivers--he's gone. He's done for. The 'Snow-Burner' is dead, dead dead!"

Like wolves in revolt the men of "Hell Camp" lined the bank of the rushing, ice-choked river and cursed and roared into the blackness of the night. Behind them the buildings of the camp, scene of the Snow-Burner's inhuman brutality and dominance over the lives of men, were going up in seas of flame which they had started.

Before them the tumultuous river, the waters battling the ice which strove to cover it, tossed black and white under the red glow of tumbling fire. And somewhere out in the murderous current, whirled and sucked down by the rushing water, buffeted and crushed by the grinding ice, a bullet-hole through his shoulder, was all that was left of the man whose life they had cried for.

The river had cheated them. Like panting wolves, their hands outstretched claw-like to clutch and kill, they had pursued him closely to the river's edge. A cry of rage, short, sharp, unreasoning, had leaped from their throats as Reivers, staggering from his wound, had leaped unhesitatingly out on to the heaving cakes of ice.

Spellbound, open-mouthed and silent, they had stood and watched as their erstwhile oppressor ran zigzagging, leaping from cake to cake, out toward the black slip of open water which ran silently, swiftly in the river's middle. And then they had cried out again.

For the open water had caught him. Straight into it, without pausing or swerving, Reivers had run on. And the black water had taken him home. Like a stone dropped into its midst, it had taken him plump--a flirt of spray, a gurgle. Then the waters rushed on as before, silent, deadly, unconcerned.

And so the men of Hell Camp, drunk with the spirit and success of their revolt, cried out in triumph. Their cry rose over the roar of flame. It rang above the rumble of crunching ice. It reached, pæan-like, up through the star-filled northern night--a cry of victory, of gratification, the old, terrible cry of the kill.

For the Snow-Burner was gone. Wolf-like he had harried them and wolf-like he had died. No man, not even Hell-Camp Reivers, they knew, could live a minute in that black water. They had seen the waters close above him; a floe of ice swept serenely over the spot where he had gone down. He was gone. The world was rid of him.

And so the men of Cameron-Dam Camp, while their cry still echoed in the timber, turned to carry the news of the Snow-Burner's end back to the men who were milling about the burning camp. The Snow-Burner was dead!

Out in the deadly river, Hell-Camp Reivers stayed under water until he knew that the men on the bank counted him drowned. He had sought the open water deliberately, his giant lungs filling themselves with air as he plunged down to the superhuman test which was to spell life or death for him.

He realised that if he were to live he must appear to perish in the river, before the eyes of the men who pursued him. To have won through the open water, and over the ice beyond, and in their sight have reached the farther shore would have sealed his doom as surely as to have returned to the bank where stood the men.

The camp had revolted. Two hundred men had said that he must die; and had he been seen to cross the river and enter the timber beyond, half of the two hundred, properly armed, would have crossed the stringers of the dam, not to pause or rest until they had hunted him down. He was without weapons of any kind save his bare fists. He was bleeding heavily from the bullet-hole in his right shoulder. He would have died like a wounded wolf run to earth had he been seen to cross the river safely. His only chance for life was to appear to die in the river.

He made no fight as he went down. The swift waters sucked him under like a straw. They rolled him over the rocky bottom, whirled him around and around sunken piles of ice. Into the sluice-like current of the stream's middle they spewed him, and the current caught him and shot him into the darkness below the glare of the burning camp.

He lay inert in the water's grasp, recking not how the sharp ice gashed and tore face and hands, how the rocks crushed and bruised his body. A sweeping ice-floe caught him and held him down. Like some great river-beast he lay supine beneath it, conserving every atom of his giant's strength for the test that was to win him life.

Then, with the blood roaring in his temples, and his bursting lungs warning him that the next second must yield him air or death, he threw his body upward against the ice, felt it slip to one side, thrust his upturned face out of the water, caught a finger-hold on another floe that strove to thrust him down, gasped, clawed and--laughed.

He was a dead man, and he lived. Men had driven him into the jaws of death, and death had engulfed and apparently swallowed him. Men counted him now as one who had gone hence. Far and wide the word would be flung in a hurry: the Snow-Burner was no more; Hell-Camp Reivers had passed away.

The face of the Snow-Burner as it rode barely above the icy, lapping waters, bore but one single expression, a sardonic appreciation of the joke he had played upon men and Death. The loss of Cameron Camp, of his position, of all that he called his own did not trouble him.

As the current swept him down there, he was a beaten man, stripped of all the things that men struggle for to have and to hold, and with but a slippery finger-hold on life itself. Yet he was victorious, triumphant.

He had placed himself within the clammy fingers of the River Death. The fingers had closed upon him, and he had torn them apart, had thrust death away, had clutched life as it fleeted from him and had drawn it back to hold for the time being. And Reivers laughed contemptuously, tauntingly, at the sucking waters cheated of their prey.

"Not yet, Nick, old boy," he muttered. "It doesn't please me to boss your stokers just yet."

The current tore the ice from his precarious grip and he was forced to swim for it. In the darkness he struck the grinding icefield on the far side of the open water, and like the claws of a bear his stiffening fingers sought for and found a crevice to afford a secure hold.

A pull, a heave and a wriggle, and he lay face-down on the jagged ice--heart, lungs and brain crying for the cold air which he sucked in avidly. The ice-cakes parted beneath his weight. Once more he fought through the water to a resting place on the ice; once more the treacherous ice parted and dropped him into the water.

Swimming, crawling, wriggling his way, he fought on. At last an outstretched hand groped to a hold on a snow-covered root on the far bank of the river.

"About time," he said and, slowly drawing himself up onto the bank, he rolled over in the snow and lay with his face turned back toward Cameron Camp.

The fire which the men had started in the long bunk-house when they had revolted against the inhumanity of Reivers now had gained full headway. In pitchy, red billows of flame the dried log walls were roaring upward into the night. Like the yipping of maddened demons, the bellowing shouts of the men came back to him as they danced and leaped around the fire in celebration of the passing of Reivers and of the camp for which his treatment of men had justly earned the title of Hell-Camp.

But louder and more poignant even than the roar of flame and the shouts of jubilant men, there came to Reivers' ears a sound which prompted him to drag himself to an elbow to listen. Somewhere out in the timber near the camp a man was crying for mercy. A rifle cracked; the pleading stopped. Reivers smiled contemptuously.

"One of the guards; they got him," he mused. "The fool! That's what he gets for being silly enough to be faithful to me."

But the fate of the guard, one of the "shot-gun artists" who had served him faithfully and brutally in the task of keeping the men of the camp helpless under his heel, roused Reivers to the need of quick action. If the guards had escaped into the woods and were being hunted down by the maddened crew, the hunt might easily lead across the dam and up the bank to where he lay. Once let it be known that he had not perished in the river, and the whole camp would come swarming across the dam, each man's hand against him, resolved to take his trail and hunt him down, no matter where the trail might lead or how long the hunt might take.

The fight through the river ice was but the preliminary to his flight for safety. Many miles of cold trail between him and the burning camp were his most urgent present needs, and with a curse he staggered to his feet and stood for a moment lowering back across the water to the scene of his overthrow.

To a lesser man--or a better man--there would have been deep humiliation in the situation. Reivers's mind flashed back over the incidents of the last few hours. Over there, across the river, he had been beaten for the first time in his life in a fair, stand-up fist fight. He had underestimated young Treplin, and Treplin had beaten him.

Following his defeat had come the revolt of the men. Following that had come flight. The power and leadership of the camp had been wrested from his hands by a better man; he himself had been driven out, helpless, beaten, yet Reivers only laughed as he stood now and looked back across the river. For in the river the Snow-Burner had died.

The past was dead. A new life was beginning for him. It had to be so, for if word went back that the Snow-Burner was still alive the men of Cameron-Dam Camp would come clamouring to the hunt. To die, and yet to live; to slough one life, as an old coat, and to take up another, not having the slightest notion of what it might hold--that was the great adventure, that was something so interesting that the humiliation of defeat never so much as reached beneath Reivers' skin.

He stood for a moment, looking back at the camp, and he smiled. He waved his left hand in a polished gesture of contemptuous farewell.

"Good-by, Mr. Hell-Camp Reivers," he growled. "Hello, Mr. New Man, whoever you are. Let's go and lay up till the puncture in your hide heals. Then we'll go out and see what you can do to this silly old world."

With his fingers clutching the hole in his shoulder, he turned and lurched drunkenly away into the blackness of the thick timber.

The icy waters of the river had been kind to him in more ways than one. They had congealed the warm blood-spurts from his wound into a solid red clot, and his thick woolen shirt and mackinaw were frozen stiff and tight against the clot.

He held to his staggering run for an hour, seeking bare spots in the timber, travelling on top of windfalls when he found them, hiding his trail in uncanny fashion, before his body grew warm enough to thaw the icy bandages. Then he halted and, by the light of the cold moon, bared his shoulder and took stock. It was a bad, ragged wound. He moved the shoulder and smiled sardonically as he noted that no bone was touched.

From the butt of a shattered windfall he tore a flat sliver of clean pine. With his teeth he worried it down to a proper size, and with handkerchief and belt he bound it over the wound so tightly that it sunk deep into the muscles of the shoulder. It chafed and cut the skin and started the blood in half a dozen places, but he pulled the belt up another hole despite the inclination to grimace from pain.

"Suffer, Body," he muttered, "suffer all you please. You've nothing to say about this. Your job for the present is merely to serve life by keeping it going. Later on you may grow whole again. I shall need you."

He buttoned his mackinaw with difficulty and, finding an open space, turned and took his bearings. Far behind him a dull red glow on the sky marked the location of Cameron-Dam Camp. From this he turned, carefully scanning the heavens, until above the top of the timber he caught the weird glint of the northern lights. That way lay his course.

The white man's country stopped with the timber in which he stood. Beyond was Indian country, the bleak, barren Dead Lands, a wilderness too bare of timber to tempt the logger, a land of ridge upon ridge of ragged rock, unexplored by white man, save for a rare mining prospector, and uninhabited save for the half-starved camp of the people of Tillie, the Chippewa, Reivers' slave, by the power of the love she bore him.

White men shunned the white wastes of the Dead Lands as, in warmer climes, they shun the unwatered sands of the desert. That was why Reivers sought it. Out there in the camp of Tillie's people he could lie safe, well fed, well nursed, until his wound healed and the strength of his body came back to him. And then....

"Cheer up, Body!" he chuckled as he started northward. "We'll make the world pay bitterly for all of this when we're in shape again. For the present we're going north, going north, going north. You can't stop, Body; you can't lay down. Groan all you want to. You're going to be dragged just as far to-night as if you weren't shot up at all."

## CHAPTER XXIII--THE GIRL WHO WAS NOT AFRAID

Break of day in Winter time comes to the Dead Lands slowly and without enthusiasm, as if the rosy morning sun wearied at the hopeless landscape which its rays must illumine. Aimless rock formation was a drug on the creation's market the day that the Bad Lands were made. Gigantic boulders, box-like bluffs, ragged rock-spires, cliffs and plateaus of bare rock were in oversupply.

Nature, so a glimpse of the place suggests, had resolved to get rid of a vast surplus of ugly, useless stone, and with one cast of its hands flung them solidly down and made the Dead Lands. There they lie, hog-back, ridge, gully and ravine, hopelessly and aimlessly jumbled and tumbled, a scene of desolate greyness by Summer; by Winter the raw, bleak ridges and spires, thrusting themselves through the covering of snow like unto the bones of a half concealed skeleton.

Daylight crept wearily over the timber belt and spread itself slowly over the barrenness, and struck the highest rise of ground, running crosswise through the barrens, which men called "Hog-Back Ridge." Little by little it lighted up the bleak peaks and tops of ridge and rock-spire.

A wind came with it, a bleak, morning Winter wind which whined as it whipped the dry snow from high places and sent it flying across coulée and valley in the grey light of dawn. Nothing stirred with the coming of daylight. No nocturnal animal, warned of the day's coming, slunk away to its cave; no beast or bird of daylight greeted the morning with movement or song. The grey half-light revealed no living thing of life upon the exposed hump of the ridge.

The sun came, a ball of dull red, rising over the timber line. It touched the topmost spires of rock, sought to gild them rosily, gave up as their sullen sides refused to take the colour, and turned its rays along the eastern slope. Then something moved. A single speck of life stirred in the vast scene of desolation.

On the bare ground in the lea of a boulder a man sat with his back to the stone and slept. His face was hollow and lined. The corners of his mouth were drawn down as if a weight were hung on each of them, and the thin cheeks, hugging the bones so tightly that the teeth showed through, told that the man had driven himself too far on an empty stomach. Yet, even in sleep, there was a hint of a sardonic smile on the misshapen lips, a smile that condemned and made naught the pain and cruelty of his fate.

The sun crept down the slope of Hog-Back Ridge and found him. It reached his eyes. Its rays had no more warmth than the rays of the cold Winter moon, but its light pierced through the tightly drawn lids. They twitched and finally parted. Reivers awoke without yawning or moving and looked around.

It was the second morning after his flight from Cameron-Dam Camp, and he had yet to reach the Winter camp of the people of Tillie the squaw. Somewhere to the west it lay. He would reach it and reach it in good time, he swore; but he had not had a bite of food in his mouth for two days, and the fever of his wound had sapped heavily his strength.

"Be still, Body," he growled, as with the return of consciousness his belly cried out for food. "You will be fed before life goes out of you."

He rose slowly and stiffly to his knees and looked down the ridge to where the rays of the sun now were illumining the snow-covered bottom of the valley below. The valley ran eastward for a mile or two, and at first glance it was empty and dead, save for the flurries of wind-swept snow, dropping down from the heights above. But Reivers, as he rose to his feet, swept the valley with a second glance, and suddenly he dropped and crouched down close to the ground.

Far down at the lower end of the valley a black speck showed on the frozen snow, and the speck was moving.

Reivers lay on the bare patch of ground, as silent and immovable as the rock above him. The speck was too large to be a single animal and too small to be a pack of travelling caribou.

For several minutes he lay, scarcely breathing, his eyes straining to bring the speck into comprehensible shape. His breath began to come rapidly. Presently he swore. The speck had become two specks now, a long narrow speck and a tiny one which moved beside it, and they were coming steadily up the valley toward where he lay.

"One man and a dog-team," mused Reivers. "He won't be travelling here without grub. Body, wake up! You are crying for food. Yonder it comes. Get ready to take it."

Slowly, with long pauses between each movement, and taking care not to place his dark body against the white snow, Reivers dragged himself around to a hiding-place behind the boulder against which he had slept. The sun had risen higher now. Its rays were lighting the valley, and as he peered avidly around one side of the stone, Reivers could make out some detail of the two specks that moved so steadily toward him.

It was a four-dog team, travelling rapidly, and the man, on snow-shoes, travelled beside his team and plied his whip as he strode. Reivers' brows drew down in puzzled fashion. The sledge which whirled behind the running dogs seemed flat and unloaded; the dogs ran in a fashion that told they were strong and fresh. Why didn't the man ride?

Reivers drew back to take stock of the situation. The man might be a stranger, travelling hurriedly through the Dead Lands, or he might be one of the men from Cameron-Dam Camp. If the former, food might be had for a mere hail and the asking; if the latter--Reivers's nostrils widened and he smiled.

Yet a third possibility existed. The man was travelling in strange fashion, running beside an apparently empty sled, and whipping his dogs along. So did men travel when they were fleeing from various reasons, and men fleeing thus do not go unarmed nor take kindly to having the trail of their flight witnessed by casual though starving strangers. Thus there was one chance that a hail and plea for food would be met with a friendly response; two chances that they would be met with lead or steel.

Reivers, not being a careless man, looked about for ways and means to place the odds in his favour. A hundred yards to the north of him the valley narrowed into a mere slit between two straight walls of rock. Through this gap the traveller must pass.

When Reivers had crawled to a position on the rock directly above the narrow opening, he lay flat down and grinned in peace. He was securely hidden, and the dog-driver would pass unsuspectingly, unready, thirty feet beneath where he lay. Things were looking well.

The driver and team came on at a steady pace. Even at a great distance, his stride betrayed his race and Reivers muttered, "White man," and pushed to the edge of the bluff a huge, jagged piece of rock. The man might not listen to reason, and Reivers was taking no chances of allowing an opportunity to feed to slip by.

The sleigh still puzzled him. As it came nearer and nearer he saw that it was not empty. Something long and flat lay upon it. Reivers ceased to watch the driver and turned his scrutiny entirely to the bundle upon the sleigh. Minute after minute he watched the sleigh to the exclusion of everything else.

He made out eventually that the bundle was the size and form of a human body. Soon he saw that it moved now and then, as if struggling to rise.

The sleigh came nearer, came into a space where the sunlight, streaming through a gap in the ridge, lighted it up brightly, and Reivers' whole body suddenly stiffened upon the ground and his teeth snapped shut barely in time to cut short an ejaculation of surprise.

The bundle on the sleigh was a woman--a white woman! And she was bound around from ankle to forehead with thongs passed under the sleigh.

"Food--and a woman--a white woman," he mused. "The new life becomes interesting. Body, get ready."

He held the rock balanced on the edge of the cliff, ready to hurl it down with one supreme effort of his waning strength. Hugging the cliff he lay, his head barely raised sufficiently to watch his approaching quarry. He could make out the face of the man by this time, a square face, mostly covered with hair, with the square-cut hair of the head hanging down below the ears. Two fang-like teeth glistened in the sunlight when the man opened his mouth to curse at the dogs, and he turned at times to leer back at the helpless burden on the sleigh.

As he approached the narrow defile, where the rock walls hid a man and what he might do from the eyes of all but the sky above, the man turned to look more frequently, more leeringly at his victim. Reivers saw that the woman was gagged as well as bound.

The driver shouted a command at his dogs, and their lope became a walk, and even as Reivers, up on the cliff, arched his back to hurl his stone, the outfit came to a halt directly beneath where he lay. Reivers waited. He had no compunction about disabling or killing the man below; a crying belly knows no conscience. But he would wait and see what was to develop.

The man swiftly jerked his team back in the traces and turned toward his victim. Reivers, turning his eyes from the man to the woman, received a shock which caused him to hug closer to the cliff. The woman lay helpless on the sleigh, face up. A cloth gag covered her face up to the nose, and a cap, drawn down over the forehead, left only the eyes and nose visible. And the eyes were wide open--very wide open--and they were looking quite calmly and unafraid up at Reivers.

The driver came back and tore the gag from the woman's lips.

"I'll give you a chance," he exploded, and Reivers, up on the cliff, caught the passion-choked note in voice and again held the stone ready. "I'm stealing you for the chief--for Shanty Moir, the man who's got your father's mine, and who's determined to put shame on you, Red MacGregor's daughter. I'm taking you there to him--in his camp. You know what that means.

"Well, I've changed my mind. I--I'll give you a chance. I'll save you. Come with me. I won't take you up there. We'll go out of the country. You know what it'd mean to go up there. Well,--I'll marry you."

Many things happened in the next few seconds. The man threw himself like a wild beast beside the sledge, caught the woman's face in his hands and kissed her bestially upon the helpless lips.

The girl did not struggle or cry out. Only her wide eyes looked up to the top of the cliff, looked questioningly, speculatively, calmly. He of the hairy face caught the direction of her look and sprang up and whirled around, the glove flying from his right hand, and a six-shooter leaping into it apparently from nowhere.

His face was upturned, and he fired even as the big rock smote him on the forehead and crushed him shapelessly into the snow. Reivers dragged forward another stone and waited, but the man was too obviously dead to render caution necessary.

"He was experienced and quick," said Reivers to the woman, "but I was too hungry to miss him. Did you think I did it to save you? Oh, no! Just a minute, till I get down; you'll know me better."

He staggered and fell as he rose to pick his way down, for the cast with the heavy stone had tapped the last reservoirs of his depleted strength, had wrenched open the wounded shoulder and started the blood. Painfully he dragged himself on hands and knees to a snow-covered slope, and slipping and sliding made his way to the valley-bottom and came staggering up to the sledge. The woman to him for the time being did not exist.

"Steady, Body," he muttered, as he tore open the grub-bag on the sleigh. "Here's food."

His fingers fell first on a huge chunk of cooked venison, and he looked no farther. Down in the snow at the side of the helpless woman he squatted and proceeded to eat. Only when the pang in his stomach had been appeased did he look at the woman. Then, for a time, he forgot about eating.

It was not a woman but a girl. Her face was fair and her hair golden red. Her big eyes were looking at him appraisingly. There was no fear in them, no apprehension. She noted the hollowness of his cheeks, the fever in his eyes. Reivers almost dropped his meat in amazement. The girl actually was pitying him!

He stood up, thrust the meat back into the grub-bag and stood swaying and towering over her. The girl's eyes looked back unwaveringly.

"---- you!" growled Reivers as he bent down and loosed the thongs. "What do you mean? Why aren't you afraid?"

"MacGregor Roy was my father," she said quietly. "I am not afraid." She sat up as the bonds fell from her and looked at the still figure in the snow. "He is dead, I suppose?"

"As dead as he tried to make me," sneered Reivers.

A look of annoyance crossed her face.

"Then you have spoiled it all," she broke out, leaping from the sledge. "Spoiled the fine chance I had to find the cave of Shanty Moir, murderer of my father."

Reivers' jaw dropped in amazement, and hot anger surged to his tongue. Many women of many kinds he had looked in the eyes and this was the first one--

"Spoiled it, you red-haired trull! What do you mean? Didn't I save you from our bearded friend yonder. Or--" his thin lips curled into their old contemptuous smile--"or perhaps--perhaps you are one of those to whom such attentions are not distasteful."

The sudden flare and flash of her anger breaking, like lightning out of a Winter's sky, checked his words. The contempt of his smile gave place to a grin of admiration. Tottering and wavering on his feet, he did not stir or raise his arms, though the thin-bladed knife which seemed to spring into her hands as claws protrude from a maddened cat's paws, slipped through his mackinaw and pricked the skin above his heart, before her hand stopped.

"'Trull' am I? The daughter of MacGregor Roy is a helpless squaw who takes kindly to such words from any man on the trail? Blood o' my father! Pray, you cowardly skulker! Pray!"

His grin grew broader.

"Pretty, very pretty!" he drawled. "But you can't make it good, can you? You thought you could. Your little flare of temper made you feel big. You were sure you were going to stick me. But you couldn't do it. You're a woman. See; your flash of bigness is dying out. You're growing tame. That's one of my specialties--taming spitfires like you. Oh, you needn't draw back. Have no fear. I never did have any taste for red hair."

A painter would have raved about the daughter of MacGregor Roy as she now stood back, facing her tormentor. The fair skin of her face was flushed red, the thin sharp lines of mouth and nostril were tremulous with rage, and her wide, grey eyes burned. Her head was thrown back in scorn, her cap was off; the glorious red-golden hair of her head seemed alive with fury. With one foot advanced, the knife held behind her, her breath coming in angry gasps, she stood, a figure passionately, terribly alive in the dead waste of the snows.

"Oh, what a coward you are!" she panted. "You knew I couldn't avenge myself on a sick man. You coward!"

Reivers laughed drunkenly. The fever was blurring his sight, dulling his brain and filling him with an irresistible desire to lie down.

"Yes, I knew it," he mumbled. "I saw it in your eye. You couldn't do it--because I didn't want you to. I want you--I want you to fix me up--hole in the shoulder--fever--understand?"

"I understand that when Duncan Roy, my father's brother, catches up with us he will save me the trouble by putting a hole through your head."

"Plenty of time for that later on." Reivers fought off the stupor and held his senses clear for a moment. "Have you got my whisky?"

"And what if I have?"

"Answer me!" he said icily. "Have you?"

"Duncan Roy has whisky," she replied reluctantly. "He will be on our trail now."

"How long--how long before he'll get here?"

"Yon beast--" she nodded her head toward the still figure in the snow--"raided our camp, struck me down and stole me away with my team two hours before sundown, yestere'en. Duncan Roy was out meat-hunting, and would be back by dark. He'll be two hours behind us, and his dogs travel even with these."

"Two hours? Too long," groaned Reivers and pitched headlong into the snow.

## CHAPTER XXIV--THE WOMAN'S WAY

When he came to, it was from the bite and sting of the terrible white whisky of the North, being poured down his throat by a rude, generous hand.

"Aye; he's no' dead," rumbled a voice like unto a bear's growl. "He lappit the liquor though his eye's closed. Hoot, man! Ye take it in like mother's milk."

"Have done, Uncle Duncan," warned another voice--the bold, free voice of the girl, Reivers in his semi-consciousness made out. "'Tis a sick man. Don't give him the whole bottle."

"Let be, let be," grumbled the big voice, but nevertheless Reivers felt the bottle withdrawn from his lips. "'Tis no tender child that a good drink of liquor would hurt that we have here. Do you not note that mouth and jaw? I'm little more pleased with the look of him than with yon thing in the snow."

"'Tis a sick, helpless being," said the girl.

The big voice rumbled forth an oath.

"And what have we--you and I--to do with sick, helpless beings? Are we not on the trail to find Shanty Moir, who is working your father's mine, wherever it is, and there take vengeance on said Shanty for your father's murder, as well as recover your own property? Is this a trail on which 'tis fit and well we halted to nurse and care for sick, helpless beings? Blood of the de'il! An unlucky mess! What business has man to be sick and ailing on the Winter trail here in the North? 'Tis the law of Nature that such die!"

"And do you think that law will be followed here?" demanded the girl.

"Were I alone, it would," retorted the man. "Our task is to find the place of Shanty Moir and do him justice."

"And the hospitality of the MacGregors? Is it like Duncan Roy to see beast or man needing or wanting help without stretching his hand to help it?"

The man was silent.

"Do you think any good could come to you or me if we turned our hearts to stones and let a sick man perish after he had fallen helpless on our hands?"

"I tell you what I think, Hattie MacGregor," broke out the big voice. "I think there is trouble travelling as trail-fellow with this man. I see trouble in the cut of his jaw and the lines of his mouth. There is a fate written there; he's a fated man and no else, and nothing would please me better than to have him a thousand days mushing away from me and never to see him again. Trouble and trouble! It's written on him plain.

"Who is he? Whence came he? Why is he alone, dogless, foodless, weaponless, here in these Dead Lands! 'Tis uncanny. Blood o' the de'il! He might be dropped down from somewhere, or more like shot up from somewhere--from the black pit, for instance. It's no' proper for mere human being to be found in his condition out this far on the barrens, with no sign of how he came or why?"

"Have no fear, Uncle Duncan," laughed the girl. "He's only a common man."

Reivers opened his eyes, chuckling feverishly.

"You'll pay for that 'common,' you spitfire, when I've tamed you," he mumbled.

"Only a common man, Uncle Duncan," repeated the girl steadfastly, "and I've a bone to pick with him when he's on his feet, no longer helpless and pitiable as he is now."

Again Reivers laughed through the haze of fever. He did not have the strength to hold his eyes open, but his mind worked on.

"Helpless! Did you notice the incident of the rock?" he babbled. "Bare, primitive, two-handed man against a man with a gun. Who won?"

"Aye," said the man seriously, "we owe you thanks for that. For a helpless man, you deal stout knocks."

"And speak big words," snapped the girl. "Now, around with the teams, Uncle Duncan, and back to camp. There's been talk enough. We must take him in and shelter and care for him, since he has fallen helpless and pitiable on our hands. We owe him no thanks. Can you not lay his head easier--the boasting fool! There; that's better. Now, all that the dogs can stand, Uncle, for I misdoubt we'll be hard-pressed to keep the life in him till we get him back to camp."

Reivers heard and strove to reply. But the paralysis of fever and weakness was upon him, and all that came from his lips was an incoherent babbling. In the last vapoury stages of consciousness he realised that he was being placed more comfortably upon the sledge, that his head was being lifted and that blankets were being strapped about him.

He felt the sledge being turned, heard the runners grate on the snow; then ensued an easy, sliding movement through space, as the rested dogs started their lope back through the valley. The movement soothed him. It lulled him to a sensation of safety and comfort.

The phantasmagoria of fever pounded at his brain, his eyes and ears, but the steady, swishing rush of the sleigh drove them away. He slept, and awoke when a halt was called and more whisky forced down his throat. Then he slept again.

There were several halts. Once he realised that he was being fed thin soup, made from cooked venison and snow-water. That was the last impression made on remaining consciousness. After that the thread snapped.

The sledges went on. They left the valley. Through the jumbled ridges of the Dead Lands they hurried. They reached a stretch of stunted fir, and still they continued to go. At length they pulled up before a solid little cabin built in a cleft of rocks.

The Snow Burner was carried in and put to bed. After a rest Duncan Roy and the fresher of the dogteams took the trail again. They came, back after a day and a night, bringing with them a certain Père Batiste, skilled in treating fevers and wounds of the body as well as of the soul. The good curé gasped at the torso which revealed itself to his gaze as he stripped off the clothes to work at the wound.

"If le bon Dieu made him as well inside as outside, this is a very good man," he said simply; and Duncan MacGregor smiled grimly.

"God--or the de'il--made him to deal stout knocks, that's sure," he grunted. "'Tis a rare animal we have stripped before us."

"A rare human being--a soul," reproved Father Batiste. "And it is le bon Dieu who makes us all."

"But the de'il gets hold of some very young," insisted the Scotchman.

Father Batiste stayed in the cabin for two days.

"He was not meant to die this time," he said later. "It will be long--weeks perhaps--before he will be strong enough to take the trail. He will need care, such care as only a woman can give him. If he does not have this care he will die. If he does have it he will live. Adieu, my children; you have a sacred, human life in your hands."

And he got the care that only a woman could give him. For the next two weeks Duncan MacGregor watched his niece's devoted nursing and gnawed his red beard gloomily.

"Trouble--trouble--trouble!" he muttered over and over to himself. "It rides around the man's head like a storm-cap. Hattie MacGregor, take care. Yon man will be a different creature to handle when he has the strength back in his body."

At the end of a week Reivers awoke as a man wakes after a long, fever-breaking slumber, weak and wasted, yet with a grateful sense of comfort and well-being. Before he opened his eyes he sensed by the warmth and odours of the air that he was in a small, tight room, and in a haze he fancied that he had fallen in the tepee of Tillie, the squaw. Then he remembered. He opened his eyes.

He was lying in a bunk, raised high from the floor, and above the foot of the bed was a small window, shaded by a frilled white curtain. Reivers lay long and looked at the curtain before his eyes moved to further explore the room. For once, long, long ago, he had belonged in a world where white frilled curtains and frills of other kinds were not an exception.

In his physically washed-out condition his memory reached back and pictured that world with uncanny clearness, and he turned from the curtain with a frown of annoyance to look straight into the eyes of Duncan Roy, who sat by the fireplace across the room and studied him from beneath shaggy red brows.

Reivers looked the man over idly at first, then with a considerable interest and appreciation. Sitting crouched over on a low stone bench, with the light of the fire and of the sun upon him, MacGregor resembled nothing so much as an old red-haired bear. He was short of leg and bow-legged, but his torso and head were enormous. His arms, folded across the knees, were bear-like in length and size, and his hair and beard flamed golden red.

There was no friendliness in the small, grey eyes which regarded Reivers so steadily. Duncan MacGregor was no man to hide his true feelings. Reivers looked enquiringly around.

"She's stepped outside to feed the dogs," said MacGregor, interpreting the look. "You'll have to put up with my poor company for the time being."

"I accept your apology," said Reivers and turned comfortably toward the wall.

A deep, chesty chuckle came from the fireside.

"Man, whoever are you or whatever are you, to take it that Duncan MacGregor feels any need to apologise to you?"

The words were further balm to Reivers's new-found feeling of comfort and content.

"Say that again, please," he requested drowsily.

Laughingly the giant by the fire repeated his query.

"Good!" murmured Reivers. "I just wanted to be sure that you didn't know who I am--or, rather, who I was?"

"Blood o' the de'il!" laughed the Scotchman. "So it's that, is it? Tell me, how much reward is there offered for you, dead or alive? I'm a thrifty man, lad, and you hardly look like a man who'd have a small price on his head."

"Wrong, quite wrong, my suspicious friend," said Reivers. "I see you've the simple mind of the man who's spent much time in lone places. You jump at the natural conclusion. When you know me better you'll know that that won't apply to me."

"Well," drawled the Scotchman good-naturedly, "I do not say that it looks suspicious to be found a two-days' march out in the Dead Lands, without food, dog, or weapons, with an empty belly and a hole through the shoulder, but there are people who might draw the conclusion that a man so fixed was travelling because some place behind him was mighty bad for his health. But I have no doubt you have an explanation? No doubt 'tis quite the way you prefer to travel?"

"Under certain circumstances, it is," said Reivers.

"Aye; under certain circumstances. Such as an affair with a 'Redcoat,' for instance."

"Wrong again, my simple-minded friend. You're quite welcome to bring the whole Mounted Police here to look me over. I'm not on their lists, or the lists of any authority in the world, as 'wanted.'"

"For that insult--that I'm of the kind that bears tales to the police--I'll have an accounting with you later on," said MacGregor sharply. "For the rest--you'll admit that you're under some small obligation to us--will you be kind enough to explain what lay behind you that you should be out on the barrens in your condition? I'll have you know that I am no man to ask pay for succouring the sick or wounded. Neither am I the man to let any well man be near-speaking with my ward and niece, Hattie MacGregor, without I know what's the straight of him."

Reivers turned luxuriously in his bunk and regarded his inquisitor with a smile.

"Poor, dainty, helpless, little lady!" he mocked. "So weak and frail that she needs a protector. Never carries anything more than an eight-inch knife up her sleeve. You do right, MacGregor; your niece certainly needs looking after. She certainly doesn't know how to take care of herself.

"But about obligations, I don't quite agree with you. Didn't you owe me a little something for that turn with the bearded fellow? Not that I did it to save the girl," he continued loudly, as he heard the door open behind him and knew that Hattie MacGregor had entered. "What was she to me? Nothing! But I was hungry. I needed food. But for that our black-bearded friend might now have been wandering care-free over the snows, a red-haired woman still strapped to his sledge, his taste seeming to run to that colour, which mine does not."

Hattie MacGregor stilled her uncle's retort with a shake of her golden-red head, crossed to the fireplace and took up a bowl that was simmering there, and approached the bed. Reivers looked at her closely, striving to catch her eye, but she seated herself beside him without apparently paying the slightest attention. She spoke no word, made no sign to welcome him back from his unconsciousness, but merely held a spoonful of the steaming broth up to his lips.

There was a certain dexterity in her movements which told that she had performed this action many, many times before, and there was nothing in her manner to indicate her sensibility of the change in his condition. Reivers opened his mouth to laugh, and the girl dexterously tilted the contents of the spoon down his throat.

"You fool!" he sputtered, half strangling.

He strove to rise, but her round, warm arm held him down. Over by the fireplace Duncan MacGregor slapped his thigh and chuckled deep down in his hairy throat, but on the face of his niece there was only the determined patience of the nurse dealing with a patient not yet entirely responsible for his behaviour.

She was not surprised at his outbreak, Reivers saw. Apparently she had fed him many times just so--he utterly helpless and childish, she capable and calm. Apparently she was determined to sit there, firm and patient, until he was ready to take his broth quietly and without fuss.

Indignantly he raised his hands to take the bowl from her; then he opened his eyes wide in surprise. He was so weak that he could barely lift his arms, and when she offered him a second spoonful he swallowed it without further demur.

"Ah, well, we'll soon be able to take the trail again," drawled MacGregor mockingly. "We're getting strong now; soon we'll be able to eat with our own hands."

"Hold tongue, Uncle," snapped the girl, and continued to feed her patient.

"I suppose I must thank you?" taunted Reivers, when the bowl was empty.

Hattie MacGregor made no sign to indicate that she had heard. She put the bowl away, felt Reivers' pulse, laid her hand upon his forehead--never looking at him the while--arranged the pillows under his head, tucked him in and without speaking went out. Reivers' eyes followed her till the door closed behind her.

"The little spitfire!" he growled in grudging admiration; and Duncan MacGregor, by the fire, laughed till the room echoed.

## CHAPTER XXV--GOLD!

Next morning when she came to feed him Reivers angrily reached for the bowl. He was stronger than the day before, and he held his hands forth without trembling.

"There's no need of your feeding me by hand any longer," said he. "I assure you I'll enjoy my food much better alone than I do with you feeding me."

The girl seated herself at the bunk-side, holding the bowl out of his reach, and looked him quietly in the eyes. It was the first time she had appeared to notice his return to consciousness, and Reivers smiled quizzically at her scrutiny. She did not smile in return, merely studied him as if he were an interesting subject.

In the grey light of morning Reivers for the first time saw her with eyes cleared of the fever blur. His smile vanished, for he saw that this woman, to him, was different from any woman he ever had known before. And he had known many.

In her wide grey eyes there rode a sorrow that reached out and held the observer, despite her evident efforts to keep it hidden. But the mouth belied the eyes. It was set with an expression of determination, almost superhuman, almost savage. It was as if this girl, just rounding her twenties, had turned herself into a force for the accomplishment of an object. The mouth was harsh, almost lipless, in its set. Yet, beneath all this, the woman in Hattie MacGregor was obvious, soft, yearning.

Many women had had a part in Reivers' life--far too many. None of them had held his interests longer than for a few months; none of them had he failed to tame and break. And none of them had reached below the hard husk of him and touched the better man as Hattie MacGregor did at this moment. His past experiences, his past attitude toward women, his past manner of life, flashed through his mind, each picture bringing with it a stab of remorse.

Remorse! The Snow Burner remorseful! He laughed his old laugh of contempt and defiance of all the world, but, though he refused to acknowledge it to himself, the old, invincible, self-assured ring was not in it. This girl was not to him what other women had been, and he saw that he could not tame her as he had tamed them.

Strange thoughts rose in his mind. He wished that the past had been different. He actually felt unworthy. Well, the past was past. It had died with him in the river. He was beginning a new life, a new name, a new man. Why couldn't he? He drove the weak thoughts away. What nonsense! He--Hell-Camp Reivers--getting soft over a woman? Pooh!

"I said I could feed myself," he snarled. "Give me that bowl. I don't want you around."

For reply she dipped the spoon into the food and held it ready.

"Lie down quietly, please," she said coldly. "This is no time for keeping up your play of being a big man."

"Give me that bowl," he commanded.

"Uncle," she called quietly.

Her big kinsman came lurching in from the other room of the cabin.

"Aye, lass?" said he.

"It looks as if we would have to obey Father Batiste's directions and feed him by force," said the girl quietly. "He has come out of the fever, but he hasn't got his senses back. He thinks of feeding himself. Do you get the straps, Uncle. You recollect Father Batiste's orders."

Duncan MacGregor scratched his hairy head in puzzled fashion.

"How now, stranger?" he growled. "Can you no take your food in peace?"

"I can take it without anybody's help," insisted Reivers. He knew that the situation was ridiculous, but he saw no way of getting the whip-hand.

"It was the word of the good Father, without whom you would now be resting out in the snow with a cairn of rock over you, that you should be fed so much and so little for some days after your senses come back," said MacGregor slowly. "I do not ken the right of it quite, but the lass does. The lass--she'll have her way, I suspect. I can do naught but obey her orders."

"Get the straps," commanded the girl curtly.

Reivers glared at her, but she looked back without the least losing her self-possession or determination.

"You'll pay for this!" he snorted.

"Will you take your food without the straps?" said she.

For a minute their eyes met in conflict.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous," snapped Reivers. "Have your silly way."

"Good. That's a good boy," she said softly; and Duncan Roy ran from the room choking.

"You see," she continued, as he swallowed the first spoonful, "it isn't always possible to have your own way, is it? I am doing this only for your own good."

"Hold your tongue," he growled. "I've got to eat this food, but I don't have to listen to your talk."

"Quite right," she agreed, and the meal was finished in silence.

At noon she fed him again, without speaking a word. Apparently she had given her uncle orders likewise to refrain from talking to Reivers, for not a word did he speak during the day.

In the evening the same silent feeding took place. After she and her uncle had supped, they drew up to the fireplace, where, in silence, Duncan repaired a dog-harness while the girl sewed busily at a fur coat. At short intervals the uncle cast a look toward Reivers' bunk, then choked a chuckle in his beard, each chuckle bringing a glance of reproof from his niece.

"No, Hattie," MacGregor broke out finally, "I cannot hold tongue any longer. Company is no' so plentiful in the North that we can sit by and have no speech. Do you keep still if you wish--I must talk. Stranger, are you going to tell me about yoursel', as I asked you yestereve?"

"Does her Royal Highness, the Red-Headed Chieftainess, permit me to speak?" queried Reivers sarcastically.

"'Twas your own sel' told me to hold tongue," said the girl evenly, without looking up. "I am glad to see you are reasonable enough to give in."

"Let be, Hattie," grumbled the old man. "He's our guest, and we in his debt. Stranger, who are you?"

"Nobody," said Reivers.

"Ah!" cried the girl. "Now he's come to his senses, sure enough."

"Hattie!" said the old man ominously. "I beg pardon for her uncivility, stranger."

"Never mind," said Reivers lightly. "Apparently she doesn't know any better. Speaking to you, sir, I am nobody. I'm as much nobody as a child born yesterday. My life--as far as you're concerned--began up there on the rocks in the Dead Lands.

"I died just a few days before that--died as effectively as if a dozen preachers had read the service over me. You don't understand that. You've got a simple mind. But I tell you I'm beginning a new life as completely as if there was no life behind me, and as you know all that's happened in this new life, you see there's nothing for me to tell you about myself."

"You died," repeated the old man slowly. "I'll warrant you had a good reason."

"A fair one. I wanted to live. I died to save my life."

"Speak plain!" growled MacGregor. "You were not fleeing from the law?"

"No--as I told you yesterday. The only law I was fleeing from was the good old one that cheap men make when they become a mob."

"I tak' it they had a fair reason for becoming a mob?"

"The best in the world," agreed Reivers. "They wanted to kill me. Now, why they wanted to do that is something that belongs to my other life--with the other man--has nothing at all to do with this man--with me--and therefore I am not going to tell you anything about it, except this: I didn't come away with anything that belonged to them, except possibly my life."

MacGregor nodded sagely as Reivers ended.

"And his own bare life a man has a right to get away with if he can, even though it's property forfeited to others," he said. "I suppose you have, or had, a name?"

"I did. I haven't now; I haven't thought of one that would please me."

"How would the 'Woman Tamer' suit you?" asked the girl, without pausing in her sewing. "You remember you told me one of your specialties was taming spitfires like me?"

Reivers smiled.

"I am glad to see that you've become sufficiently interested in me, Miss MacGregor, to select me a name."

"Interested!" she flared; then subsided and bent over her sewing. "I will speak no more, Uncle," she said meekly.

"Good!" sneered Reivers. "Your manners are improving. And now, Mr. MacGregor, what about yourselves, and your brother, and a mine, and a man named Moir that I've heard you speak of?"

Duncan MacGregor tossed a fresh birch chunk into the fire and carefully poked the coals around it. Outside, the dogs, burrowing in the snow, sent up to the sky their weird night-cry, a cry of prayer and protest, protest against the darkness and mystery of night, prayer for the return of the light of day. A wind sprang up and whipped dry snow against the cabin window, and to the sound of its swishing wail Duncan MacGregor began to speak.

"Little as you've seen fit to tell about yourself, stranger," he said, "'tis plain from your behaviour out on the rocks that you're no man of that foul Welsh cutthroat and thief, Shanty Moir. For the manner in which you dealt with yon man, we owe you a debt."

"We owe him nothing," interrupted the niece. "Had he not interfered, I would have found the way to Shanty Moir."

"But as how?"

"What matter as how? What matter what happens to me if I could find what has become of my father and bring justice to the head of Shanty Moir?"

MacGregor shook his head.

"We owe you a debt," he continued, speaking to Reivers, "and can not refuse to tell you how it is with us. It is no pleasant situation we are in, as you may have judged. My brother, father of Hattie, is--or was, we do not know which--James MacGregor, 'Red' MacGregor so-called in this land, therefore MacGregor Roy, as is all our breed. You would have heard of him did you belong in this country.

"Ten year ago we built this cabin, he and I, and settled down to trap the country, for the fur here is good. Five year ago a Cree half-breed gave James a sliver of rock to weight a net with, and the rock, curse it forever, was over half gold. The breed could not recall where the rock had come from, save that he had chucked it into his canoe some place up north.

"James MacGregor stopped trapping then. He began to look for the spot where the gilty rock came from. Three years he looked and did not find it. Two years ago Shanty Moir came down the river and bided here, and Moir was a prospector among other things. Together they found it, after nearly two years looking together; for James took this Moir into partnership, and that was the unlucky day of his life."

MacGregor kicked savagely at the fire and sat silent for several minutes.

"Six months gone they found it," he continued dully, "in the Summer time. They came in for provisions--for provisions for all Winter. A deposit for two men to work, they said. My brother would not even tell me where they found it. The gold had got into his brain. It was his life's blood to him. We only knew that it was somewhere up yonder."

He embraced the whole North with a despairing sweep of his long arms and continued:

"Then they went back, five months, two weeks gone, to dig out the gold, the two of them, my brother, James, and the foul Welsh thief, Shanty Moir. For foul he has proven. In three months my brother had promised he would be back to say all was well with him. We have had no word, no word in these many months.

"But Shanty Moir we have heard of. Aye, we have heard of him. At Fifty Mile, and at Dumont's Camp he had been, throwing dust and nuggets across the bars and to the painted women, boasting he is king of the richest deposit in the North, and offering to kill any man who offers to follow his trail to his holdings. Aye, that we have heard. And that must mean only one thing--the cut-throat Moir has done my brother to death and is flourishing on the gold that drew James MacGregor to his doom.

"Well," he went on harshly, "what men have found others can find. We have sent word broadcast that we will find Shanty Moir and his holdings, and that I will have an accounting with him, aye, an accounting that will leave but one of us above ground, if it takes me the rest of my life."

"And mine," interjected the girl hotly. "Shanty Moir is mine, and I take toll for my father's life. It's no matter what comes to me, if I can bring justice to Shanty Moir for what he has done to my father. My hand--my own hand will take toll when we run the dog to earth."

In his bunk Reivers laughed scornfully.

"I've a good notion to go hunting this Moir and bring him to you just to see if you could make those words good," said he. "With your own hand, eh? You'd fail, of course, at the last moment, being a woman, but it would almost be worth while getting this Moir for you to see what you'd do. Yes, it would be an interesting experiment."

It was the girl's turn to laugh now, her laughter mocking his.

"'Twould be interesting to see what you would do did you stand face to face with Shanty Moir," she sneered. "Yes, 'twould be an interesting experiment--to see how you'd crawl. For this can be said of the villain, Shanty Moir, that he does not run from men to get help from women. You bring Shanty Moir in! How would you do it--with your mouth?"

"On second thought it would be cruel and unusual punishment to make any man listen to your tongue," concluded Reivers solemnly.

MacGregor growled and shook his head.

"There's no doubt that Shanty Moir of the black heart is a hard-grown, experienced man," said he. "Henchmen of his--three of them, Welshmen all--came through here while James and he were hunting the mine, and he treated them like dogs and they him like a chieftain. 'Twas one of them you slew with the rock out yon, and the matter is very plain: Shanty Moir has got word to them and they have come to the mine and overpowered my brother James. You may judge of the strong hand he holds over his men when a single one of them dares to raid my camp in my absence and steal the daughter of James MacGregor for his chieftain--a strong, big man. 'Twill make it all the sweeter when we get him. He will die hard."

"Also--being of a thrifty breed--you won't feel sorry at getting hold of whatever gold he's taken out," suggested Reivers.

"That's understood," said MacGregor, and put a fresh chunk on the fire for the night.

## CHAPTER XXVI--THE LOOK IN A WOMAN'S EYES

Next morning Hattie MacGregor, after she had fed him his morning's meal, said casually to Reivers:

"You have about six days more to pump my uncle and get all he knows about my father's mine. In six days you should be strong enough to travel, and so long and no longer do I keep you."

"Six days?" repeated Reivers. "I may take it into my head to start before."

"And that's all the good that would do you," she replied promptly. "You don't go from here until you are firm on your feet, and that will be six days, about."

"Your interest flatters me," he mocked.

"Interest!" Her laugh was bitter. "No stray, wounded cur even goes from this camp till he's fit to rustle a living on the trail. I could do no less even for you."

"And if I should make up my mind and go?"

"I would shoot you if necessary to keep you here till my duty by you is done!"

"You spitfire!" laughed Reivers, hiding the admiration that leaped into his eyes. "And what makes you think I'm going hunting for this alleged mine when I depart from your too warm hospitality?"

"Pooh! 'Tis easy enough to see that you're that kind--you with your long, hungry nose! I was watching you when my uncle babbled away last night. You've naught a thing in the world but the clothes you stand in. What would you do but go snooping around when you hear of gold? I see it in your mean eyes. Well, seek all you please. You're welcome. You'll not interfere with our quest. In the first place, you have not the heart to stay on the trail long enough to succeed; in the second, you'd back-track quick enough did you once come face to face with Shanty Moir."

"And you--I suppose this bad man, Shanty Moir, will quail when he sees your red hair? Or perhaps you expect to charm him as you charmed the gentleman who had you tied on the sledge?"

"I do not know that," she said without irritation. "But I do know that my uncle and I will run Shanty Moir to earth, and that he will pay in full for the wrong he has done."

"You silly, childish fool!" he broke out. "Haven't you brains enough to realise what an impossible wild-goose chase you're on? Since it took your father five years to find the mine, you ought to realise that it's pretty hard to locate. Since he didn't find it until this Moir, a prospector, came to help him, you ought to understand that it takes a miner to find it.

"You're no miner. Your uncle is no miner. You've neither of you had the slightest experience in this sort of thing. You wouldn't know the signs if you saw them. You'll go wandering aimlessly around, maybe walking over Shanty Moir's head; because, since nobody has stumbled across his camp, it must be so well hidden that it can't be seen unless you know right where to look. Find it! You're a couple of children!"

"Mayhap. But we are not so aimless as you may think. We go to Fifty Mile and to Dumont's Camp and stay. Sooner or later Shanty Moir will come there, to throw my father's gold over the bars and to worse. It may be a month, a year--it doesn't make any difference. But I suppose a great man like you has a quicker and surer way of doing it?"

"I have," said Reivers.

"No doubt. I could see your eyes grow greedy when you heard my uncle tell of gold."

"Oh, no; not especially," taunted Reivers. "The gold is an incident. Shanty Moir is what interests me. He seems to be a gentleman of parts. I'm going to get him. I'm going to bring you face to face with him. I want to see if you could make good the strong talk you've been dealing out as to what you would do. You interest me that way, Miss MacGregor, and that way only. It will be an interesting experiment to get you Shanty Moir."

"Thank Heaven!" she said grimly. "We'll soon be rid of you and your big talk. Then I can forget that any man gave me the name you gave me and lived to brag about it afterward."

He laughed, as one laughs at a petulant child.

"You will never forget me," he said. "You know that you will not forget me, if you live a thousand years."

"I have forgotten better men than you," she said and went out, slamming the door.

That evening Reivers sat up by the fire and further plied old MacGregor with questions concerning the mine.

"You say that your brother claimed the mine lay to the north," he said. "I suppose you have searched the north first of all?"

"For a month I have done nothing else," was the reply. "I have not gone far enough north. My brother James said it lay north from here; and 'twas north he and Shanty Moir went when they started on their last trip together, from which my brother did not return or send word."

"Dumont's Camp and Fifty Mile, where Moir's been on sprees; lay to the west."

"Northwest, aye. Four days' hard mushing to Fifty Mile. Dumont's hell-hole's a day beyond."

"And you think the mine lies to the north of that?"

"Aye. More like in a direct line north of here, for 'twas so they went when they left here."

Reivers hid the smile of triumph that struggled on his lips. The Dead Lands were strange country to him, but in the land north of Fifty Mile he was at home. In his wanderings he had spent months in that country in company with many other deluded men who thought to dig gold out of the bare, frozen tundra. He had found no gold there, and neither had any one else. There was no gold up there, could be none there, and, what was more important to him just now, there was no rock formation, nothing but muskeg and tundra. The mine could not be up north.

It must, however, be within easy mushing distance of Fifty Mile and Dumont's Camp, say two or three days, else Shanty Moir would not have hied himself to these settlements when the need for riot and wassail overcame him.

"You know the ground between here and Fifty Mile, I suppose?" he said suddenly.

"'Tis my trapping-ground," replied MacGregor.

So the mine couldn't be east of the settlements. It was to the west or the south.

"Your brother was particularly careful to keep the location of his find secret even from you?"

"Aye," said MacGregor sorrowfully. "It had gone to his head, he had searched so long, and the find was so big. He took no chances that I might know it, or his daughter Hattie; only the thief, Shanty Moir."

And he said that the mine lay to the north. That might mean that it lay to the south--west or south of the settlements, there his search would lie. It was new country to him, and, as MacGregor well knew before he gave him his confidence, a man not knowing the land might wander aimlessly for years without covering those vast, broken reaches. But MacGregor did not know of the Chippewa squaw, Tillie, and her people.

"And now I suppose you will be able to find it soon," snapped Hattie MacGregor, "now that you have pumped my uncle dry?"

"I will," said Reivers. "I'll be there waiting for you when you come along." And Duncan MacGregor chuckled deeply.

For the remainder of his stay at the cabin, Reivers maintained a sullen silence toward the girl. Had she been different, had she affected him differently, he would have cursed her for daring to disturb him even to this slight extent. But he knew that if she had been different she would not have disturbed him at all. Well, he would soon be away, and then he would forget her.

He had an object again. His nature was such that he craved power and dominance over men, as another man craves food. He would not live at all unless he had power. He had used this power too ruthlessly at Cameron-Dam Camp, and it had been wrested from him. For the time being he was down among the herd. But not for long.

Shanty Moir had a mine some place south or west of the settlements, and the mine yielded gold nuggets and gold dust for Shanty Moir to fling across the bars. Gold spells power. Given gold, Reivers would have back his old-time power over men, aye, and over women. Not merely a power up there in the frozen North, but in the world to which he had long ago belonged: the world of men in dress clothes, of lights and soft rugs, or women, soft-speaking women, shimmery gowns and white shoulders, their eyes and apparel a constant invitation to the great adventure of love.

After all, that was the world that he belonged in. And gold would give him power there, and in that whirl he would forget this red-haired, semi-savage who looked him in the eye as no other woman ever had dared. His fists clenched as his thoughts lighted up the future. The Snow-Burner had died, but he would live again, and he would forget, absolutely and completely, Hattie MacGregor.

On the morning of the sixth day Duncan MacGregor gravely placed before him outside the cabin door a pair of light snowshoes and a grub-bag filled with food for four days. Reivers strapped on the snowshoes and ran his arms through the bagstraps without a word.

"Stranger," said MacGregor, holding out his hand, "I did not like you when first I saw you. I do not say I like you now. But--shake hands."

Reivers hurriedly shook hands and tore himself away. He had resolved to go without seeing Hattie, and he was inwardly raging at himself because he found this resolution hard to keep. He laid his course for the nearest rise of land, half a mile away. Once over the rise the cabin would be shut out of sight, and even though he should weaken and look back there would be no danger of letting her see.

Bent far over, head down, lunging along with the cunning strides of the trained snowshoer, he topped the rise and dropped down on the farther side. There he paused to rest himself and draw breath, and as he stood there Hattie MacGregor and her dog-team swept at right angles across his trail.

She was riding boy-fashion, half sitting, half lying, on the empty sledge, driving the dogs furiously for their daily exercise. She did not speak. She merely looked up at him as she went past. Then she was gone in a flurry of snow, and Reivers went forth on his quest of power with a curse on his lips and in his heart the determination that no weakening memories of a girl's wistful eyes should interfere with his aim.

## CHAPTER XXVII--ON THE TRAIL OF FORTUNE

Reivers travelled steadily for an hour at the best pace that was in him. It was not a good pace, for he was far from being in his old physical condition, and the lift and swing of a snowshoe will cramp the calves and ankle-tendons of a man grown soft from long bed-lying, no matter how cunning may be his stride.

He swore a little at first over his slow progress. He was like a wolf, suddenly released from a trap, who desires to travel far, swiftly and instantly, and who finds that the trap has made him lame.

Reivers wanted to put the MacGregor cabin, and the scenes about it, which might remind him of Hattie, behind him with a rush. But the rush, he soon found, threatened to cripple him, so he must perforce give it up. The trail that he had set out to make was not one that any man, least of all one recently convalescent, could hope to cover in a single burst of speed.

He was going to the Winter camp of the people of Tillie, the squaw. The camp lay somewhere in the northwest. How far away he did not know; and it was no part of his plans to arrive at the camp of the Chippewas depleted in energy and resource. The role he had set out to play now called for the character of the Snow-Burner at his best--dominant, unconquerable. Therefore, when he found that his first efforts at speed threatened to cripple him with the treacherous snow-shoe cramp, he resigned himself to a pace which would have shamed him had he been in good condition. It was poor snow-shoeing, but at the end of an hour he had placed between himself and all possible sight of Hattie MacGregor the first ragged rock-ramparts of the Dead Lands, and he was content.

On the western slope of a low ridge he unstrapped his snow-shoes and sat down on a bare boulder for a rest. His heart throbbed nervously from his exertion and his lungs gasped weakly. But with each breath of the crisp air his strength was coming back to him, and in his head the brains of the Snow-Burner worked as of old. He smiled with great self-satisfaction. He was not considering his condition, was not counting the difficulties that lay in his path. He was merely picturing, with lightning-like play of that powerful mental machinery of his, the desperate nature of the adventure toward which he was travelling.

It was desperate enough even to thrill Hell-Camp Reivers. For probably never did born adventurer set forth of his own free will on a more deadly, more hopeless-looking trail. As he sat on the rock there in the Dead Lands, Reivers was in better condition than on his flight from Cameron-Dam Camp to this extent: the bullet-hole in his shoulder was healed, and, he had recuperated from the fever brought on by exposure and exhaustion. That was all. He was still the bare man with empty hands. He possessed nothing in the world but the clothes he stood in, the food on his back and the gift snow-shoes on his feet.

He had not even a knife that might be called a weapon, for the case-knife that old MacGregor had given him upon parting could scarcely be reckoned such. In this condition he was setting forth--first, to find a cunningly hidden mine; second, to take it and keep it for his own from one Shanty Moir, who treated his henchmen like dogs and was looked up to as a chieftain.

The Snow-Burner lived again as he contemplated the possibilities of a clash with Moir. If what the MacGregors had said was true, Shanty Moir was a boss man himself. And as instinctively and eagerly as one ten-pronged buck tears straight through timber, swamp and water to battle with another buck whose deep-voiced challenge proclaims him similarly a giant, so Reivers was going toward Shanty Moir.

He leaped to his feet, with flashing eyes, at the thought of what was coming. Then he remembered his weakened condition and sat down again. For the immediate present, until his full strength returned, he must make craft take the place of strength.

When he was ready to start again, Reivers took his bearings from the sun, it being a clear day, and laid his trail as straight toward the northwest as the formation of the Dead Lands would allow. He slept that night by a hot spring. A tiny rivulet ran unfrozen from the spring southward down into the maze of barren stone, a thread of dark, steaming water, wandering through the white, frozen snow.

Had he been a little less tired with the day's march Reivers might have paid more attention to this phenomenon that evening. In the morning he awoke with such eagerness to be on toward his adventure that he marched off without bestowing on the stream more than a casual glance. And later he came to curse his carelessness.

Bearing steadily toward the northwest, his course lay in the Dead Lands for the greater part of the day. Shortly before sundown he saw with relief that ahead the rocks and ridges gave way to the flat tundra, with small clumps of stunted willows dotting the flatness, like tiny islands in a sea of snow.

Reivers quickened his pace. Out on the tundra he hurried straight to the nearest bunch of willows. Even at a distance of several rods the chewed white branches of the willows told him their story, and he gave vent to a shout of relief. The caribou had been feeding there. The Chippewas lived on the caribou in Winter. He had only to follow the trail of the animals and he would soon run across the moccasin tracks of his friends, the Indians.

Luck favoured him more than he hoped for. At his shout there was a crash in a clump of willows a hundred yards ahead and a bull caribou lumbered clumsily into the open. At the sight of him the beast snorted loudly and turned and ran. From right and left came other crashes, and in the gathering dusk the herd which had been stripping the willows fled in the wake of the sentinel bull, their ungainly gait whipping them out of sight and hearing in uncanny fashion.

Reivers smiled. The camp of Tillie's people would not be far from the feeding ground of the caribou. He ate his cold supper, crawled into the shelter of the willows and went to sleep.

Dry, drifting snow half hid the tracks of the caribou during the night, and in the morning he was forced to wait for the late-coming daylight before picking up the trail. The herd had gone straight westward, and Reivers followed the signs, his eyes constantly scanning the snow for moccasin tracks or other evidence of human beings.

In the middle of the forenoon, in a birch and willow swamp, he jumped the animals again. They caught his scent at a mile's distance, and Reivers crouched down and watched avidly as they streaked from the swamp to security.

To the north of the swamp lay the open, snow-covered tundra, where even the knife-like fore-hoof of the caribou would have hard time to dig out a living in the dead of Winter. To the south lay clumps of brush and stunted trees, ideal shelter and feed.

The animals went north. Reivers nodded in great satisfaction. There were wolves or Indians to the south, probably the latter. Accordingly he turned southward. Toward noon he found his first moccasin track, evidently the trail of a single hunter who had come northward, but not quite far enough, on a hunt for caribou.

The track looped back southward and Reivers trailed it. Soon a set of snow-shoe tracks joined the moccasins, and Reivers, after a close scrutiny had revealed the Chippewa pattern in the snow, knew that he was on the right track. The tracks dropped down on to the bed of a solidly frozen river and continued on to the south.

Other tracks became visible. When they gathered together and made a hard-packed trail down the middle of the river, Reivers knew that a camp was not far away, and grew cautious.

He found the camp as the swift Winter darkness came on, a group of half a dozen tepees set snugly in a bend of the river, one large tepee in the middle easily recognisable as that of Tillie, the squaw, chief of the band.

Reivers sat down to wait. Presently he heard the camp-dogs growling and fighting over their evening meal and knew that they would be too occupied to notice and announce the approach of a stranger. Also, at this time the people of the camp would be in their tepees, supping heavily if the hunter's god had been favourably inclined, and gnawing the cold bones of yesterday if that irrational deity had been unkind.

By the whining note in the growls of the dogs, Reivers judged that the latter was the case this evening; and when he moved forward and stood listening outside the flap of the big tepee he knew that it was so. Within, an old squaw's treble rose faintly in a whining chant, of which Reivers caught the despairing motif:

Black is the face of the sun, Ah wo! The time has come for the old to die. Ah wo, ah wo! There is meat only to keep alive the young. Ah wo! We who are old must die. Ah wo! Ah wo! Ah wo!

Any other white man but Reivers would have shuddered at the terrible, primitive story which the wail told. Reivers smiled. His old luck was with him. The camp was short of meat and the hunters had given up hopes of making a kill.

With deft, experienced fingers he unloosed the flap of the tepee. There was no noise. Suddenly the old squaw's wail ceased; those in the tepee looked up from their scanty supper. The Snow-Burner was standing inside the tepee, the flap closed behind him.

There were six people in the tepee, the old squaw, an old man, two young hunters, a young girl, and Tillie. They were gathered around the fire-stone in the centre, making a scant meal of frozen fish. Tillie, by virtue of her position, had the warmest place and the most fish.

No one spoke a word as they became aware of his presence. Only on Tillie's face there came a look in which the traces of hunger vanished. Reivers stood looking down at the group for a moment in silence. Then he strode forward, thrust Tillie to one side and sat down in her place. For Reivers knew Indians.

"Feed me," he commanded, tossing his grub-bag to her.

He did not look at her as she placed before him the entire contents of the bag. Having served him she retired and sat down behind him, awaiting his pleasure. Reivers ate leisurely of the bountiful supply of cold meat that remained of his supply. When he had his fill he tossed small portions to the old squaw, the old man and the young girl.

"Hunters are mighty," he mocked in the Chippewa tongue, as the young men avidly eyed the meat. "They kill what they eat. The meat they do not kill would stick in their mighty throats."

Last of all he beckoned Tillie to come to his side and eat what remained.

"Men eat meat," he continued, looking over the heads of the two hunters. "Old people and children are content with frozen fish. When I was here before there were men in this camp. There was meat in the tepees. The dogs had meat. Now I see the men are all gone."

One of the hunters raised his arms above his head, a gesture indicating strength, and let them fall resignedly to his side, a sign of despair.

"The caribou are gone, Snow-Burner," he said dully. "That is why there is no meat. All gone. The god of good kills has turned his face from us. Little Bear--" to the old man--"how long have our people hunted the caribou here?"

Little Bear lifted his head, his wizened, smoked face more a black, carved mask than a human countenance.

"Big Bear, my father, was an old man when I was born," he said slowly. "When he was a boy so small that he slept with the women, our people came here for the Winter hunt."

"Oh, Little Bear," chanted the hunter, "great was your father, the hunter; great were you as a hunter in your young days. Was there ever a Winter before when the caribou were not found here in plenty?"

The old man shook his head.

"Oh, Snow-Burner," said the hunter, "these are the words of Little Bear, whose age no one knows. Always the caribou have been plenty here along this river in the Winter. Longer than any old man's tales reach back have they fed upon the willows. They are not here this Winter. The gods are angry with us. We hunt. We hunt till we lie flat on the snow. We find no signs. There are men still here, Snow-Burner, but the caribou have gone."

"Have gone, have gone, have gone. Ah wo!" chanted the old squaw.

"Where do you hunt?" asked Reivers tersely.

"Where we have always hunted; where our fathers hunted before us," was the reply. "Along the river in the muskeg and bush to the south we hunt. The caribou are not there. They are nowhere. The gods have taken them away. We must die and go where they are."

"We must go," wailed the old squaw. "The gods refuse us meat. We must go."

Her chant of despair was heard beyond the tepee. In the smaller tents other voices took up the wail. The women were singing the death song, their primitive protest and acquiescence to what they considered the irrevocable pleasure of their dark gods.

Reivers waited until the last squaw had whined herself into silence. Even then he did not speak at once. He knew that these simple people, who for his deeds had given him the expressive name of Snow-Burner, were waiting for him to speak, and he knew the value of silence upon their primitive souls. He sat with folded arms, looking above the heads of the two hunters.

"You have done well," he said, nodding impressively, but not looking at the two young men. "You have hunted as men who have the true hunter's heart. But what can man do when the gods are against him? The gods are against you. They are not against me. To-morrow I slay you your fill of caribou."

"Snow-Burner," whispered one of the hunters in the awe-stricken silence that followed this announcement, "there are no caribou here. Are you greater than the gods?"

Reivers looked at him, and at the light in his eyes the young man drew back in fright.

"To-morrow I give you your fill of meat," he said slowly. "Not only enough for one day, but enough for all Winter. Each tepee shall be piled high with meat. Even the dogs shall eat till they want no more. I have promised. I alone. Do you--" he pointed at the hunters--"bring me to-night the two best rifles in the camp. If they do not shoot true to-morrow, do not let me find you here when I return from the hunt. And now the rest of you--all of you--go from here. Go, I will be alone."

They rose and went out obediently, except Tillie who watched Reivers's face with avid eyes as the young girl left the tepee. Then she crawled forward and touched her forehead to his hand, for Reivers had not bestowed upon the girl a glance.

Presently the hunters came back and placed their Winchesters at his feet. He examined each weapon carefully, found them in perfect order and fully loaded, and dismissed the men with a wave of his arm. Tillie sat with bowed head, humbly waiting his pleasure, but Reivers rolled himself in his blanket and lay down alone by the fire.

"I wish to sleep warm," he said. "See that the fire does not go out till the night is half gone. Be ready to go with me in the hour before daylight. Have the swiftest and strongest team of dogs and the largest sledge hitched and waiting to bear us to the hunt. Go! Now I sleep."

## CHAPTER XXVIII--THE SNOW-BURNER HUNTS

The snarling of dogs being put into harness awoke him in the morning, but he lay pretending to sleep until Tillie, having overseen the hitching-up, came in, prepared food over the fire, which had not gone out all night, and came timidly and laid a hand on his shoulder.

It was pitch dark when they went from the tepee. The dogs whined at the prospect of a dark trail, and the hunter who held them plied his whip savagely. With the rifles carefully stowed in their buckskin cases on the sledge, and a big camp-axe, as their whole burden, Reivers immediately took command of the dogs and headed down the river.

"Oh, Snow-Burner!" chattered the frozen hunter in disappointment. "There are no caribou to the south. It is a waste of strength to hunt there."

"There are no caribou anywhere for you," retorted Reivers. "For me it does not make any difference where I hunt; the spirits are with me. Stay close to the tepees to-day. If any one follows my trail the spirits will refuse their help. Hi-yah! Mush!"

Under the sting of his skilfully wielded whip the big team whirled down the river, Reivers riding in front, Tillie behind. But they did not go south for long. A few miles below the camp Reivers abruptly swung the dogs off the river-bed and bore westward.

Half a mile of this and he shifted and changed his course to right angles, straight toward the north.

"And now, mush! ---- you! Mush for all that's in you!" he cried, plying the whip. "You've got many miles to cover before daylight. Mush, mush!"

He held straight northward until he left the bush and reached the open tundra at the spot where the caribou the day before had swung away farther north. He knew that the herd, being in a country undisturbed by man, would not travel far from the willows where he had jumped them the day before, and he held cautiously on their trail until the first grey of daylight showed a rise in the land ahead. Here he halted the dogs and crept forward on foot.

It was as he expected. The caribou had halted on the other side of the height of land, feeling secure in that region where no man ever came. Below him he could see them moving, and he realised that he must act at once, before they began their travels of the day.

"Tillie," he whispered, coming back to the sledge, "as soon as you can see the snow on the knoll ahead do you drive the dogs around there, to the right, and swing to the left along the other side of the knoll. Drive fast and shout loud. Shout as if the wolves had you. There are caribou over the knoll. When the dogs see them let them go straight for the herd. But wait till the snow shows white in the daylight."

Snatching both rifles from their covers, he ran around the left shoulder of the knoll and ambushed in a trifling hollow. He waited patiently, one rifle cocked and in his hand, the other lying ready at his side. The light grew broader; the herd, just out of safe rifle shot, began milling restlessly.

Suddenly, from around the right of the knoll, came the sharp yelp of a dog as Tillie's leader, rounding the ridge, caught scent and sight of living meat ahead. The caribou stopped dead. Then bedlam broke loose as the dogs saw what was before them. And the caribou, trembling at the wolf-yells of the dogs, broke into their swift, lumbering run and came streaking straight past Reivers at fifty yards' distance.

Reivers waited until the maddened beasts were running four deep before him. Then the slaughter began. No need to watch the sights here. The crash of shot upon shot followed as quickly as he could pump the lever. There were ten shots in each rifle, and he fired them all before the herd was out of range. Then only the hideous yelps of the maddened dogs tore the morning quiet. A dozen caribou, some dead, some kicking, some trying to crawl away, were scattered over the snow, and Reivers nodded and knew that his hold on Tillie's people was complete.

The dogs were on the first caribou now, snarling, yelping, fighting, eating, for the time being as wild and savage as any of their wolf forebears. Tillie, spilled from the sledge in the first mad rush of the team, came waddling up to Reivers and bowed down before him humbly.

"Snow-Burner, I know you are only a man, because I alone of my people have seen you among other white men," she said. "Yet you are more than other men. Snow-Burner, I have lived among white people and know that the talk of spirits is only for children. But how knew you that the caribou were here?"

"The meat is there," said Reivers, pointing at his kill. "Your work is to take care of it. The axe is on the sledge. Cut off as many saddles and hind-quarters as the dogs can drag back to camp. The rest we will cache here. To your work. Do not ask questions."

He reloaded and put the wounded animals out of their misery, each with a shot through the head, and sat down and watched her as she slaved at her butcher's task. Tillie had lived among white people, had been to the white man's school even, but Reivers knew he would slacken his hold on her if he demeaned himself by assisting her in her toil.

When the dogs had stayed their hunger he leaped into their midst with clubbed rifle and knocked them yelping away from their prey. When they turned and attacked him he coolly struck and kicked till they had enough. Then with the driving whip he beat them till they lay flat in the snow and whined for mercy.

By the time Tillie had the sledge loaded and the rest of the kill cached under a huge heap of snow, it was noon, and the dogs started back with their heavy load, open-mouthed and panting, their excitement divided between fear of the man who had mastered them and the odour of fresh blood that reeked in their avid nostrils.

## CHAPTER XXIX--THE WHITE MAN'S WILL

That night in the camp at the river bend the Indians feasted ravenously, and Reivers, sitting in Tillie's place as new-made chief, looked on without smiling.

"Oh, Snow-Burner!" said the oldest man at last. "What is it you want with us? Our furs? Speak. We obey your will."

"Furs are good," replied Reivers, "when a man has nothing else, but gold is better, and the gold that another man has is best of all."

The old man cackled respectfully.

"Oh, Snow-Burner! Do you come to us for gold? Do you think we would sit here without meat if we had gold? No, Snow-Burner. What we have you can have. Your will with the tribe from the oldest to the youngest is our law. We owe you our lives. The strength of our young men is yours; the wisdom of our old heads is yours. But gold we have not. Do not turn your frown upon us, Snow-Burner; you must know it is the truth."

"Since when," said Reivers sternly, "has my friend, old Little Bear, dared say that the Snow-Burner has the foolishness of a woman in his head? Do you think I come seeking gold from you? No. It is the strength of your young men and the wisdom of your old heads that I want. I seek gold. You shall help me find it."

Little Bear raised his arms and let them fall in the eloquent Indian gesture of helplessness.

"White men have been here often to seek for gold. The great Snow-Burner once was one of them. They have digged holes in the ground. They have taken the sand from creek bottoms. Did the Snow-Burner, who finds caribou where there are none, find any gold here? No. It is an old story. There is no gold here."

Reivers leaned forward and spoke harshly.

"Listen, Little Bear; listen all you people. There is gold within three days' march from here. Much gold. Another man digs it. You will find it for me. I have spoken."

Silence fell on the tepee. The Indians looked at one another. Little Bear finally spoke with bowed head.

"We do the Snow-Burner's will."

Nawa, the youngest and strongest of the hunters, turned to Reivers respectfully.

"Oh, Snow-Burner, Nawa serves you with the strength of his leg and the keenness of his eyes. Nawa knows that the Snow-Burner sees things that are hidden to us. Our oldest men say there is no gold here. Other white men say there is no gold here. The Snow-Burner says there is gold near here.

"The Snow-Burner sees what is hidden to others. Nawa does not doubt. Nawa waits only the Snow-Burner's commands. But Nawa has been to the settlements at Fifty Mile and Dumont's Camp. He has heard the white men talk. They talk there of a man who carries gold like gunpowder and gold like bullets, instead of the white man's money.

"Nawa has talked with Indians who have seen this man. They call him 'Iron Hair,' because his hair is black and stiff like the quills of a porcupine. Oh, Snow-Burner, Nawa knows nothing. He merely tells what he has heard. Is this the man the Snow-Burner, too, has heard of!"

Reivers looked around the circle of smoke-blackened faces about the fire. No expression betrayed what was going on behind those wood-like masks, but Reivers knew Indians and sensed that they were all waiting excitedly for his answer.

"That is the man," he said, and by the complete silence that followed he knew that his reply had caused a sensation that would have made white men swear. "What know you of Iron Hair, Nawa?"

"Oh, Snow-Burner," said Nawa dolefully, "our tribe knows of Iron Hair to its sorrow. Two moons ago the big man with the hair like a porcupine was at Fifty Mile for whisky and food. He hired Small Eyes and Broken Wing of our tribe to haul the food to his camp, a day's travelling each way, so he said. The pay was to be big. Small Eyes and Broken Wing went. So much people know. Nothing more. The sledges did not come back. Small Eyes and Broken Wing did not come back. So much do we know of Iron Hair. Nawa has spoken."

"Once there were men in these tepees," said Reivers, looking high above Nawa's head. "Once there were men who would have gone from their tepees to follow to the end the trail of their brothers who go and do not come back. Now there are no men. They sit in the tepees with the women and keep warm. Perhaps Small Eyes and Broken Wing were men and did not care to come back to people who sit by their fires and do not seek to find their brothers who disappear."

"We have sought, oh, Snow-Burner," said Nawa hopelessly. "Do not think we have only sat by our fires. We sought to follow the trail of Iron Hair out of Fifty Mile----"

"How ran the trail?" interrupted Reivers.

"Between the north and the west. We went to hunt our brothers. But a storm had blotted out the trail. Iron Hair had gone out in the storm. Who can follow when there is no trail to see?"

"Once," resumed Reivers in the tone of contempt, "there were strong dog-drivers and sharp eyes here. They would have found the camp of Iron Hair in those days."

"Our dogs still are strong, our young men drive well, our eyes are sharp even now, Snow-Burner," came Nawa's weary reply. "We searched. Even as we searched for the caribou we searched for the camp of Iron Hair. We found no camp. There is no white man's camp in this country. There is no camp at all. We searched till nothing the size of a man's cap could be hidden. The white men from Dumont's Camp and Fifty Mile have searched for the gold which white men are mad for. They found nothing. At the settlements the white men say, 'This man must be the devil himself and go to hell for his gold, because his camp certainly is not in this world where men can see it with their eyes.'"

"And the caribou were not in this world, either?" mocked Reivers.

Nawa shook his head.

"White men, too, have looked for the camp of Iron Hair."

"Many white men," supplemented old Little Bear. "White men always look when they hear of gold. They find gold if it is to be found. The earth gives up its secrets to them. Snow-Burner, they could not find the place where Iron Hair digs his gold."

"Nawa and his hunters could not find the caribou," said Reivers.

There was no reply. He had driven his will home.

"Oh, Snow-Burner," said Nawa, at last, "as Little Bear has said, we do your will."

"Good;" Reivers rose and towered over them. "My will at present is that you go to your tepees. Sleep soundly. I have work for you in the morning."

He stood and watched while they filed, stooped over, through the low opening in the tepee wall. They went without question, without will of their own. A stronger will than theirs had caught them and held them. From hence on they were wholly subservient to the superior mentality which was to direct their actions. Reivers smiled. Old MacGregor had felt safe in telling about the mine; a strange man had no chance to find it. But MacGregor did not know of Tillie's people.

Reivers suddenly turned toward the fire. Tillie was standing there, arrayed in buckskin so white that she must have kept it protected from the tepee smoke in hope of his coming. At the sight of her there came before Reivers' eyes the picture of Hattie MacGregor's face as she had looked up at him when he was leaving the MacGregor cabin. The look that came over his face then was new even to Tillie.

"You, too, get out!" he roared, and Tillie fled from the tepee in terror.

## CHAPTER XXX--ANY MEANS TO AN END

In the big tepee Reivers rolled on his blankets and cursed himself for his weakness. What had happened to him? Was he getting to be like other men, that he would let the memory of an impudent, red-haired girl interfere with his plans or pleasures? Had he not sworn to forget? And yet here came the memory of her--the wide grey eyes, the suffering mouth, the purity of the look of her--rising before his eyes like a vision to shame him.

To shame him! To shame the Snow-Burner! He understood the significance of the look she had given him, and which had stood between him and Tillie. Womanhood, pure, noble womanhood, was appealing to his better self.

His better self! Reivers laughed a laugh so ghastly that it might have come from a bare skull. His better self! If a man believed in things like that he had to believe in the human race--had to believe in goodness and badness, virtue and sin, right and wrong, and all that silly, effeminate rot. Reivers didn't believe in that stuff. He knew only one life-law, that of strength over weakness, and that was the law he would live and die with, and Miss Hattie MacGregor could not interfere.

With his terrible will-power he erased the memory of her from his mind. He did not erase the resentment at his own weakness. On the contrary, the resentment grew. He would revenge himself for that moment of weakness.

There were two ways of finding Moir and the mysterious mine. One--the way he had first planned to follow--was to scatter his Indians, and as many others as he could bribe with caribou meat, over the country lying to the south of Fifty Mile, where he knew the mine must be. Moir, or his men, must show themselves sooner or later. In time the Indians would find Moir's camp.

But there was also a shorter and surer way--a shameful way. Moir, by the talk he had heard of him, came to Fifty Mile and Dumont's Camp for such whisky and feminine company as might be found. He had even sent one of his henchmen to steal Hattie MacGregor. Such a move proved that Moir was desperate, and by this time, by the non-appearance of the would-be-kidnapper, the chief would know that his man was either killed or captured, and that no hope for a woman lay in that quarter. Moir's next move would be to come to Fifty Mile and Dumont's, or to send a man there, to procure the means of salving his disappointment. And Reivers had two attractive women at his disposal, Tillie, and the young girl who was nearly beautiful. Thus did Reivers overcome his momentary weakness. The black shamefulness of his scheme he laughed at. Then he went to sleep.

He gave his orders to Tillie early next morning.

"Have this tepee and another one loaded on one sledge," he directed. "Have a second sledge loaded with caribou meat. Do you and the young girl prepare to come with me. We are going on a long journey. You will both take your brightest clothes."

He waited with set jaws while his orders were obeyed. No weakness any more. There was only one law, the strong over the weak, and he was the strong one.

A call from Tillie apprised him that all was ready, and he strode forth to find Nawa, the young hunter, waiting with the two women ready for the trail.

"How so?" he demanded. "Did I say aught about Nawa?"

"Oh, Snow-Burner," whispered Tillie, "Neopa is to be Nawa's squaw with the coming of Spring. They wish to go together."

"And I do not wish them to go together," said Reivers harshly. "Give me that rifle." He took the weapon from Nawa's hands. "Do you stay here and eat caribou meat and grow fat against the coming of Spring, Nawa."

"Snow-Burner," said Nawa, a flash of will lighting his eyes for the moment, "does Neopa come back to me?"

"Perhaps," said Reivers, cocking the rifle. "But if you try to follow you will never come back. Is it understood?"

Nawa bowed his head and turned away. Neopa made as if to run to him, but Reivers caught her brutally and threw her upon the lead sledge. He had resolved to travel the way of shame, no matter what the cost to others.

"Mush! Get on!" he roared at the dogs, and with the rifle ready and with a backward glance at Nawa, he drove away for Fifty Mile and Dumont's Camp.

## CHAPTER XXXI--THE SQUAW-MAN

A day after Reivers drove out of the Indian camp, Dumont's Camp had something to talk about. A half-witted, crippled-up squaw-man went through with a couple of squaws, and the youngest of the squaws was a beaut'! The old bum hadn't stopped long, just long enough to trade a chunk of caribou meat for a bottle of hooch, but long enough, nevertheless, to let the gang get a peek at the squaws.

Dumont's Camp opined that it was a good thing for the old cripple that he hadn't stayed longer, else he might have found himself minus his squaws, especially the young one. But Dumont's Camp would have been mightily puzzled had it seen how the limp and stoop went out of the squaw-man's body the moment he had left their camp behind, how the foolish leer and stuttering speech disappeared from his mouth, and how, straight-backed and stern-visaged, he threw the bottle of hooch away in contempt and hurried on toward Fifty Mile.

Reivers had played many strange parts in his tumultuous life, and his squaw-man was a masterpiece. Fifty Mile had its sensation early next morning. The half-witted, crippled-up squaw-man with the two extremely desirable squaws came through, stopped for another bottle of hooch, and drove on and made camp just outside the settlement.

"He certainly was one soft-headed old bum," said Jack Raftery, leaning on the packing-case that served as bar in his logcabin saloon. "Yes, men, he certainly is bumped in the bean and locoed in his arms. Gimme that chunk o' meat there for a bottle o' hooch. 'Bout fifty pounds, it'll weigh. I'd give 'im a gallon, but he grins foolish and says: 'Bottle. One bottle.' 'Drag your meat in,' says I. Well, gents, will you b'lieve he couldn't make it. No, sir; paralysed in the arms or something.

"That young squaw o' his did the toting. A beaut'? Gents, there never was anything put up in a brown hide to touch it. An' that locoed ol' bum running 'round loose with it. Tempting providence, that's what he is, when he comes parading 'round real men-folks with skirts like them. Shouldn't wonder if something'd happen to him one o' these cold days. Looks like he might 'a' been an awful good man in his day, too. Well built. Reckon he's been used mighty rough to be locoed and crippled up the way he is."

"I reck-ong," drawled Black Pete, who ran the games at Raftery's when there was any money in sight. "I reck-ong too mebbe he get handle more rough some tam ef he's hang 'round long wid dem two squaw. Tha' small squaw's too chic, she, to b'long to ol' bum lak heem."

The assembled gents laughed. Had they seen the "ol' bum" at that moment their laughter would have been cut short. Reivers, in a gully out of sight of the settlement, had thrown away his hooch, pitched camp, tethered the dogs and made all secure with a swiftness and efficiency that belied the characterisation Black Pete had applied to him. He had the two tepees set up far apart, the dogs tied between them, and Tillie and Neopa had one tepee, and Reivers the other, alone.

Having made camp, Reivers knew what the boys would expect of him in his character of sodden squaw-man. Having resolved to use the most shameful means in the world to achieve his end, he played his base part to perfection.

"Do you take this chunk of meat," he directed Tillie, "and go down to the saloon and get another bottle of hooch. Yes, yes; I know I have destroyed one bottle. You are not to ask questions but to obey my commands. Go down and trade the meat for hooch. Do not stop to speak to the white men. Come, back at once. Go!"

But down in Raftery's the assemblage had no hint of these swift changes, and they laughed merrily at Black Pete's remarks.

"What d'you reckon his lay is, Jack?" asked one.

"Booze," replied Raftery instantly. "Nothing else. When you see a man who's sure been as good a man in his day as this relic, trailing 'round with squaw folks, you can jest nacherlly whittle a little marker for him and paint on it, ''Nother white man as the hooch hez got.' Sabbe? I trace him out as some prospector who's got crippled up and been laying out 'mongst the Indians with a good supply of the ol' frost-bite cure 'longside of 'im. Nothin' to do but tuh hit the jug offen enough to keep from gettin' sober and remembering what he used to was. Sabbe? Been layin' out sucking the neck of a jug till his ol' thinker's got twisted.

"I've seen dozens of 'em. You can't fool me when I see one, and I saw him when he was comin' through the door. Ran out o' hooch and was afraid he'd get sober, so he comes down here to get soaked up some more. Brings his load o' meat 'long to trade in, an' these two brown dolls to make sure in case the caribou have been down this way, which they ain't. Bet the drinks against two bits that he'll be chasin' one o' the squaws down here for another bottle before an hour's gone. They all do. I've seen his kind before."

Black Pete took the bet.

"Because I'm onlucky, moi, lately, an' I want to lose this bet," he explained.

Raftery laughed homerically.

"What's on you' chest, Jack?" demanded one of his friends.

"I was just thinking," gurgled the saloonist, "what 'ud happen in case this stiff gent, Iron Hair, was to run in 'bout this time."

"By Gar!" laughed Pete. "An' Iron Hair, he's just 'bout due."

At that moment Tillie came waddling in, laid down her bundle of meat before Raftery and said--

"One bottle."

"What'd I tell you?" chuckled Raftery, handing over the liquor. "Boss him get laid out, eh?" he said to Tillie.

But Tillie did not pause for conversation. She whipped the bottle under her blanket and waddled out without a word.

"Well, I'm a son-of-a-gun!" proclaimed Raftery. "That ol' bum has got 'em well trained, anyhow."

Black Pete pulled his beard reflectively.

"Come to theenk," he mused aloud, "dere was wan rifle on those sledge. I theenk mebbe I no go viseet thees ol' bum, he's camp, teel she's leetle better acquaint' weeth moi."

## CHAPTER XXXII--THE SCORN OF A PURE WOMAN

And Fifty Mile talked. It talked to all who came in from the white wastes of the country around. It talked in its tents. It talked while trifling with Black Pete's games of no-chance. It talked around Raftery's bar. It talked so loudly that men heard it up at Dumont's Camp.

From Fifty Mile and Dumont's the talk spread up and down the trails, and even out to solitary cabins and dugouts where there were no trails. Wherever men were to be found in that desolate region the talk of Fifty Mile soon made its way. And the talk was mainly of the young squaw, of the old crippled-up squaw-man, and that she was of a beauty to set men's heads a-whirling and make them murder each other for her possession.

Men meeting each other on the trails asked three questions in order:

"Where you traveling? How's your tobacco? Heard about the beaut' of a little squaw down to Fifty Mile?"

Men travelling in the direction of the settlements bent their steps toward Fifty Mile, even though it lay far out of their course. Men travelling in the opposite direction passed the news to all whom they bespoke. Of those who came to the settlement, many strolled casually up the gully where the squaw-man had his camp. And all of them strolled down again with nothing to brag about but a drink of hooch and a mouthful of talk with the squaw-man.

"I don't quite follow that gent's curves," summed up Jack Raftery, speaking for the gang. "He gets enough hooch here to keep any human gent laid out twenty-six hours out of the twenty-four, but somehow whenever you come moseying up to his camp he's on his pins, ready to give you a drink and a lot of locoed talk. Yessir, he sure is locoed until he needs a guardian, but for one I don't go to do no rushing of his lady-folks, not while he's able to stand on his pins and keep his eyes moving. Gents, there's been one awful stiff man in his day, and his condition goes to show what booze'll do to the best of 'em, and ought to be a warning to us all. Line up, men; 'bout third drink time for me."

"There is sometheeng about heem," agreed Black Pete, "I don't know what 'tees, but there is sometheeng that whispairs to me, 'Look out!'"

While Fifty Mile thus debated his character, Reivers lay in his tepee, carefully playing the shameful part he had assumed. He knew that by now the news of his arrival, or rather the arrival of Neopa and Tillie, had been bruited far and wide around the settlements. Soon the news must come to the ears of the man for whose benefit the scheme had been arranged.

Shanty Moir, being what he was, would become interested when he heard the descriptions of Neopa, and, also because he was what he was, he would waste no time, falter at no risks, stop at nothing when his interest had been aroused. Reivers had only to wait. Moir would come. The only danger was that Hattie and her uncle might come before him.

On the third day after the squaw-man's arrival, Fifty Mile had a second sensation. That morning, as Reivers, staggering artistically, came out of Raftery's house of poison, he all but stumbled over a sledge before the door. With his assumed grin of idiocy growing wider, he examined the sledge carefully, next the team which was hitched to it, then lifted his eyes to the man and woman that stood beside the outfit. At the first glance he had recognised the sledge, and he needed the time thus gained to recover from the shock.

"Hello, Mac, ol' timer!" he bellowed drunkenly at Duncan MacGregor. "Come have a drink with me."

MacGregor looked at him dourly, disgust and anger on his big red face. Hattie, at his side, looked away, her lips pressed tightly together to control the anger rising within her. She had gone deadly pale at the first sight of Reivers; now the red of shame was burning in her cheeks.

"I shook hands with you, stranger, when you left our roof," said MacGregor gruffly. "I do not do so now. I thought you were a man."

"I never did!" snapped Hattie, still looking away. "I knew it was not a man." Something like a sob seemed to wrench itself from her chest in spite of her firm lips. "I knew it was--just what it is."

Suddenly she flared around on Reivers, her face wan with mingled pain, shame and anger.

"Now you are doing just what you are fit for. I've heard. Living on your squaws! And you dared to talk big to me--to a decent woman. Blood of my father! You dared to talk to me at all! Drive on, Uncle. We'll go on to Dumont's. We'll get away from this thing; it pollutes the air. Hi-yah, Bones! Mush, mush, mush!"

Reivers leered and grinned foolishly--for the benefit of the onlookers--as the sledge went on out of sight.

"See?" he said boastfully. "I used to know white folks once. Yes sir; used to know lot of 'em. Don't now. Only know Indians. S'long, boys; got to go home."

All that day he sat alone in his tepee. Tillie came to him at noon with food and he cursed her and drove her away. In the evening she came to him again, and again Reivers ordered her not to lift the flap on his tepee.

Tillie by this time was fully convinced that the Snow-Burner had gone mad. Else why had he repulsed all her advances? Why had he refused to look at the young and attractive Neopa? And now he even spurned food. Yes, the Snow-Burner had gone mad, as white men sometimes go mad in the North; but she was still his slave. That was her fate.

Reivers sat alone in his tepee, once more fighting to put away the face of Hattie MacGregor as it rode before his eyes, a burning, searing memory. He was not faltering. The shame for him, because he was a white man, because she had once had him under her roof, that Hattie MacGregor had suffered as she saw him now, did not swerve him in the least from the way he was going.

He had decided to do it this way. That was settled. The shame and degradation of his assumed position he had reckoned and counted as naught in the game he was playing. Any means to an end. These same men who were despising him for a sodden squaw-man would bow their heads to him when the game was won. And he would win it, the memory of the face of Hattie MacGregor would not halt him in the least. Rather it would spur him on. For when the game was won, he would laugh at her--and forget.

For the present it was a little hard to forget. That was why he sat alone in the tepee and swore at Tillie when she timidly offered to bring him food.

So the red-headed girl thought that of him, did she--that he was living on his squaws? Well, let her think it. What difference did it make? She thought he was that base, did she? All right. She would pay for it all when the time came.

Reivers roused himself and strode outdoors. His thoughts persisted in including Hattie MacGregor in their ramblings as he sat in the tepee, and he felt oppressed. What he needed was to mingle with other men. He'd forget, then. He condemned the company that was to be found at Raftery's, but his need for distraction drove him and, assuming the stoop, limp and leer of the sodden squaw-man, he slumped off down the gully to the settlement.

It was a clear, starlit night, and as he slumped along he mused on what a fine night it would be for picking out a trail by the stars. As he approached Raftery's he saw and heard evidences of unusual activity in the bar. A team of eight dogs, hitched to an empty sledge, was tied before the door. Within there was sound of riot and wassail. Over the sound of laughter and shuffling feet rose a voice which drowned the other noises as the roar of a lion drowns the chirping of birds, a voice that rattled the windows in a terrifying rendition of "Jack Hall."

Oh, I killed a man 'tis said, so 'tis said; I killed a man 'tis said, so 'tis said. I kicked 'is bloody head, an' I left 'im lyin' dead; Yes, I left 'im lyin' dead ---- 'is eyes!

Reivers opened the door and strode in silently and unobserved. He made a base, contemptible figure as, stooped and shuffling, a foolish leer on his face, he stood listening apologetically to the song. The broad back of the singer was turned toward him. As the song ended Raftery's roaming eye caught sight of Reivers.

"Ah, there he is; here he is, Iron Hair. There's the man with the squaws I was telling you about."

The man swung around, and Reivers was face to face with the man he sought, Shanty Moir.

## CHAPTER XXXIII--SHANTY MOIR

Reivers' tumultuous scheme of life often had led him into situations where his life had hung on his ability to play artistically the part he had assumed. But never had his self-control been put to such a test as now, when he faced Shanty Moir.

Had he not prepared himself for a shock, his surprise must surely have betrayed him, for even the Snow-Burner could not look upon Shanty Moir without amazement. To Reivers, the first impression that came was that he was looking at something as raw and primitive as the sources of life itself.

Shanty Moir had little or nothing in common with the other men in the room. He was even shaped differently. He belonged, so it seemed to Reivers, to the age of the saber-tooth tiger, the long-haired mammoth, and a diet of roots and raw flesh.

There was about him the suggestion of man just risen to the dignity of an upright position. His body was enormous--longer, wider, denser than a man's body should be; the legs beneath it short and bowed. There was no neck that could be seen. His arms seemed to begin close up to the ears, and ran downward in curves, like giant calipers, the hands even with the knees.

The head fitted the body, squat and enormous, the forehead running abruptly back from the brows, and the face so flat and bony that the features seemed merely to dent it. The brow-bones came down and half hid the small eyes; the nose was small, but a pair of great nostrils ran back in the skull; the mouth was huge, yet it seemed small, and there was more of the head below it than above.

Iron Hair was well nicknamed. His hair was probably three inches long, and it stood out straight from his head--black, wiry, menacing. Reivers, with his foolish grin growing larger on his face, appraised Moir with considerable admiration. Here was the real thing, the pure, unadulterated man-animal, unweakened, untouched by effeminising civilisation. This man knew no more law or conscience than the ancient cave-tiger, whose only dictates sprang from appetite.

Reivers had rejected morals because it pleased him to run contrary to all the rest of the world; this man never knew that right or wrong existed. What his appetites told him to take he took as a matter of course. And it was written in his face that his appetites were as abnormally powerful as was he.

Reivers had been a leader of men because his mind was stronger than the minds of the men with whom he had dealt. This man was a leader because of the blind, unintelligent force that was in him. And inwardly the fighting man in Reivers glowed at the prospects of the Titanic clash that would come between them.

Shanty Moir as he looked from under his bony brows saw exactly what Reivers wished him to see: a drunken broken squaw-man, so weak that he could not possibly be the slightest source of trouble. Being primitive of mind he listed Reivers at once as helpless. Having done this, nothing could alter his opinion; and Reivers had gained the vantage that he sought.

Moir threw back his head and laughed, softly and behind set teeth, when his quick inspection of Reivers was ended.

"So that's tuh waster who's got tuh squaws 'at hass tuh camp upset," he said languidly. "Eh, sonnies! Art no men among ye that ye have not gone woman-stealing by this? Tuh waster does not look hard to take a young woman from."

Reivers broke into an apologetic snigger.

"Don't you try to steal my two kids, mister," he whined. "You'd be mighty sorry for your bargain if you did."

"How so, old son?" demanded Moir with a tolerant laugh.

"Them kids--if you was to steal them without my permission--one or both of 'em--they'd make you wish you'd never seen 'em--'less I was along," chuckled Reivers.

"Speak it up, old son," said Moir sharply. "What's behind thy fool's words?"

"Them kids--they'd die if they was took away from me," replied Reivers seriously. "And they'd take the man who stole 'em to the happy hunting ground along with 'em." He winked prodigiously. "Lots of funny things in this ol' world, mister. You wouldn't think to look at me that those two kids wouldn't want to live if I wasn't with 'em, but that's the fact. I wasn't always what I'm now, mister. Once--well, I was different once--and them kids will just nacherlly manage to poison the first man who touches 'em--unless I give the word."

The men of Fifty Mile looked at one another, and Black Pete shuddered.

"The ol' moocher sure has got 'em trained, Iron Hair," said Raftery. "He's locoed, but those squaws look up to him like a little tin god, and that's no lie."

"Poison?" repeated Moir doubtingly. "Art a medicine man, old son?"

Reivers shook his head loosely.

"Not me, mister, not me," he chuckled. "It's something Indian that I don't sabbe. But there's a couple graves 'way up where we came from, and they hold what's left of a couple of bad men who raided my camp and stole my kids. I don't know how it happened, mister. The kids come back to me the same night, and the two bad men were stiff and black--as black as your hair, mister, after the first kiss."

"The kiss of Death," chimed in Black Pete, crossing himself. "I have heard of eet. Sacré! I am the lucky dog, moi."

Shanty Moir nodded. He, too, had heard of the method by which Indian women of the North on rare occasions revenge themselves upon the brutal white men who steal them from their people. Having often indulged in that thrilling sport himself, Moir was well versed in the obstacles and dangers to be met in its pursuit. Being crafty, with the craft of the lynx that eschews the poisoned deer carcass, he had thus far managed to select his victims from the breed of squaws that do not seriously object to playing a Sabine part; and he had no intention of decreasing his caution now, although what men had spoken of Neopa had fired his blood.

"Ho, ho! I see how 'tis, old son," he said with a grin of appreciation. "Dost manage well for a waster."

He suddenly drew his hand from his mackinaw pocket and held it out, opened, toward Reivers. Two jagged nuggets of dull gold the size of big buckshot jiggled on his palm, and Moir laughed uproariously as Reivers, at the sight of them, bent forward, rubbing his hands together, apparently frantic with avarice.

"Eh--hey!" drawled Moir, closing his fist as Reivers' fingers reached for the gold. "I thought so. 'Tis tub gold thy wants, eh, old sonny? Well, do thee bring me tuh cattle to look at and we'll try to bargain."

"Come up to my camp," chattered Reivers, eying the fist that contained the nuggets. He was anxious to get out of the bar. He had no fear that the primitive Moir would be able to see any flaw in his acting, but Black Pete and Jack Raftery were less primitive, and he knew that they had not quite accepted him for the weakling that he pretended to be. "Come and visit me. Buy a bottle of hooch and we go up to my camp."

Moir tossed one of the nuggets across the bar to Raftery.

"Is't good for a round, lad?" he laughed.

Raftery cunningly hefted the nugget and set out the bottles.

"Good for two," he replied.

Moir tossed over the second nugget.

"Then that's good for four," said he. "Do ye boys drink it up while I'm away to tuh camp of old sonny here. A bottle, Raftery. Now, sonny, do thee lead on, and if I'm not satisfied I'll wring thy neck to let thee know my displeasure."

## CHAPTER XXXIV--THE BARGAIN

Reivers led the way to his tepee and bade Moir wait a moment by the fire, while he spoke to Tillie. "Dress yourself and Neopa in your newest," he commanded. "Then do you both come in to me, bringing food for two men."

"What's wrong, sonny?" laughed Moir, seeing Reivers come under the door flap alone. "Hast lost the whip over thy cattle?"

"They're getting some grub ready," replied Reivers fawningly. "They'll be here in a minute. Let's have a drink out of that bottle, mister. That's the stuff."

He tipped the bottle to his lips and lowered the burning liquor in a fashion that made even Moir open his eyes in admiration.

"Takest a man-sized nip for a broken waster, sonny," he chuckled, and measuring with his fingers on the bottle a drink larger than Reivers' he tossed it gurgling down his hairy throat. Reivers took the bottle from his hand.

"I always take an eye-opener before my real drink," said Reivers, and, measuring off twice the amount that Moir had taken, he drank it off like so much water.

The fiercest liquor made was to Reivers only a mild stimulant. On his abnormal organisation it merely had the effect of intensifying his characteristics. When he wished to drink whisky he drank--out of full-sized water tumblers. When he did not wish to drink he put liquor from him with contempt. Now he handed the bottle back to Moir. The latter looked at him and at the bottle, a trifle puzzled but not dismayed. Reivers had apparently unconsciously passed the challenge to him, and it was not in his nature to play second to any man in a drinking bout.

"Shouldst have taken all thee wanted that time, sonny," said Moir, and finished the bottle.

"No more?" muttered Reivers vacantly.

"Gallons!" replied Moir. "Whisky enough to drown you dead--if your women satisfy."

"Look at them," said Reivers as the door-flap was flung back. "Here they are."

Tillie came in first. She was dressed in white buckskin, her hair hanging in two thick braids down her shoulders. Neopa followed, and the wistfulness that had come into her face from thinking of Nawa made her the more interesting in Shanty Moir's eyes.

A glance from Neopa's fawn-like eyes at the big man whom Reivers had brought home with him, and then her eyes sought the ground and she trembled. Tillie looked at Moir with interest. Save for the Snow-Burner, she had never seen so masterful a man. She looked at Reivers and saw that he was not watching her. So she smiled upon Moir slyly. She was the Snow-Burner's slave; his will was her law. But since he refused to notice her smiles it would do no harm to smile upon a man like this Iron Hair--just a little, when the Snow-Burner was not looking.

Moir read the smile wrong and spoke sharply to Reivers.

"Take the young one outside for two minutes. I've a word to say to this one."

To his surprise Reivers rose without demur, thrust Neopa out before him, and dropped the flap.

"Listen," whispered Moir swiftly in her own tongue to Tillie, "we will put his man out of the way. It is easily done. Then you will go with me, you and the young one, and you will be first in my tepee and the young one your slave. Speak quickly. We will be on the trail in an hour."

Still smiling invitingly, Tillie shook her head.

"The Snow-Burner is the master," she said seriously. "I will slay the man who does him harm. I can not do what he does not wish. I can not go away from him."

"But when he is dead, fool, he can have no wish."

The smile went from Tillie's full lips and she took a step toward the opening.

"Stop," laughed Moir softly. "I merely wished to know if you are a true woman. All right, old sonny!" he called. "Come on in."

"I takest off cap to you, lad," he continued as Reivers and Neopa re-entered. "Hast got thy squaws fair buffaloed." His eyes ran over the shrinking Neopa in cruel appraisal. "Now, old sonny, out with it. What's thy idea of tuh bargain?"

Reivers looked longingly toward the empty whisky bottle.

"Said enough," laughed Moir. "Shall have all tuh hooch thy guts can hold."

Reivers shook his head, a sly grin appearing on his lips.

"Hooch is good," said he, "but gold is better."

"Go on," said Moir sullenly.

"You've got gold," continued Reivers. "I saw it. You've got lots of gold; I've heard them talk about you down at Raftery's. You want us to go with you when you go back to your camp, don't you?"

Moir nodded angrily.

"I want the women," he said brutally. "I might be able to use you, too."

Reivers cackled and rubbed his hands.

"You've got to use me if you're going to have the women," he chuckled. "You know that by this time, don't you, mister?"

Again Moir's black head nodded in grudging assent.

"What then?" he demanded.

"I'm a handy man around a camp, mister," whined Reivers. "You got to take me along if you take the women, but I can be a help----"

"Canst cook?" snapped Moir suddenly.

"Heh, heh! Can I cook?" Reivers rubbed his hands. "I'm an old--I used to be an old sour-dough, mister. Did you ever see one of the old-timers who couldn't cook?"

"Might use thee then," said Moir. "My fool of a cook has gone. Sent him after a woman for me, and he hasn't come back. Happen he got himself killed, tuh fool. Wilt kill him myself if he ever shows up without tuh woman. Well, then, if that's settled--what's tuh bargain?"

Reivers appeared to struggle with indecision. In reality the situation was very clear to him. Moir had listed him as a weakling; therefore he had no fear of taking him to the mine. Once there, Moir would be confident of winning the loyalty of the two women from their apparently helpless master. And as it was apparent that the man whom Reivers had slain with a rock had been Moir's cook, it was probable that he was sincere in his offer to use Reivers in that capacity.

"In the Spring," said Reivers in reply to Moir's question, "me and my two kids go north again, back among their own people."

"In the Spring," growled Moir, "canst go to ---- for all of me. I'll be travelling then myself. Speak out, sonny. How much?"

"Plenty of hooch for me all Winter," Reivers leered with drunken cunning.

"I said plenty," retorted Moir. "What else?"

"Gold," said Reivers, rubbing his hands. "Gold enough to buy me hooch for all next Summer."

Moir smiled at the miserable request of the man he was dealing with. His eyes ran over the plump Tillie, over Neopa, the supple child-woman.

"Done," he laughed. "And now, old son, break up thy camp while I load my sledge with hooch. Be ready to travel when I come back. I'll bring plenty of liquor, but none to be drinked till we're on the trail. Wilt travel fast and far to-night, I warn thee. But willst have a snug berth in my camp when we get there. Yes," he laughed as he hurried out, "wilt not be able to tear thyself away."

## CHAPTER XXXV--THE TEST OF THE BOTTLE

Under Reivers' sharp orders--given in a way that would have startled Moir had he heard--Tillie and Neopa hurriedly packed the dog-sledges with their belongings, harnessed the dogs and hooked them to the traces.

"Oh, Snow-Burner," said Neopa timidly, "do we go back to Nawa?"

"In good time," said Reivers. "For the present, you have only to obey my wishes. Get on the first sledge."

With bowed head the girl took the place directed, and Reivers turned to find Tillie smiling craftily at his elbow.

"Snow-Burner," she said softly, "this is the man, Iron Hair, who digs the gold which you want. We go to rob him. I understand. You play at drinking to fool Iron Hair. It is well. Tillie will help the Snow-Burner. We will kill Iron Hair and take his gold. Then the Snow-Burner will come with Tillie to her tepee?"

Reivers looked at her, and for the first time he felt a revulsion against the base part he was playing. Would he return with Tillie to her tepee when this affair was over? Would he go on with his old way of living, the base part of him triumphant over the better self? The strange questions rapped like trip-hammers on Reivers' conscience.

"Get on the sledge!" he growled, choked with anger.

She did not stir. He struck her cruelly. Tillie smiled. That was like the Snow-Burner of old; and she waddled to her appointed place without further question.

Up the gulch from Raftery's came Moir quietly leading his dogs, the sledge well loaded with cases of liquor.

"Wilt have a kiss first of all," he laughed excitedly, and catching Neopa in his arms tossed her in the air, kissed her loudly on her averted cheeks and set her back on the sledge. "Now, old son, follow and follow quietly. When Iron Hair travels he wants no Fifty Mile gang on his trail. Say nothing, but keep me in sight. Heyah, mush, mush!"

Out of the gully he led the way swiftly and silently to the open country beyond the settlement. There he circled in a confusing way, bearing northward. After an hour he began circling again, doubling on his trail to make it hard for any one to follow, but finally Reivers knew by the stars that the course lay to the south. Another series of false twists in the trail, then Moir struck out in determined fashion on a straight course, east and a trifle south from Fifty Mile.

Reivers, silently guiding his dogs in the tracks made by Moir, breathed hard as he read the stars. By the pace that Moir was setting it seemed certain that he now was making for his camp in a direct line. But if so, if this trail were held, it would take them back toward the Dead Lands, straight into the country that was Duncan MacGregor's trapping-ground. Could the mine be in that region. If so, how could it have escaped the notice of the old trapper?

It was well past midnight when Reivers saw the team ahead disappear in a depression in the ground and heard Moir's voice loudly calling a halt. By the time Reivers came up with his two sledges Moir had unhitched his dogs on the flat of a frozen river-bed and was hurriedly dragging a bottle from one of the cases on his sledge.

"Hell's fire, old son; unhook and camp. The liquor's dying in me, and I had just begun to feel good."

"I was wondering," gasped Reivers in assumed exhaustion. "I was wondering how much farther you were going before you opened a bottle."

"Have your squaws get out tuh grub," ordered Moir, jamming down the cork. "And now you 'n' me, wilt see who drinks t'other off his feet."

For reply Reivers promptly gulped down a drink that would have strangled most men.

"Good enough," admitted Moir. "Here's better, though." And he instantly improved on Reivers' record.

The first bottle was soon emptied--a quart of raw, fiery hooch--and a second instantly broached.

The food was forgotten by Moir; the women were forgotten. His primitive mind was obsessed with the idea of pouring more burning poison down his throat than this broken-down waster who dared to drink up to him. Bolt upright he sat, laughing and singing, never taking his eyes off Reivers, while drink after drink disappeared down their throats.

No movement of Reivers escaped Moir's vigilant watch for signs of weakness. As Reivers gave no apparent sign of toppling over he grew enraged.

"Hell's fire! Wilt sit here till daylight if thou wilt," he roared. "Drink on there! 'Tis thy turn."

Tillie and Neopa got food ready from the grub-bag and sat waiting patiently; the dogs ceased moving, bedded down in the snow and went to sleep; and still the contest went on.

Finally Reivers discerned the slight thickening of speech and the glassy stare in his opponent's eyes that he had been waiting for. Then, and not until then, did he begin to betray apparent signs of failing.

"Sh-sh-shtrong liquor, m-m-mishter," he stuttered. "Awful sh-sh-shtrong liquor."

Moir cackled in drunken triumph.

"'Tish bear's milk, old shon. 'Tish made for men. Drink, ---- ye, drink again!"

Reivers drank, drank longer and heavier than he had yet done.

"There; take the mate of that, mister, and you'll know you been drinking," he stammered.

Moir's throat by this time had been burned too raw to taste, and his sight was too dulled to measure quantities. He tipped the bottle up and drained it. The dose would have killed a normal man. To Shanty Moir it brought only an inclination to slumber. His head fell forward on his breast.

With a thick-tongued snarl he sat up straight and looked at Reivers. Reivers hiccoughed, swayed in his seat, and collapsed with a drunken clatter.

Moir smiled. He winked in unobserved triumph. Then the superhuman strength with which he had fought off the effects of the liquor snapped like a broken wire, and he pitched forward on his face into the snow.

## CHAPTER XXXVI--THE SNOW-BURNER BEGINS TO WEAKEN

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."

## CHAPTER XXXVII--INTO THE JAWS OF THE BEAR

Shanty Moir stirred when the first rays of the morning sun, glancing off the snow, struck his eyes. He rose like a musk-ox lifting itself from its snow wallow, with mighty heaves and grunts, and looked around.

He was blear-eyed and puffed of face, his throat was raw and burning from the unbelievable amount of hooch he had swallowed in the night, but his abnormal organisation had thrown off the effects of the alcohol and he was cold sober. His first move was to cool his throat with handfuls of snow, his second to step over and regard the apparently paralysed Reivers with a look of mingled triumph and contempt.

"Eh, old sonny! Would a drinked with Shanty Moir, wouldst 'ee?" he chuckled. "Happen thee got thy old soak's skin filled to overflow that time. Get up, you waster!" he commanded, stirring the prostrate form with a heavy foot "Up with you!"

Reivers did not stir, but he put that touch of the foot down as something extra that Moir would have to pay for. He was apparently lying steeped in the depths of drunken slumber, and he wished to drive the impression firmly into Shanty Moir's mind that he had been dead to the world all night. Hence he did not interrupt his snoring as Moir's foot touched him.

"Laid out stiff!" laughed Moir.

He reached down, lifted Reivers' head from the snow and let it fall heavily. Still Reivers made no sign of awakening. Moir looked at him for a moment, then slily tiptoed toward the shelter tepee and threw up the flap. The next instant a bellow of rage shattered the morning quiet. Like a maddened bear Moir was back at Reivers, cuffing, kicking, cursing, commanding that he wake up.

Reivers awoke only in degree. Not until Moir had opened a new bottle of hooch and poured a drink down his throat did he essay to sit up and open his eyes.

"Wha' smatter? Can't a man shleep?" he protested. "Wha' smatter with you?"

"Matter!" bellowed Moir. "Plenty of matter, you old waster. Where's the young lass, eh? Where's the girl gone? Look in the tepee and see what's the matter. You told me you had the trulls buffaloed. What's become of the young girl?"

It was some time before Reivers appeared to understand. Finally he stumbled to his feet and started toward the tent, met Tillie as she stepped out rubbing her eyes, and recoiled drunkenly.

"Neopa? Where is she?" muttered Tillie. "She slept near the door. Now she is gone."

She had let her shiny black hair fall loosely over her shoulders and now she threw it back, looked straight at Moir and smiled.

"Neopa gone?" demanded Reivers thickly. "She can't be; she wouldn't dare."

"Dare, you fool? Look there." Moir pointed to the hollows where the missing dog team had lain and to the tracks that ran straight and true up the river bed. "She's run away. Been gone half a night. Well, what have you got to say?"

Reivers turned with a scowl on Tillie, but Tillie was comfortably plaiting her thick hair.

"Neopa has run away--back to our people," she said with a smile, as she turned back into the tepee. "Tillie does not run away," she added as she disappeared.

Moir sat down on a sledge and cursed Reivers steadily for five minutes, but at every few words his eyes would stray back to the tepee which hid Tillie.

"We'll go after her," said Reivers. "We'll bring her back."

"Go after her!" snorted Moir. "She has half a night's start on us. She'll reach her people before we could get her. Do you think I want half the country following my trail."

"I'll go after her alone then," insisted Reivers.

"Will you?" Moir's eyes narrowed to slits. "I think not. Let me tell thee something, old son: he who goes this far on the home trail with Shanty Moir goes all the way. Understand? You'll come with me or you'll be wolf-meat out here on the snow. No; there'll be no following of that kid. She's gone. The other one's here. There is no telling what tale the kid will spin when she meets people, or who will be down here looking for our trail. Therefore we are going to travel and travel quick. Have the squaw get food in a hurry. Get your dogs together. We'll be on the trail in half an hour."

Moir was masterful and dominant now. It was evident that he was more worried over the possibility of some one hearing of his whereabouts through Neopa than he was over the girl's escape. He gave Reivers a second drink of liquor, since he seemed to need it to fully awaken him, and set about making ready for the trail.

"Eat plenty," he commanded, when Tilly served the cold meat and tea. "The next meal you have will be about sundown."

He tore down the tepee, packed the sledges and had the outfit ready for the start in an amazingly short while.

"Now, old son," he said quietly, pointing to the rifle that lay uncovered on top of his sledge, "do 'ee take good look at her. She's a good old Betsy and I've knocked o'er smaller men than you at the half mile. Do you keep well up with me on the trail I'll be making this day and there'll be no trouble. Try any tricks and the wolves will have whiskey-soaked meat to feed on. There's no turning back now. He who comes this far with Shanty Moir goes all the way."

"You can't lose me, mister," stammered Reivers. "I want that money for hooch for next Summer like you promised."

"Wilt get more than you bargained for, old son," laughed Moir. "Yes, more than you ever dreamed of. Hi-yah! Buck! Bugle! Mush; mush up!"

Moir made no pretence at hiding his trail when he started this time. Apparently he reasoned that the damage was done. If any one wished to trail him after hearing Neopa's story they would have no trouble in finding his tracks, despite any subterfuge he might attempt. He went straight forward, as a man who has nothing to fear if he can but reach his fastness, and Reivers' wonderment grew as the trail held straight toward the rising sun.

The course was parallel to the one he had taken westward from MacGregor's cabin to Tillie's encampment. If it held on as it was going it would lead straight into the heart of the Dead Lands, and within half a day's travel of the MacGregor home. Was it possible that the mine lay in the Dead Lands? Duncan MacGregor made this territory his trapping-ground. How could his brother's find have escaped his trained outdoor eyes?

The next instant Reivers was cursing himself for a blind fool. There was no trapping in the Dead Lands. There was no feed there. Except for a stray wolf-cave, fur-bearing beasts would shun those barren rocks as a desert, and Duncan MacGregor, being a knowing trapper, might trap around it twenty years without venturing through after a first fruitless search for signs.

The mine was in the Dead Lands, of course. It was as safely hidden there as if within the bowels of the earth. And he, Reivers, had probably been within shooting distance of it during his two days' wandering in that district. The man whom he had killed with the rock had undoubtedly been hurrying with Hattie MacGregor straight to his chief's fastness.

It was noon when the ragged ground on the horizonhead told Reivers that his surmises were correct and that they were hurrying straight for the Dead Lands. An hour of travel and the jagged formation of the rock country was plainly distinguishable a little over a mile ahead. Then Moir for the first time that day called a halt. When Reivers caught up with him he saw that Moir held in each hand a small pouch-like contrivance of buckskin, pierced near the middle with tiny holes and equipped with draw-strings at the bottom.

"Come here, lass," he beckoned to Tillie. "Must hide that smiling mouth of thine for the present."

With a laugh he threw the pouch over the squaw's head, pulled the bottom tightly around her neck, and tied the strings securely.

"The same with thee, old son," he said, and treated Reivers in the same summary manner. "You see, I do not wish to have to put you away," he explained genially, "and that I would do if by chance thy eyes should see the way to Shanty Moir's mine. One or two men have been unlucky enough to see it. They will never be able to tell the tale." He skilfully searched the pair for hidden weapons, but Reivers had expected this and carried not so much as a knife. "All right. Keep in my steps, old son. Presently thou'll get wet. Do not fear. Wilt not let 'ee come to harm. Neither thee nor tuh squaw. I have use for you both. Come now; I'll go slow."

The buckskin pouch pierced only by the tiny air-holes, masked Reivers' eyes in a fashion that precluded any possible chance of sight. He knew instinctively that Moir was turning. First the turn was to the left. Then back to the right. Then in a circle, and after that straight ahead.

Presently the feel of a sharp rock underfoot told him that they had entered the Dead Lands. He stumbled purposely to one side of the trail and bumped squarely against a solid wall of stone. Next he tried it on the opposite side with the same result. Moir was leading the way through a narrow defile in the rocks.

Suddenly there came to Reivers' ears the sound of running water, the lazy murmur of a small brook. Almost at the same instant came the splash of Moir and his dogs going into the stream and Moir's laughing:

"Wilt get a little wet here, old son. But follow on."

Fumbling with his feet Reivers found the stream and stepped in. To his surprise the water was warm. Warm water? Where had he seen warm water recently in this country? His thoughts leaped back with a snap. There was only one open stream to be found thereabouts, and that was the brook that came from the warm springs by which he had camped on his way to Tillie's.

"Warm water!" laughed Moir. "Wilt find all snug in my camp. Aye, as snug as in a well-kept jail."

The stream was knee-deep, and by the pressure of the water against the back of his legs Reivers knew that they were going down-stream. Presently Moir spoke again.

"Now, if you value the tops of your heads, do you duck as low as you can. Duck now, quick; and do you keep that position till I tell you to straighten up."

Reivers and Tillie ducked obediently. Suddenly the tiny light that had come through the air-holes of their masks was shut out. The darkness was complete. Reivers thrust his hand above his bowed head and came in contact with cold, clammy rock. No wonder it had taken MacGregor and Moir two years to find the mine, since the way to it lay by a subterranean river!

The light reappeared, but it was not the sunny light that had come through the air-holes before they had entered the river tunnel. It was grey and dead, as the light in a room where the sunshine does not enter.

"Now you can lift your heads," laughed Moir. "Come to the right. Up the bank. Here we are."

He jerked Reivers out of the water roughly, and roughly pulled the sack from his head. Reivers blinked as the light struck his eyes. Moir treated him to a generous kick.

"Welcome," he hissed menacingly. "Welcome to the camp of Shanty Moir."

## CHAPTER XXXVIII--MACGREGOR ROY

Reivers' first impression was that he was standing in a gigantic stockade. The second that he was on the floor of a great quarry-pit. Then, when the situation grew clear to him, he stood dumfounded.

The camp of Shanty Moir lay in what would have been a solid rock cave but for the lack of a roof. It was an irregular hollow in the strange formation of the Dead Lands, perhaps fifty yards long and thirty yards wide at its greatest breadth. The hollow was surrounded completely by ragged stone walls about fifty feet in height. These walls slanted inward to a startling degree. Thus while the floor of the strange spot was thirty yards wide, the opening above, through which showed the far-away sky, could scarcely have been more than half that width. The brook ran through the middle of the chasm, entering the upper end by a tunnel five feet in height and disappearing in the solid wall of rock at the lower end by a similar opening.

On each side of the narrow stream, and running back to the rock walls, was a floor of smooth river-sand. Beneath an overhanging ledge on the side where Reivers stood were the rude skin fronts of two dugouts. A tin smoke-stack protruded from the larger of the two habitations; the other, which was high enough only to admit a man stooping far over, was merely a flap of hide hanging down from the rock.

On the beach at the other side of the creek a fire burned beneath a great iron pan, the wood smoke filling the chasm with its pungent odour. Behind the fire a series of tunnels ran down in the sand under the cliffs. From the tunnel immediately behind the fire came a thin spiral of sluggish smoke, and Reivers knew that this tunnel was being worked and that the fire was being used to thaw the frozen earth.

A man who resembled Moir on a small scale was at work at the thawing-pan, breaking the hard earth with his fingers and tossing it into a washing-pan at his side. He stood now with a chunk of frozen sand in his hand, and at sight of Reivers and Tillie he tossed the sand recklessly into the air and whooped.

"Ha! Hast done well this time, Shanty," he cried in an accent similar to theirs. "Hast made tuh life endurable. A new horse for me and a woman for 'ee. 'Tis high time. Since Blacky went off and did not come back, and tuh two Indians tried to flee, we've had but one horse to do with. Now wilt have two. Wilt clean up in a hurry now, and live in tuh meanwhile."

Shanty Moir laughed harshly.

"How works tuh old Scot jackass to-day?" he called.

The man across the creek shook his head.

"He's never tuh horse he was when we first put him in harness," he chuckled. "Fell twice in his tracks to-day, he did, and lay there till Joey gave him an inch of tuh prod. Has been a good beastie, the Scot has, Shanty, but 'tis in my mind tuh climate does not 'gree with him. Scarce able to pull his load. In tuh mines at home we knocked such worn beasties in the head and sent them up o' tuh pit."

Moir laughed again.

"Hast a quaint way o' putting things, Tammy," he said. "But I mind when ponies were scarce we used them till they crawled their knees raw. 'Tis plenty o' time to knock old horse-flesh in tuh head when tuh job's done."

They laughed together. Evidently this was a well-liked camp joke.

"'Tis a well-coupled animal 'ee have there, Shanty," said the humourist across the water, with a jerk of the head at Reivers. "Big in tuh bone and solid around tuh withers. Yon squaw is a solid piece, too. Happen they're broke to pull double?"

"Unbroke stock, Tammy," drawled Moir leisurely. "Gentleman, squaw-man, waster. But breaking stock's our specialty, eh, Tammy?"

A muffled shout floated up from the mouth of the smoking pit before Tammy could reply. Instantly there followed a dull moan of pain: Moir and Tommy laughed knowingly.

"Here comes sample of our work," said Tammy, nodding toward the tunnel. "Poor Joey! Has to use tuh prod to start him with each load now."

A grating, shuffling sound now came from the mouth of the tunnel. Following it appeared the head of a man. And Reivers needed only one glance at the emaciated countenance to know that he was looking upon the father of Hattie MacGregor.

"Giddap, Scotch jackass!" roared Moir in great good humour. "Pull it out o' there. That's tuh horse. Pull!"

The man came painfully, an inch at a time, out of the pit, and looked across the creek at Shanty Moir. Behind him there dragged a rough wooden sledge loaded with lumps of earth. The man was hitched to this load by a harness of straps that held his arms helpless against his sides. No strait-jacket ever held its victim more utterly helpless than the contrivance which now held James MacGregor in toils as a beast of burden. A contrivance of straps about the ankles held his legs close together.

So short were the traces by which the sledge was drawn that MacGregor could not have stood upright without having lifted the heavy load a foot or more from the ground. He made no attempt to stand so, but hung half-bowed against the harness, his eyes gleaming through the matted red hair over his brows straight at Shanty Moir.

It was the eyes that drew and held Reivers' attention to the face, rather than to the man's terrible situation. James MacGregor, helpless beast of burden to his tormentors that he was, was not beaten. The same clean-cut nose, mouth and chin that Reivers remembered so well in the daughter were apparent in the father's pain-marked face. The eyes gleamed defiance. And they were wide and grey, Reivers saw, the same as the eyes that haunted him in memory's pictures of the girl who had not feared his glance.

"Shanty Moir," spoke MacGregor in a voice weak but firm, "when the devil made you he cursed his own work. He cursed you as a misbegotten thing not fit for hell. The gut-eating wolverine is a brave beast compared to you. Skunks would run from your company. You think you have done big work. You fool! You cannot rob me of what belongs to me and mine; you cannot kill me. As sure as there is a God in Heaven, He will let me or mine kill you with bare hands."

Moir and his man laughed in weary fashion, as if this speech were old to them, and Reivers was amazed at an impulse within him to throw himself at Shanty Moir's throat. He joined foolishly in the laughter to hide his confusion. What had he to do with such impulses? What business had he having any feeling for the poor enslaved man before him? He had come to Moir's camp for one purpose: to get the gold mined there, to get a new start in life. Was it possible that he was growing weak enough to experience the feeling of pity, the impulse to help the helpless? Nonsense! He laughed loudly. His plan was one in which silly impulses of this nature had no part, and he would go through with it to the end.

"Well brayed, Scots jackass," said the man at the thawing-pan casually. "Now pull tuh load over here. Giddap-pull!"

MacGregor leaned weakly against the harness, but the sledge had lodged and his depleted strength was insufficient to budge it.

"Oh ho! Getting lazy, eh?" came from the tunnel, and a thin-faced man came out, a short stick with a sharp brad in his hands. "Want help, eh? Well, here 'tis," he chuckled, and drove the brad into MacGregor's leg.

Again the strange impulse to leap to the tortured man's rescue, to kill his tormentor without reckoning the price or what might come after, stirred itself in Reivers' breast, and again he joined in the laughter to pass it off.

MacGregor started as the iron entered his flesh and the movement loosened the sledge. With weak, faltering steps he drew the load alongside the fire, where Tammy proceeded to transfer the frozen chunks of earth to the thawing-pan.

"Eh, hah! New cattle?" said the man with the prod when he espied Reivers and Tillie. "Cow and bull."

"Cow--and an old ox, Joey," laughed Moir. "Has even burnt his horns off with hooch, and wilt go well in the harness when he's broke."

"'Tis time," said Joey. "Tuh Scots jackass'll soon drop in his tracks."

"Not until I've paid you out in full, you devils," said MacGregor quietly. "I'll give you an hour of living hell for every prod you've given me, you poor cur."

Joey approached him and unhooked the traces from his harness with an air that told how well he was accustomed to such threats.

"Must call it a day, Shanty," he said, loosening the straps that bound MacGregor's hands so the forearms were free while the upper arms remained bound tightly to his sides. "Old pit's full o' smoke." In bored sort of fashion he kicked MacGregor into the creek. "To your stable, jackass. Day's done."

MacGregor, tripped by the traps about his ankles, fell full length in the water, floundered across, and crawled miserably out of sight behind the skin front of the smaller dugout. Moir and his two henchmen watched him, jeering and laughing. At a sign the two on the other side of the creek came across and drew close to their chief.

"And now, old son," snarled Moir, swinging around on Reivers like a flash, "now, you slick waster--now we'll attend to 'ee."

## CHAPTER XXXIX--JAMES MACGREGOR'S STORY

The three men moved forward until they were within arm's reach of Reivers, and stood regarding him with open grins on their hairy faces. Reivers, reading the import of their grins, knew that they were bent upon enjoying themselves at his expense, and tried swiftly to guess what form their amusement might take. If it were only horse-play he would be able to continue in the helpless character he had assumed. If it were to be rougher than that, if they set out to break him in real earnest, he feared that his acting was at an end.

Even for the sake of the gold that he was after he would hardly be able to submit, humbly and helplessly as became a drunken squaw-man, to their efforts to make a wreck of him. He calculated his chances of coming through alive if the situation developed to this extreme, and decided that the odds were a trifle too heavy against him.

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

It was very still in the dugout. Suddenly Reivers leaned forward to see if MacGregor were telling the truth. Satisfied with his scrutiny he sat back and laughed softly.

"In a belt, around his middle, eh?" he said. "Good work. Mr. Moir is cautious enough to be interesting."

"Cautious!" MacGregor threw up the flap of the dugout. "Look out there, man."

Reivers looked. On the sand directly before the door lay chained a huge, husky dog, an ugly, starved brute with mad eyes.

"Try but to crawl outside the shack," suggested MacGregor.

Reivers tried. His head had no more than appeared outside when the dog sprang. The chain jerked him back as his teeth clashed where Reivers' head had been. He leaped thrice more, striving to hurl himself into the dugout, then returned to his place and lay down, growling.

"Very cautious," agreed Reivers.

He peered carefully out toward the cooking-fire. The fire had died down now and was deserted. By the sounds coming from the larger dugout Reivers knew that Moir and his men were occupied with their supper, supplemented by occasional drafts of liquor, and once more he crawled out upon the sand.

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

Reivers came forth from the dugout, stooped and shaking, the drunken squaw-man's morning condition to perfection, but in reality alert and watchful for the opportunity he was seeking. He had had a bad night, and he was anxious to have the job over with and get away with his loot to some place where he could forget.

A surprise awaited him outside. Two tin plates loaded with meat and a tin cup half full of liquor were placed on the sand before the dugout. Ten feet away stood Shanty Moir, his six-shooter covering the two men as they emerged. With the instinct of the wild animal that he was, Moir knew the value of clamping his hold firmly on his victims in the cold grey of morning.

"Drink and eat," he said, satisfied with the humility with which the two went to their food. "Eat fast, or you'll go into tuh pit with tuh belly empty."

"I thought you hired me for a cook, mister," whined Reivers, as he raised the tin cup to his lips. "I want to cook."

"Cook, ----!" sneered Moir. "Tuh squaw'll do all tuh cooking done here. Draft beast with tuh Scotch jackass, that's what 'ee be, old ox. Hurry up. Wilt have a little of tuh prod?"

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

With MacGregor leading the way, Reivers humbly picked up his rope and helped drag the sledge into the mine. The tunnel, high and broad enough only for two men to crawl abreast, ran at a steep slant into the sand for probably twenty-five feet. At its end it spread into a small room in which Joey was at work, chopping loose chunks of frozen earth.

One glance around and Reivers knew from experience that this room had been the home of the pocket, and that, unless the signs lied, the pocket soon would be worked out. Judging by the extent of the excavation the pocket had been a good-sized one, and the amount of dust and nuggets taken from it undoubtedly would foot up to a neat sum. Yes, it would be a tidy fortune. It would be plenty to give him a new start in life, plenty to pay him for the trouble he had gone to, plenty even to pay him for the baseness of his present position.

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"

"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.

## CHAPTER XLIV--THE MADNESS OF "HELL-CAMP" REIVERS

The day opened as the day before had opened. A bellow from Shanty Moir, and Reivers strapped MacGregor into his harness again and they tumbled out to their rude morning meal. Again Moir stood a distance away, the big six-shooter balanced easily in his hand. But this morning Joey and Tammy, over by the pit-mouth, also were awaiting the appearance of their two beasts of burden, and Reivers instantly sensed something new and sinister afoot. At the sight of MacGregor's decrepitude, as, stiff and tottering, he made his way to his meal, Joey and Tammy strove vainly to conceal the wolfish grins that appeared on their ugly faces.

"Aye, Shanty, art quite right. Is worth his keep no longer," said Tammy. "Hast been a fair animal for a Scotch jackass, but does not thrive on his oats no more."

"One fair day's work left in him," said Joey, appraising MacGregor shrewdly. "Will knock off a little early, eh, Shanty, so's to have tuh light to see him swim."

"Would not miss tuh sight of that for a pound of dust," replied Shanty, and the three roared fiendishly together.

"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.

## CHAPTER XLV--A SURPRISE FOR SHANTY MOIR

Reivers caught hold of a spear of rock the instant his head came out of water, and held on. He did not try to think or understand at first. Sufficient to know that he was alive and to pump his lungs full of the air they were crying for. He held MacGregor under his left arm, and he rather wondered that he hadn't let him go in that moment when he went under. MacGregor was beginning to revive, too. Reivers looked around.

There was not much to see. They were in a tiny opening in the rocks, a yard or two in length. It was a duplicate of Moir's cavern on a miniature scale, except that here the rock walls were not high or impossible to climb. For this space the brook showed itself once more to the sun, then vanished again under the cliffs.

"Is it Heaven?" gasped MacGregor, only half conscious.

"Nearer hell," laughed Reivers.

He lifted himself and his burden out of the water to a resting-place on a shelf of rock. For a minute or two he sat looking up at the rock walls and the grey sky above them. He looked down at the water, at the spot where they had been spewed from death back into life. And then he leaped upright and laughed, laughed so that the rocks rang with it, laughed so that MacGregor's senses cleared and he looked at his saviour in consternation. His laughter was the uncontrollable, heart-free laughter of the man who suddenly sees a great joke upon his enemy.

He smote MacGregor between the shoulder-blades so he gasped and coughed. He tore the straps and harness from his arms, body and legs, tossed him up in the air, shook him and set him down on the rock.

"I've got him!" he said at last. "Oh, Shanty Moir, what a surprise you have coming to your own black self!"

MacGregor, with his senses cleared enough to realise that he was alive, and to remember how the miracle had come about, said quietly--

"Man, that was the bravest thing I ever saw a man do."

"What?"

"Diving into that hole after me."

"Oh, to ---- with that! That's past. The past doesn't count--not when the very immediate future is so full of juice and interest as happens to be the case just now. I've got Shanty Moir, old-timer. Do you understand? He's mine and all that he's got is mine, and he's going to be surprised. Oh, how surprised he's going to be!"

MacGregor looked down at the two yards of rushing water, up at the rock walls and then at the jubilant Reivers.

"I dinna see it," he said dryly.

"Really?" Reivers suddenly became interested in him as if he presented a rare mental problem. "Can't you make that simple mind of yours work out the simple solution of this problem?"

MacGregor shook his head.

"What I see is this: we're alive, and that only for the present. We're in a little hole in the Dead Lands. Happen we climb out of the hole, we have no dogs, food, or weapons. The nearest camp is two good days' mushing, with good fresh dogs. Too far. If I could manage to stagger five miles I'd surprise myself. There is not so much as a dry match on us. No, I maun say, lad, my simple mind does not see the solution of the problem."

"Try again, Mac," urged Reivers. "Make your mind work. What do we need to make our condition blessed among men; what do men need to be well-fitted on the Winter trail? You can make your mind do that sum, can't you?"

"We need," replied MacGregor doggedly, "dogs, and food, and fire, and weapons."

"Correct. And now what's the next thought that your grey matter produces after that masterpiece?"

"That the nearest place where we may obtain these things is too far away for us to make, unless happen we meet some one on the trail, which is not likely."

"Pessimism!" laughed Reivers. "Too much caution stunts the possibility of the mind. Interesting demonstration of the fact, with your mind as an example." He turned and smote with the flat of his hand the stone wall from under which they had just emerged. "What's the other side of those rocks, Mac?"

"Shanty Moir and his six-shooter."

"And dogs, and food, and matches, and cartridges, and gold, everything, everything to make us kings of the country, Mac! And they're ours--ours as surely as if we had 'em in our hands now."

"I dinna see it," said MacGregor.

"Pessimism again. How can Moir and his gang get out of their camp?"

"Up-stream, by the creek, of course."

"Any other way?"

"There's the way we came--but they do not know that."

"Correct, and when we've plugged up that single exit they can't get away from us, Mac, and then we've got 'em!"

MacGregor's eyes lighted up, then he grew dour again.

"We have got 'em, if we plug up the river, I see," he admitted, "but when we have got them, what good does it do us? What are you going to do, then?"

"That's the surprise, Mac; I won't tell even you." He looked swiftly for a way up the rock walls and found one. "The first question is: Do you think you can climb after me up that crevice there?"

"I could climb through hell and back again if it would help in getting Shanty Moir."

"All right. I can't quite give you hell, but I'll give Shanty Moir an imitation of it before he's much older. Come on. We've got some work to do before it gets dark."

He led the way into the crevice he had marked for the climb up from the hole and boosted MacGregor up before him. It was slow, hard work, but MacGregor's weak hold slipped often, and he came slipping down upon Reivers' shoulders. In the end Reivers impatiently pulled him down, took him on his back and crawled up, and with a laugh rolled himself and his burden in the snow on top of the cliffs. A few rods away smoke was rising through the opening above Moir's camp, and at the sight of it MacGregor's numbed faculties came to life.

"Lemme go, man!" he pleaded as Reivers caught him as he staggered toward the opening. "It's my chance, man. I can kill the cur with a rock from up here."

"Save your strength; I've got use for it," said Reivers. "Can you walk? All right. Come on, then, and don't try to get near that gap."

Taking MacGregor by the hand he led the way carefully around the big opening till they came to the opposite side of the mass of rocks, where the creek entered the tunnel by which Moir reached his camp. Crawling and slipping, they made their way down until they stood beside the bed of the stream.

"Now to work, Mac," said Reivers, and seizing a rock bore it to the tunnel's mouth and dropped it into the water.

"Aye, aye!" chuckled MacGregor, as he understood the significance of this move. "We'll wall the curs in."

For half an hour they laboured. Reivers carried and rolled the heaviest rocks he could move into position across the tunnel, and MacGregor staggered beneath smaller pieces to fill up the chinks. When their work was finished there was a rock wall across the mouth of the tunnel which it would have been almost impossible to tear down, especially from the inside.

It was growing dark when the task was completed, and Reivers nodded in great satisfaction.

"That'll hold 'em long enough for my purpose, and we just made it in time," he said. "Now come on up the mountain again, and then for the surprise."

"The surprise, man?" panted MacGregor as he toiled up the rocks. "What are you going to do? Tell me what's in your head?"

"Hush, hush!" laughed Reivers, pulling him up to the top. "Your position is that of the onlooker. It would spoil it for you if you knew what was going to happen."

"An onlooker--me--when it's a case of getting Shanty Moir? Don't say that, lad. Don't leave me out. He's mine. You know that by all the rights of men and gods it's my right to get him. Give me my just share of revenge."

"Shut up!"

They were nearing the brink of the opening. Reivers' hand covered MacGregor's mouth as they leaned over and looked down upon the unsuspecting men in the cavern below.

In the shut-in spot night had fallen. On the sand before the dugout Tillie was cooking over a brisk fire, going about her work as calmly as if nothing of moment had happened during the afternoon. Near by, Moir and Joey were packing the dog-sledge and repairing harness, evidently preparing to take the trail after the evening meal. Tammy sat by the fire, holding together with both hands the pieces of his nose which Reivers' blow had smashed flat on his face.

Reivers scarcely looked at the men, but began to scan the walls for a way to get down. The walls slanted inwardly from the top, and at first it seemed impossible that a man could get safely into the cavern without the aid of a rope. But presently Reivers saw that for thirty feet directly above the large dugout the rocks were ragged enough to afford plenty of holds for hands and feet.

The walls were nearly fifty feet high. If he could reach to the bottom of this rough space he would be hanging with his feet, ten or twelve feet above the cavern floor.

"Good enough," he said aloud. "It's a cinch."

"A cinch it is," breathed MacGregor softly. "We'll roll up a pile of rocks and kill 'em like rats in a pit. But you maun leave Shanty to me, lad, I----"

"Shut up!" Reivers thrust the Scotchman back from the brink. "Do you want me to go after the harness for you? I told you that your job was to be the onlooker. I settle this thing with Shanty Moir myself."

"But man----"

"Moir kicked me. Do you understand? He placed his dirty foot on me. Do you see why I'm going to do it by myself?"

"Placed his foot on you? God's blood! What has he done to me--robbed me, made an animal of me, stabbed me with a prod! Who has the better right to his foul life?"

"It isn't a case of right, but of might, Mac," chuckled Reivers. "I've got the better might. Therefore, will you give me your word that you'll refrain from interfering with my actions until I've paid my debt to Mr. Moir, or must I go back after the harness and strap you up?"

"Cruel----"

"Promise!"

"I promise," said MacGregor. "But it's wrong, sore wrong. I protest."

"All right. Protest all you want to, but do it silently. Not another word or sound out of you now until the job's done."

Together they crawled back to the brink above the large dugout and peered down into the darkening cavern. In a flash Reivers had his mackinaw and boots off. The cooking-fire was deserted. No one was in sight. Moir and his men and Tillie were at supper in the dugout, and Reivers's chance had come. He swung himself silently over the brink and hung by a handhold on the rock.

"Don't interfere, Mac," he said warningly. "Not till I've paid Shanty Moir for the touch of his foot."

## CHAPTER XLVI--A FIGHT THAT WAS A FIGHT

With a twist of his body he threw his stockinged feet forward and caught toe-holds on the rough surface of the wall. Next he released his right hand and fumbled downward till he found a solid piece of protruding rock. Having tested it thoroughly he let go his holds with both feet and left hand and dropped his full weight into the grip of his right. Above him, MacGregor, with his face glued to the brink of the opening, gasped twice, once because he was sure Reivers was dropping straight to the bottom, and again when his right hand took the shock of his full weight without loosening its grip.

Reivers heard and looked up and smiled. Then he swung his feet inward again, secured another hold, lowered his right hand to another sure grip, and so made his startling way down the inwardly slanting cliff.

At the third desperate drop MacGregor drew back, unable to stand the strain of watching. Had Reivers been able to see on top of the cliff he would have laughed, for the Scotchman was down on his knees in the snow, earnestly praying.

Finally MacGregor summoned up courage to peer down once more. Then he knew his prayers had been answered. Reivers was hanging easily by his hands, directly above the front of the large dugout, and his feet were less than ten feet above the bottom of the cave. MacGregor gave a whoop of thanksgiving and gathered to him an armful of stones.

For a moment Reivers hung there, looking down and appraising the situation. He loosened his hold until his whole weight hung on the ends of his fingers.

"Come out and fight, Shanty!" he bellowed suddenly. "Come out, you cheap cur, and fight like a man!"

Nothing loath Moir came, responding like a wild animal on the instant of the weird challenge from above. Like a wild man he came, six-shooter in hand, tearing the front of the dugout away in his rush, and Reivers dropped and struck him neatly the instant he appeared.

It was a carefully aimed drop. Landing on Moir's neck, Reivers would have killed him. He had no wish to kill him--yet. He landed on Moir's shoulders and the six-shooter went flying away as the two bodies crashed together and dropped on the sand with a thud.

Reivers was up first. It was well that he was. Tammy and Joey were only a step behind Moir. Like wildcats they clawed at Reivers and like wildcats they rolled on the ground when his fists met them. Then Moir was up on his feet. His senses were a little dull, but he saw enough of the situation to satisfy him. Before him was something to fight, to rush, to annihilate. And he rushed.

Up on the cliff the maddened MacGregor yelped joyously, a stone in each hand, as Reivers leaped forward to meet the rush and struck. Shanty Moir had expected a grapple, and Reivers' fist caught him full in the mouth and threw him back on his shoulders a man's length away.

When Moir arose then, the lower part of his face had the appearance of crushed meat, but he growled through the blood and rushed again. Reivers struck, and Moir's nose disappeared in a welter of blood and gristle. He struck again, but Moir came on and locked him in his huge arms.

Joey and Tammy were up now. Their knives were out. They saw their chance and leaped forward to strike at Reivers' back. With his life depending upon it, the Snow-Burner swung Moir's great body around, and Joey and Tammy stayed their hands barely in time to save plunging their knives into the back of their chief.

Growling a wild curse, MacGregor dropped two stones the size of his head. One struck Joey on the shoulder and sent him shrieking with pain into the dugout; the other dropped at Reivers' feet. With a yell he hurled Moir from him and snatched up the stone. Joey, reading his doom in the Snow-Burner's eyes, backed away into the brink of the brook. The heavy stone caught him in the chest. Then he struck the water with a splash and was gone.

But Moir was up in the same instant and his arms licked around from behind and raised Reivers off his feet. The hold was broken as suddenly as it was clamped on. They were face to face again, and face to face they fought, trampling the sand and the fire indiscriminately. Each blow from Reivers now splashed blood from Moir's face as from a soaked sponge, and at each blow MacGregor shouted wildly:

"That for the kick you gave him, Shanty! That for the dirt you did me!"

The dogs, mad with terror, fled up the brook, met the stone wall and came whining back. They cowered, jammering in fright at the terrible combat which raged, minute after minute, before them.

Out of the dugout softly came stealing Tillie. A knife, dropped by Joey or Tammy, gleamed in the light of the fire. She picked it up. With a smile of great contentment on her face she crept noiselessly toward the struggling men. They were locked in a clinch now, and with the smile widening she moved around behind Moir's broad back. The knife flashed above her head. Reivers saw it. With an effort he wrenched an arm free and knocked the knife away.

"Keep away!" he roared, springing out of the clinch. "This is between Iron Hair and me."

Up on the cliff MacGregor groaned. In freeing himself Reivers had hurled Moir to one side, and Moir had dropped with his outstretched hands nearly touching his six-shooter, where it had fallen when Reivers had dropped upon him. Like the stab of a snake his hand reached out and snapped it up.

"Your soul to the devil, Shanty Moir!" shrieked MacGregor and hurled another stone.

His aim was true this time. The stone struck Moir squarely on his big head and drove his face into the sand. He never moved after it.

Reivers looked up. On the brink of the cliff MacGregor on his knees was chanting his war-cry, his thanks that vengeance had not been denied him. Reivers smiled.

"That's a good song, Mac, whatever it is!" he laughed, when the maddened Scotchman had grown quieter. "But the fact remains that you disobeyed my orders and interfered."

"Aye! I interfered. I hurled a stone and sent the black soul of Shanty Moir back to his brother the devil!" chanted MacGregor. "But, lad, I did not interfere until you'd paid him in full--until you'd paid double--for the kick he gave you. Three of them there were, and they were armed and you with bare fists! God's blood! Never since men stood up with fist to fist has there been such fighting. One disabled, and two men dead! Dead you are, you poor pups! And I can tell by the way you lived where you're roasting now.

"Ah, ah! I ha' seen a man fight; I ha' seen what I shall never forget, and, poor stick that I am compared to him, I ha' e'en had a hand in it myself. Man, man! Would you grudge me a little bite after your belly's full of battle?"

Reivers spoke quietly and coldly.

"Go down and tear out as much of the stone wall as you can. I'll take the heavy stones from this side." He turned to Tillie. "Take the big belt from Iron Hair and give it to me. Then make all ready for the trail. We march to-night."

And Tillie, as she harnessed the dogs, spat upon Iron Hair, the beaten.

## CHAPTER XLVII--THE SNOW-BURNER PAYS

"And now the Snow-Burner has his gold. He has robbed the great Iron Hair in his own camp. Great is the Snow-Burner! Now he has the gold which he longed for. Now he is rich. The white men will bow down to him. Great is the Snow-Burner!"

Tillie crouched beside Reivers as, an hour later, he stood on the edge of the Dead Lands, and triumphantly crooned the saga of his success. The gold belt of Shanty Moir hung heavily over his shoulder, its great weight constantly reminding him of the fortune that it contained. The dogs were held in leash, eager to be quit of the harsh rock-chasms through which they had just travelled, and to strike their lope on a trail over the open country beyond.

MacGregor sat wearily on one side of the sledge. The exertions and excitement of the afternoon had exhausted him in his weakened condition. He sat slumped together, only half conscious of what was going on. In a moment he would be sound asleep.

And Reivers had the gold. He had succeeded. He had the gold, and he had a supply of food and a strong, fresh team of dogs eager for the trail. All that was necessary was to turn the dogs toward the south. Two, three, four days' travelling and he would strike the railroad. And the railroad ran to tide-water, and on the water steamboats would carry him away to the world he had planned to return to.

It was very simple, as simple as had been Tillie's scheme for getting rid of Moir. But he couldn't do it. He didn't want to do it. He wanted to do just one thing now, above all others, and that was what he set out to do.

He stood down and strapped the belt of gold around MacGregor's middle. MacGregor was sound asleep now, so he placed him on the sledge and bound him carefully in place. Tillie's chant died down in astonishment.

"We take the old one with us?" she asked.

"We do," said Reivers. "Hi-yah! Together there! Mush, mush up!"

To Tillie's joy he turned the dogs to the northwest, in the direction of the camp of her people. The Snow-Burner was lost to her; she knew that, when he had refused her help with Shanty Moir; but it was something to have him come back to the camp.

Reivers, driving hard and straight all night, brought his team up the river-bed to Tillie's camp in the morning. MacGregor was out of his head by then, and for the day they stopped to rest and feed. Reivers sat in the big tepee alone with MacGregor and fed him soft food which the old squaws had prepared. In the evening he again tied the old man and the belt of gold to the sledge and hitched up the dogs. Tillie had read her doom in his eyes, but nevertheless she came out to the sledge prepared to follow.

"You do not come any farther," said Reivers as he picked up the dog-whip.

Tillie nodded.

"I know. With gold the Snow-Burner can be a great man among the white women. Will the Snow-Burner come back--some time?"

"I will never come back."

"Ah-hh-hh!" Tillie's breath came fiercely. "So there is one white woman, then. If I had known----"

But Reivers was whipping and cursing the dogs and hurrying out of hearing.

MacGregor, clear-headed from the rest and food, but still weak, lifted his head and looked around as the sledge sped over the frozen snow.

"A new trail to me, lad," he said. "Where to, now?"

"On a fool's trail," laughed Reivers bitterly, and drove on.

Next morning MacGregor recognised the land ahead.

"Straight for Dumont's Camp we're heading, lad," he said. "Is it there we go?"

"Yes."

They came to Dumont's Camp as night fell. Reivers halted and made sundry enquiries.

"In a shack half ways between here and Fifty Mile," was the substance of the replies.

"Hi-yah! Mush, mush up!" and they were on the trail again.

At daylight the next day, from a rise in the land, he saw the shack that had been designated. Smoke was rising from the chimney, and a small figure that he knew even at that distance came out, filled a pail with snow and went in again.

Reivers stopped his dogs some distance from the shack. He threw MacGregor, gold belt and all, over his shoulder and went up to the door and knocked. For a second or two he smiled triumphantly as Hattie MacGregor opened the door and stood speechless at what she saw. Then he bowed low, laid his burden on the floor and went out without a word.

The dogs shuddered as they heard him laugh coming back to them.

"Hi-yah, mush!"

He drove them furiously into a gully that shut out the sight of the shack and sat down on the sledge. The dogs whined. It was the time for the morning meal and the master was making no preparations to eat.

"Still, you curs!" The whip fell mercilessly among them and they crouched in terror.

The time went by. The sun began to climb upward in the sky. Still the man sat on the sledge, making no preparations for the morning meal. The memory of the whip-cuts died in the dogs' minds under the growing clamour of hunger. They began to whine again.

"Still!" The master was on his feet, but the whip had fallen from his hand.

Down at the end of the gully a small figure was coming over the snow. She was running, and her red hair flowed back over her shoulders, and she laughed aloud as she came up to him. The pain was gone from Hattie MacGregor's lips, and her whole face beamed with a complete, unreasoning happiness, but the pride of her breed shone in her eyes even unto the end.

"Well, well!" sneered Reivers. "Aren't you afraid to come so near anything that pollutes the air?"

She laughed again. She did not speak. She only looked at him and smiled, and by the Eve-wisdom in the smile he knew that his secret was hers. He felt himself weakening, but the Snow-Burner died hard. He tried to laugh his old, cold laugh, but the ice had been thawed in it.

"What do you want?" he sneered. "I'm not a good enough man for you. Why did you come out here?"

"Because I knew you would not go away again," she said, "and because now I know you are a good enough man for me."

"You red-haired trull!" He raised his hand to strike her.

She did not flinch; she merely smiled up at him confidently, contentedly. Suddenly she caught his clenched fist in her hands and kissed it. With a curse Reivers swung around on his dogs.

"Hi-yah! Mush, mush out of here!"

Out of the gully into the open he kicked and drove them. He did not look back. He knew that she was following.

She followed patiently. She knew that there was nothing else for her to do. She had known it the first day she had looked into his eyes. He was her man, and she must follow him.

So she trudged on behind her man as he forced the tired dogs to move. She smiled as she walked, and the wisdom of Eve was in her smile. She had reason to smile, for the Snow-Burner was driving straight toward the little shack.

THE END