“I have a mind to settle it all, right here and now!”
I did not know until the words were out that I had spoken aloud. As a spark falling in loose powder, so was the effect of that sentence upon a spirit as turbulent and as sorely tried as his.
“Settle it then, settle it,” he rose to his feet and shouted at me. “There is your gun behind you.”
I blurted an oath and reached for the rifle, and as my fingers closed about it Jessie flung herself on me.
“No, no, no,” she screamed, “I won’t let you. Oh, oh, for God’s sake be men, not murdering brutes. Think of me if you won’t think of your own lives. Stop it, stop it! Put down those guns!”
She clung to me desperately, hampering my hands. He could have killed me with ease. I could see him across the fire, waiting, his Winchester half-raised, the fire-glow lighting up his face with its blazing eyes and parted lips, teeth set tight together. And I could not free myself of that clinging, crying girl. Not at once, without hurting her. Mad as I was, I had no wish to do that. At length, however, I loosened her clinging arms, and pushed her away. But she was quick as a steel trap. She caught the barrel of my rifle as I swung it up, and before I could break her frenzied grip the second time, a voice in the dark nearby broke in upon us with startling clearness.
“Hello, folks, hello!”
The sound of feet in the crisp snow, the squeaking crunch of toboggans, other voices; these things uprose at hand. I ceased to struggle with Jessie. But only when a man stepped into the circle of firelight, with others dimly outlined behind him, did she release her hold on my gun. Barreau had already let the butt of his drop to his feet. He stood looking from me to the stranger, his hands resting on the muzzle.
“How-de-do, everybody.”
The man stopped at the fire and looked us over. He was short, heavily built. Under the close-drawn parka hood we could see little of his face. He was dressed after the fashion, the necessity rather, of the North. His eyes suddenly became riveted on me.