She was not asking a question. She was merely stating a fact in which she confidently expected King's concurrence. The pause was not to give him an opportunity of replying. She wished only to collect her thoughts, to marshal the parts of the story she was about to tell him.
"My father is a railway construction contractor," she went on after she had walked a few yards without speaking. "The men love him—and they hate him—both at the same time. He's generous and he's straight, and he's good—but he's hard in his dealings and he crushes everyone who opposes him. For years he has taken railway contracts and worked in the woods. I was born in a mining camp out west, where my father was prospecting. When I began to grow up I was allowed to spend only a few weeks each summer in camp with him and mother. The rest of the summer I spent with my aunt in Winnipeg, where I went to school. But I never liked it. I always wanted to be with them in the camp. I loved the life and I loved the men and their rough ways. Most of all, I loved my father—my mother was very quiet and very sweet, but my father and I have always been chums."
She paused a moment to pick up a small stick from the road which she sent whirling along the trail ahead of her.
"One day something happened. My mother told me what she knew about it and my father knows that she told me, but he has never spoken to me about it. Two years ago he left my mother and me in the city and went to the coast with some others to look for gold. One of the men was Bill McCartney, who was a teamster for my father during the previous summer. In the spring they came back unexpectedly. Father had written us to tell us that he had made a good strike, but when he came back there was a change. McCartney was with him, and one night they sat all night long and there were loud words between them. In the morning my father told us that he had lost everything and that McCartney was going back to the coast again. He told mother something that made her cry, but he said, 'A bargain is a bargain—and I count this a good bargain.' Those are the only words I ever heard him speak about the affair. McCartney left that night. After that my mother grew sick—and she never got better. Later I came to camp to be with her, and one night she told me that she was dying—she said her heart was breaking—breaking for my father. She told me that some day McCartney would be back—that she hoped she might die before he came. She died last summer and McCartney came back just a few weeks later."
The muscles in King's arms grew rigid and his hands clenched fiercely as his mind rested upon the fragmentary story that Cherry McBain had told him. Instinctively he felt that Bill McCartney had been in some way the cause of the death of Keith McBain's wife.
"There was something more," she said, suddenly breaking in upon his musing. "When McCartney came back my father made him foreman of the camp and ever since then the control of the work has been gradually passing out of father's hands. To make matters worse, father has been drinking until his very mind is going. Some day, I am afraid, he will drink himself to death. And it is not all on account of the loss of my mother. There is something else. The bargain he made with McCartney did not work out satisfactorily. The claim turned out badly and McCartney came back dissatisfied. And now—though he has never said so openly—he has plans of a different kind. Once he met me alone on the trail—he had followed me without my knowing it—and when he tried to be pleasant to me in his own way, I told him to leave me. He grinned and took me by the arm and then—I struck him with my hand across the face. His expression never changed, but he warned me never to do that again—and he spoke of my father. The next day father came to me—his voice broken—his face haggard; he hadn't slept all night. And he told me not to make McCartney angry. He told me to stay away from him—go back to the city—anything, but to keep out of his way and give him no cause for anger. I told my father that I would not leave him—and I won't. But I can't go anywhere without that man shadowing me. I can't speak to one of the men but he comes and forces his attentions upon me, though he knows that I hate him. One thing—he has never offered to touch me again, and I have never had the heart to tell him what I think. I am always thinking of what may happen—and I can see the fear in my father's eyes."
She came a little closer to King and laid her hand on his arm.
"Some day," she said slowly, and her breast rose and fell fitfully as she spoke, "some day he will not wait any longer. I shall have to make my choice. Either I shall smile on him and accept his attentions—or I shall send him away and bring upon myself the complete ruin of a life that is already broken beyond hope of repair."
A faint rumbling of distant thunder caused them both to stop and look behind them.
"It is something new for me to be afraid. I never was afraid before—only there has been a change—a change that I don't like because I don't know how to meet it. The men in the camp have always been good to me. My mother was good to them and they liked her—and I have tried to be good to them. I have always thought they liked me too. But there are some—we meet them once in a while—who can't stand good treatment. They weren't born for it. And McCartney has got a few of that kind with him."