Bill wheeled, with a sense of vast and impending drama. Harold swore, a single brutal oath, then laughed nervously. An Indian squaw—for all her filth an untidiness a fair representative of her breed—pushed through the door and came stolidly inside. She walked to the back of the cabin and began upon some household task.
Bill's face was stern as the gray cliffs of the Selkirks when he turned again to Harold. "Is that your woman?" he asked simply.
Harold did not reply. He had not wished this man, emissary from his old acquaintances of his native city, to know about Sindy. He retained that much pride, at least. But the answer to Bill's question was too self-evident for him to attempt denial. He nodded, shrugging his shoulders.
Bill waited an instant; and his voice when he spoke again was singularly low and flat. "Did you marry her?"
Harold shrugged again. "One doesn't marry squaws," he replied.
Once more the silence was poignant in the wretched cabin. "I came to find Harold Lounsbury, a gentleman," Bill went on in the same strange, flat voice, "and I find—a squaw man."
Bill realized at once that this new development did not in the least affect his own duty. His job had been to find Harold and return him to Virginia's arms. It was not for him to settle the girl's destiny. For all he had spent his days in the great solitudes of nature he knew enough of life to know that women do not give their love to angels. Rather they love their men as much for their weaknesses as for their virtues. This smirch in Harold's life was a question for the two of them to settle between them.
It did, however, complicate the work of regeneration. Bill had known squaw men before, and few of them had ever regenerated. Usually they were men that could not stand the test of existence by their own toil: either from failure or weakness they took this sordid line of least resistance. From thence on they did not struggle down the trap line in the bitter winter days. They laid comfortably in their cabins and their squaws tended to such small matters. It was true that the squaws wore out quickly; sometimes they needed beating, and at about forty they withered and died, or else the blizzard caught them unprotected in the forest,—and then it became necessary to select another. This was an annoyance, but not a tragedy. One was usually as faithful and as industrious as another.
It was perfectly evident that Sindy had been at work setting out traps. Bill stared at the woman and for the moment he did not see the little sparks growing to flame in Harold's eyes.