Seated in a chair, with his feet resting on the lower of two bunks which were fitted on one side of the room, was Broom. He was reading a book with a paper cover brilliantly illuminated—one of those “Three-Fingered Jack” series of stories so eagerly devoured by uncultured minds.
Broom shut the book as Roy entered the room. He nodded familiarly, distorted his swollen lips into a smile and dropped his feet to the floor. “Well, what luck?” he inquired with feigned interest.
“Three whites and a blue,” replied the trader. He tried to put some heartiness into his words, but the irritation he still felt at the man held him back. He went back to the kitchen to wash his hands, and Broom returned to his book.
Pausing in his ablutions, Roy threw the man a searching glance. He now had a great mistrust of him. And here I may perhaps best explain who Broom was, as he is a gentleman with whom we shall have much concern in these pages.
Broom was a runaway sailor. Deserting his ship at Cape Fullerton, he had one day turned up at Fort Future. He might be one of those worthless characters found in all occupations, but he was a white man, and that had been enough for Roy Thursby. Besides he had shown considerable courage in attempting a solitary journey down the coast to the Fort. This appealed to Roy and he had allowed him to stay on, intending to give him a passage in the coast-boat that went south in the spring. At first the runaway had been very energetic. He had made himself useful about the place and regularly attended the few traps he had put down, as he laughingly remarked, to keep himself in tobacco, but latterly he had slackened off and appeared discontented. He displayed fits of irritability and moodiness. Roy had noticed this, and after Broom’s late outbreak he seriously doubted his wisdom in having harbored him. Debating the question, he went back to the inner room and sat down; then in very plain language told the sailor what he thought of his conduct. Broom looked at him through half-closed lids; his lips were still parted, but the smile was gone. Then he exploded. “Hang it all!” he said sulkily; “you needn’t be hard on a fellow.”
“Well, behave yourself, then,” said Roy, firmly, and having spoken his mind he would have dropped the subject.
But the other did not seem disposed to allow him. “She’s a pretty little baggage for an Indian,” he asserted, “and what’s more, she knows it.”
Roy directed a searching glance at the sneering face of the speaker, but paid no attention to the remark except, perhaps, that he raised his eyebrows a little. He naturally possessed more self-control than most young men of five and twenty. He was high-spirited, and could not brook an insult; but he was inclined to consider the source of a remark before he retaliated. Besides, he wished to avoid another quarrel, for he knew it would serve to widen the breach already broad enough between them.
“Wonder some Indian brave hasn’t snapped her up and carried her off to his happy wigwam,” Broom went on. “But there!” he added, “I suppose she’d turn up her pretty little nose at a native. She wants a white man.” Then, with emphasis there was no misunderstanding, “and no understrapper at that.”
Jumping to his feet, Roy stood before the fellow. A flush of manifest vexation burned upon his cheek. His hands clenched involuntarily. His eyes flashed, but restraining himself, he said: “Look here, Broom, that’s enough! I’ll have no more of your veiled insinuations, or hear any more disrespectful remarks about that girl.”