The man started, and his face flushed with anger; then he put a hand on himself, drew a step back, and watched her.
“One can settle a thing, if there’s a dozen in it. You see, Nance, you and Bantry’ve got to close out. He’s fixing it up to-night over at Dingan’s Drive, and you can’t go it alone when you quit this place. Now, it’s this way: you can go West with Bantry, or you can go North with me. Away North there’s buffalo and deer, and game a-plenty, up along the Saskatchewan, and farther up on the Peace River. It’s going to be all right up there for half a lifetime, and we can have it in our own way yet. There’ll be no smuggling, but there’ll be trading, and land to get; and, mebbe, there’d be no need of smuggling, for we can make it, I know how—good white whiskey—and we’ll still have this free life for our own. I can’t make up my mind to settle down to a clean collar and going to church on Sundays, and all that. And the West’s in your bones, too. You look like the West—”
The girl’s face brightened with pleasure, and she gazed at him steadily.
“You got its beauty and its freshness, and you got its heat and cold—”
She saw the tobacco-juice stain at the corners of his mouth, she became conscious of the slight odor of spirits in the air, and the light in her face lowered in intensity.
“You got the ways of the deer in your walk, the song o’ the birds in your voice; and you’re going North with me, Nance, for I bin talkin’ to you stiddy four years. It’s a long time to wait on the chance, for there’s always women to be got, same as others have done—men like Dingan with Injun girls, and men like Tobey with half-breeds. But I ain’t bin lookin’ that way. I bin lookin’ only toward you.” He laughed eagerly, and lifted a tin cup of whiskey standing on a table near. “I’m lookin’ toward you now, Nance. Your health and mine together. It’s got to be settled now. You got to go to the ’Cific Coast with Bantry, or North with me.”
The girl jerked a shoulder and frowned a little. He seemed so sure of himself.
“Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else,” she said, quizzically. “There’s always four quarters to the compass, even when Abe Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I’m not going West with Bantry, but there’s three other points that’s open.”
With an oath the man caught her by the shoulders, and swung her round to face him. He was swelling with anger. “You—Nick Pringle, that trading cheat, that gambler! After four years, I—”
“Let go my shoulders,” she said, quietly. “I’m not your property. Go and get some Piegan girl to bully. Keep your hands off. I’m not a bronco for you to bit and bridle. You’ve got no rights. You—” Suddenly she relented, seeing the look in his face, and realizing that, after all, it was a tribute to herself that she could keep him for four years and rouse him to such fury. “But yes, Abe,” she added, “you have some rights. We’ve been good friends all these years, and you’ve been all right out here. You said some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if you’d learned it out of a book. I’ve got no po’try in me; I’m plain homespun. I’m a sapling, I’m not any prairie-flower, but I like when I like, and I like a lot when I like. I’m a bit of hickory, I’m not a prairie-flower—”