He made out eventually that the bundle was the size and form of a human body. Soon he saw that it moved now and then, as if struggling to rise.
The sleigh came nearer, came into a space where the sunlight, streaming through a gap in the ridge, lighted it up brightly, and Reivers’ whole body suddenly stiffened upon the ground and his teeth snapped shut barely in time to cut short an ejaculation of surprise.
The bundle on the sleigh was a woman—a white woman! And she was bound around from ankle to forehead with thongs passed under the sleigh.
“Food—and a woman—a white woman,” he mused. “The new life becomes interesting. Body, get ready.”
He held the rock balanced on the edge of the cliff, ready to hurl it down with one supreme effort of his waning strength. Hugging the cliff he lay, his head barely raised sufficiently to watch his approaching quarry. He could make out the face of the man by this time, a square face, mostly covered with hair, with the square-cut hair of the head hanging down below the ears. Two fang-like teeth glistened in the sunlight when the man opened his mouth to curse at the dogs, and he turned at times to leer back at the helpless burden on the sleigh.
As he approached the narrow defile, where the rock walls hid a man and what he might do from the eyes of all but the sky above, the man turned to look more frequently, more leeringly at his victim. Reivers saw that the woman was gagged as well as bound.
The driver shouted a command at his dogs, and their lope became a walk, and even as Reivers, up on the cliff, arched his back to hurl his stone, the outfit came to a halt directly beneath where he lay. Reivers waited. He had no compunction about disabling or killing the man below; a crying belly knows no conscience. But he would wait and see what was to develop.
The man swiftly jerked his team back in the traces and turned toward his victim. Reivers, turning his eyes from the man to the woman, received a shock which caused him to hug closer to the cliff. The woman lay helpless on the sleigh, face up. A cloth gag covered her face up to the nose, and a cap, drawn down over the forehead, left only the eyes and nose visible. And the eyes were wide open—very wide open—and they were looking quite calmly and unafraid up at Reivers.
The driver came back and tore the gag from the woman’s lips.
“I’ll give you a chance,” he exploded, and Reivers, up on the cliff, caught the passion-choked note in voice and again held the stone ready. “I’m stealing you for the chief—for Shanty Moir, the man who’s got your father’s mine, and who’s determined to put shame on you, Red MacGregor’s daughter. I’m taking you there to him—in his camp. You know what that means.