“—— you!” growled Reivers as he bent down and loosed the thongs. “What do you mean? Why aren’t you afraid?”
“MacGregor Roy was my father,” she said quietly. “I am not afraid.” She sat up as the bonds fell from her and looked at the still figure in the snow. “He is dead, I suppose?”
“As dead as he tried to make me,” sneered Reivers.
A look of annoyance crossed her face.
“Then you have spoiled it all,” she broke out, leaping from the sledge. “Spoiled the fine chance I had to find the cave of Shanty Moir, murderer of my father.”
Reivers’ jaw dropped in amazement, and hot anger surged to his tongue. Many women of many kinds he had looked in the eyes and this was the first one—
“Spoiled it, you red-haired trull! What do you mean? Didn’t I save you from our bearded friend yonder. Or—” his thin lips curled into their old contemptuous smile—“or perhaps—perhaps you are one of those to whom such attentions are not distasteful.”
The sudden flare and flash of her anger breaking, like lightning out of a Winter’s sky, checked his words. The contempt of his smile gave place to a grin of admiration. Tottering and wavering on his feet, he did not stir or raise his arms, though the thin-bladed knife which seemed to spring into her hands as claws protrude from a maddened cat’s paws, slipped through his mackinaw and pricked the skin above his heart, before her hand stopped.
“‘Trull’ am I? The daughter of MacGregor Roy is a helpless squaw who takes kindly to such words from any man on the trail? Blood o’ my father! Pray, you cowardly skulker! Pray!”
His grin grew broader.