Duncan MacGregor tossed a fresh birch chunk into the fire and carefully poked the coals around it. Outside, the dogs, burrowing in the snow, sent up to the sky their weird night-cry, a cry of prayer and protest, protest against the darkness and mystery of night, prayer for the return of the light of day. A wind sprang up and whipped dry snow against the cabin window, and to the sound of its swishing wail Duncan MacGregor began to speak.
“Little as you’ve seen fit to tell about yourself, stranger,” he said, “’tis plain from your behaviour out on the rocks that you’re no man of that foul Welsh cutthroat and thief, Shanty Moir. For the manner in which you dealt with yon man, we owe you a debt.”
“We owe him nothing,” interrupted the niece. “Had he not interfered, I would have found the way to Shanty Moir.”
“But as how?”
“What matter as how? What matter what happens to me if I could find what has become of my father and bring justice to the head of Shanty Moir?”
MacGregor shook his head.
“We owe you a debt,” he continued, speaking to Reivers, “and can not refuse to tell you how it is with us. It is no pleasant situation we are in, as you may have judged. My brother, father of Hattie, is—or was, we do not know which—James MacGregor, ‘Red’ MacGregor so-called in this land, therefore MacGregor Roy, as is all our breed. You would have heard of him did you belong in this country.
“Ten year ago we built this cabin, he and I, and settled down to trap the country, for the fur here is good. Five year ago a Cree half-breed gave James a sliver of rock to weight a net with, and the rock, curse it forever, was over half gold. The breed could not recall where the rock had come from, save that he had chucked it into his canoe some place up north.
“James MacGregor stopped trapping then. He began to look for the spot where the gilty rock came from. Three years he looked and did not find it. Two years ago Shanty Moir came down the river and bided here, and Moir was a prospector among other things. Together they found it, after nearly two years looking together; for James took this Moir into partnership, and that was the unlucky day of his life.”
MacGregor kicked savagely at the fire and sat silent for several minutes.