“Mayhap. But we are not so aimless as you may think. We go to Fifty Mile and to Dumont’s Camp and stay. Sooner or later Shanty Moir will come there, to throw my father’s gold over the bars and to worse. It may be a month, a year—it doesn’t make any difference. But I suppose a great man like you has a quicker and surer way of doing it?”
“I have,” said Reivers.
“No doubt. I could see your eyes grow greedy when you heard my uncle tell of gold.”
“Oh, no; not especially,” taunted Reivers. “The gold is an incident. Shanty Moir is what interests me. He seems to be a gentleman of parts. I’m going to get him. I’m going to bring you face to face with him. I want to see if you could make good the strong talk you’ve been dealing out as to what you would do. You interest me that way, Miss MacGregor, and that way only. It will be an interesting experiment to get you Shanty Moir.”
“Thank Heaven!” she said grimly. “We’ll soon be rid of you and your big talk. Then I can forget that any man gave me the name you gave me and lived to brag about it afterward.”
He laughed, as one laughs at a petulant child.
“You will never forget me,” he said. “You know that you will not forget me, if you live a thousand years.”
“I have forgotten better men than you,” she said and went out, slamming the door.
That evening Reivers sat up by the fire and further plied old MacGregor with questions concerning the mine.
“You say that your brother claimed the mine lay to the north,” he said. “I suppose you have searched the north first of all?”