“Snow-Burner,” said Nawa, a flash of will lighting his eyes for the moment, “does Neopa come back to me?”
“Perhaps,” said Reivers, cocking the rifle. “But if you try to follow you will never come back. Is it understood?”
Nawa bowed his head and turned away. Neopa made as if to run to him, but Reivers caught her brutally and threw her upon the lead sledge. He had resolved to travel the way of shame, no matter what the cost to others.
“Mush! Get on!” he roared at the dogs, and with the rifle ready and with a backward glance at Nawa, he drove away for Fifty Mile and Dumont’s Camp.
CHAPTER XXXI—THE SQUAW-MAN
A day after Reivers drove out of the Indian camp, Dumont’s Camp had something to talk about. A half-witted, crippled-up squaw-man went through with a couple of squaws, and the youngest of the squaws was a beaut’! The old bum hadn’t stopped long, just long enough to trade a chunk of caribou meat for a bottle of hooch, but long enough, nevertheless, to let the gang get a peek at the squaws.
Dumont’s Camp opined that it was a good thing for the old cripple that he hadn’t stayed longer, else he might have found himself minus his squaws, especially the young one. But Dumont’s Camp would have been mightily puzzled had it seen how the limp and stoop went out of the squaw-man’s body the moment he had left their camp behind, how the foolish leer and stuttering speech disappeared from his mouth, and how, straight-backed and stern-visaged, he threw the bottle of hooch away in contempt and hurried on toward Fifty Mile.
Reivers had played many strange parts in his tumultuous life, and his squaw-man was a masterpiece. Fifty Mile had its sensation early next morning. The half-witted, crippled-up squaw-man with the two extremely desirable squaws came through, stopped for another bottle of hooch, and drove on and made camp just outside the settlement.
“He certainly was one soft-headed old bum,” said Jack Raftery, leaning on the packing-case that served as bar in his logcabin saloon. “Yes, men, he certainly is bumped in the bean and locoed in his arms. Gimme that chunk o’ meat there for a bottle o’ hooch. ’Bout fifty pounds, it’ll weigh. I’d give ‘im a gallon, but he grins foolish and says: ‘Bottle. One bottle.’ ‘Drag your meat in,’ says I. Well, gents, will you b’lieve he couldn’t make it. No, sir; paralysed in the arms or something.
“That young squaw o’ his did the toting. A beaut’? Gents, there never was anything put up in a brown hide to touch it. An’ that locoed ol’ bum running ’round loose with it. Tempting providence, that’s what he is, when he comes parading ‘round real men-folks with skirts like them. Shouldn’t wonder if something’d happen to him one o’ these cold days. Looks like he might ‘a’ been an awful good man in his day, too. Well built. Reckon he’s been used mighty rough to be locoed and crippled up the way he is.”