“Aye. Taken the trail for revenge. No less could be expected. Please Heaven, they’ll soon win here. And James MacGregor will not forget what he owes you, stranger, for the help you gave his daughter, when the time of reckoning comes with Moir and his poor curs.”
Reivers laughed coldly under his breath.
“You speak pretty confidently, old-times, for a man who’s trussed up the way you are.”
“God willna let this dog of a Moir have his will with me much longer,” said the Scot firmly. “It isna posseeble.”
“‘This dog of a Moir’ must be a better man than you are,” taunted Reivers. “He fooled you and trapped you as soon as you’d found this mine.”
“Did he?” MacGregor flared up. “Shanty Moir a better man than me? Hoot, no! He fooled me, yes, for I didna know that he’d got word to these three hellions of his that the mine was here. I trusted him; he was my pardner. And when we returned with proveesions for the Winter the three devils were waiting for us, just inside the wall, where the creek comes through. Shanty Moir alone never could ha’ done it. The three of them jumped on me from above. I had no chance. Then they strapped me.
“They’ve kept me strapped ever since. I’m draft beast for them. Twice a day they feed me. And between whiles Shanty Moir taunts me by playing before my eyes with the dust and nuggets that are half mine.”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t look to me as if there’d be enough gold here to bother about,” said Reivers casually. “It’s nothing but a little freak pocket by the looks of it.”
“So it is. A freak pocket. It could be nothing else in this district. ’Twas only by chance we found it, exploring the creek in here out of curiosity. ’Twas in the bowels of the warm spring up yon, where the creek starts, that the pocket was originally. The spring boiled it out into the creek, and the creek washed it down here in its bed of sand. The sand lodged here, against these rock walls. There’s about a hundred feet of the sand, running down under the cliffs, and it’s all pocket. Not a rich pocket, as you say, but Shanty Moir is filthy with nuggets and dust now, and there’ll be some more in the sand that’s left to work over.
“Not a bonanza, man, but a good-sized fortune. ‘Twould be enough to send my Hattie to school. ’Twould give her all the comforts of the world. ’Twould make folk look up to her. And Shanty Moir, the devil’s spawn, has it in his keeping.”