Tillie picked herself up with a gleam of hope in her eyes. It was long since the Snow-Burner had struck her strongly.
“Oh, Snow-Burner!” she whispered proudly as she crawled back to his side. “Why do we wait? It is all ready. The Snow-Burner knows where the gold is that he came for. Tillie will do her share. The sleep-medicine is sewed in the corner of my blanket. There is enough to kill this big pig, Iron Hair, and his men three times over. Will not the Snow-Burner give the sign for Tillie to put the sleep-medicine in their food? Then they will sleep and not awaken, and the Snow-Burner and Tillie can go away with the gold. Was it not so that the Snow-Burner wished to do?”
Reivers nodded. That was what he wished.
It was very simple. Only a nod. After that—the sleep-medicine, the tasteless Indian poison, the secret of which Tillie possessed, and which she would have used on a hundred men had Reivers given the word.
Yes, it was very simple—except that he could not forget Hattie MacGregor. The memory of her each hour had grown clearer, more torturing. Because of it he had taken the killing load of work from her father’s shoulders; because of it he was growing weak. He swore mutteringly as he thought of it. He had permitted her memory to soften him, to make a boy of him. But now he was himself again. Tillie’s words had done their work. He turned toward the squaw, and she saw by the look in his eyes that the Snow-Burner at last was going to give the fatal sign.
“To-night,” she pleaded. “Let it be to-night. It is a bad camp here. The air is not good. Iron Hair is a pig. Let me give the sleep-medicine to-night; then we go from here in the morning—together.”
She crept closer to him, slyly smiling up at him; and suddenly Reivers flung her away with a movement of loathing and sprang up, tall and straight.
“No,” he said quietly, “not to-night.” And Tillie crouched at his feet.
“Snow-Burner,” she whispered, “I hear Iron Hair and his men talk. They go away soon. They take the gold with them. Does not the Snow-Burner want the gold?”
Reivers looked down upon her. He was standing up, stiff and proud, as he should stand, but as he had not stood since he had begun to play at being a drunken squaw-man.