Reivers laughed.
“What are you talking about? Do I look as if I’d been fighting?”
MacGregor studied him seriously.
“I donno,” said he slowly. “I donno that you look as if you had been fighting. But you come in with your head high up, and the look in your eyes of a man who has conquered. That I do know. Tell me, lad, what’s taken place wi’ you outside?”
“None of your business,” snapped Reivers. “Here’s your supper.” And he returned to his side of the dugout to sit down to think.
He was on his mettle now. He had put to one side the easy, certain way to success that Tillie had offered. Success was not to be so easy as he had thought. Thus far it had been easy. He had met Moir, he had won his way into the mine, he had learned where the gold was hidden, all as he had planned. Remained to get the gold and get safely away. The time to do it in was short.
Reivers’ experienced miner’s eyes had told him that the pocket was perilously near to being mined out. Any day, any hour now, and the pay-streak which they were following might end in barren dirt. That would be the end of his opportunity. Moir and his men would waste no time in the Dead Lands after making their cleanup. They would pack and travel at once, southward, to the railroad. They would not permit even so harmless an individual as a sodden squaw-man to trail them. Hence, Reivers knew that he must find or make his opportunity without waste of time and strike the instant it was found or made.
He had been unable to find an opportunity that first day. Moir in his camp was a different man from Moir on the trail. He was the boss man here, and Reivers granted him ungrudged admiration for it. Liquor was his master on the trail; here he was master of it. His treatment of Joey and Tammy in the morning had explained his attitude on that question too clearly to make it worth while to attempt to entice him into a bout at drinking. Moir was boss here, boss of himself and others, and he always had his six-shooter handy to prove it.
Tammy and Joey wore knives at their hips, but no guns. Moir’s 30.40 rifle hung carelessly on a nail near the door of his dugout. This had puzzled Reivers at first. Would a bad man like Moir be so simple as to leave his rifle where any one might lay hands on it, and carry a six-shooter in a manner to provoke a gun-fight? When he was ordered to carry a pail of water to the dugout Reivers managed to take a careful look at the rifle, and the puzzle was explained. The breech-block had been taken out and the fine weapon was no more deadly than any club eight pounds in weight.
His respect for Moir had increased with this discovery. Evidently Moir was not so thick-headed after all. He took no chances. The only effective shooting-iron in camp was his six-shooter and, with this he was thoroughly master of the situation.