“A fine thing to be masterful over a little blonde fool like that!”
Campbell scowled.
“Even though you have no respect for the lass,” he said curtly, “I see no reason why you should put it in words.”
“Why not? Why shouldn’t I, or any one else, put it in words after that?” Toppy fairly shouted the words. “She’s made the thing public herself. She came creeping up to him right out where anybody who was looking could see her, and there won’t be a man in camp to-morrow but’ll have heard that she’s fallen for Reivers. Apparently she doesn’t care; so why should I, or you, or anybody else? Reivers has got a masterful way with women! Ha, ha! Let it go at that. It’s none of my business, that’s a cinch.”
“No,” agreed Campbell; “not if you talk that way, it’s none of your business; that’s sure.”
Toppy could have struck him for the emphatic manner in which he uttered the words. But Toppy was beginning to learn to control himself and he merely gritted his teeth. The sudden stab which he had felt in his heart at the sight of the girl and Reivers had passed. In one flash there had been overthrown the fine structure which he had built about her in his thoughts. He had placed her high above himself. For some unknown reason he had looked up to her from the first moment he had seen her. He had not considered himself worthy of her good opinion. And here she was flaunting her subservience to Reivers—to a cold, sneering brute—before the eyes of the whole camp!
The rage and pain at the sight of the pair had come and gone, and that was all over. And now Toppy to his surprise found that it didn’t make much difference. The girl, and what she was, what she thought of him, or of Reivers, no longer were of prime importance to him. He didn’t care enough about that now to give her room in his thoughts.
Reivers was what mattered now—Reivers, with his air of contemptuous dominance; Reivers, who had looked on and laughed when Toppy was tugging at the runner of the broken sleigh. That laugh seemed to ring in Toppy’s ears. It challenged him even as it contemned him. It said, “I am your master; doubt it if you dare”; even as Reivers’ cold smile had said the same to Rosky and the huddled bunch of Slavs.
The girl—that was past. But Reivers had roused something deeper, something older, something fiercer than the feelings which had begun to stir in Toppy at the sight of the girl. Man—raw, big-thewed, world-old and always new man—had challenged unto man. And man had answered. The petty considerations of life were stripped away. Only one thing was of importance. The world to Toppy Treplin had become merely a place for Reivers, the Snow-Burner, and himself to settle the question which had cried for settlement since the moment when they first looked into each other’s eyes: Which was the better man?
Toppy smiled as he stretched himself and noted the new life that seemed to have come into his body. He knew what it meant. That strenuous siege of work and a week of fevered sweating had driven the alcohol out of his system. He was making a fresh start. A few weeks at the anvil now, and he would be in better shape than at any time since leaving school. He set his jaw squarely and heaved his big arms high above his head.