He turned at the door and looked from Britt to Barrett.
“You’ve put a big thing up to me, gents, and you’ve sprung it on me like a crack with a sled-stake. If I got dizzy and answered you short it was your own fault. Give me a night to sleep on it.”
Outside he twisted his hand into the collar of Tommy Eye and started towards the main camp, dragging the inebriate. “I’ll see that he keeps his mouth shut, gents,” he called back to them.
“You needn’t worry, John,” announced Britt, closing the door and pulling out another cigar. “He’ll do it.” He waited for the sulphur to burn from the match, and lighted his tobacco, a smile of triumph wrinkling under his beard.
“You don’t usually tackle Pulaski D. Britt for good, practical advice without gettin’ it,” he went on. “The girl is crazy after MacLeod. You’ll find MacLeod square when he makes a promise. He’s got fool notions about those things. And when she’s married to him and settled down here in these woods, where she belongs, the chap that wants to make her Exhibit A in a slander against John Barrett will find himself up against a mighty tough proposition. You see that, don’t you? Now the next thing is to get her out of the hands of that gang that want to use her against you.”
He mused a moment.
“All that we need to do is to send a man up to Jerusalem to-morrow, and say that you’re all ready to start for outside and propose to take the girl along. If any one in this world has any rights over her, you have. They can’t refuse. And now we’ll go to bed, John, for if ever two men needed sleep, I reckon we’re the ones.”
But it was not unbroken slumber that came to them. The big winds outside roared with the sound of a bursting avalanche. Over the camp the sawing limbs of the interlaced crowns shrieked and groaned. There were deeper, further, and more mystic sounds, like mighty ’cellos. And when the great blow was at its height the wangan camp, built upon the roots of the splay-foot spruces, swayed with the writhing of the roots, creaked in its timbers, and seemed to toss like a craft on a crazy sea. There were noises near at hand in the woods like the detonations of heavy guns. Every now and then the earth shivered, and thunderous echoes boomed down the forest aisles.