“Courtin’ her, hey? Another case of it? I say, Rodliff, pretty soon there won’t be a whole arm or leg left on my boss if this young man here keeps chasin’ him round the country and breaks a bone on him for ev’ry girl the two of ’em get against together.”
He laughed to the full content of his soul, and then turned on the girl.
“Why, you ragged little fool, Colin MacLeod is crazier than a hornet in a thrashin’-machine over Rod Ide’s girl. He’s up in camp now with an arm in a sling to make him remember a fight he and this young dude here got into over her. And he’s up there beyond Pogey Notch sitting on a stump swearing at the choppers and bragging with every other breath that he’ll kill the dude and marry the girl—and I don’t reckon he’s changed his mind in two days since I saw him last.”
“You lie!” screamed the girl.
“Hold on, there, Miss Spitfire,” broke in the sheriff, himself highly amused by the humor of the situation as it appeared to him, “there isn’t a man between Castonia and Blunder Lake but what is talking about it. A hundred men saw the fight. I reckon five hundred have heard MacLeod ravin’ about how much he loves the Ide girl. So if he ever courted you it must have been just for the sake of getting used to the game.” Even the fawning male citizens of Misery Gore cackled their little chorus in the laughter that followed the high sheriff’s jest.
She drew back slowly and gazed on them all, her lips rolled away from her white teeth. Those jeering faces from “outside” represented property, law, the smug self-satisfaction of all who despised Misery Gore’s squalid breed.
They stood there in the midst of the land they so arrogantly claimed, ready to toss her away once more in the everlasting game of battledore and shuttlecock. They were afraid for the dollars that made them different from the wretches of Misery. They gloried in their dollars—they mocked her in that moment, the bitterness of which only her heart understood. Let them look out for their dollars, then!
Up there where the blue hills divided was sitting Colin MacLeod calling on the name of another woman and nursing a wound received for that woman’s sake. Let him look out for himself!
“We can make the Blake-cutting camps with you to-night,” said Britt, his mind on business once again. “We’ll take good care of you, and you might as well start one time as another. Out with the stuff and down with the houses, Rodliff.”
At the orders the men began to busy themselves, paying no further attention to Misery’s inhabitants.