“But it may not all be loss for you,” the old man proceeded, grimly. “Perhaps the girl will be burned up—perhaps that was in your trade with Britt.”
“I don’t know what you mean about any girl,” mumbled MacLeod, looking away from the old man’s boring eyes.
“You’re a liar again as well as a dirty whelp of a sneak.”
Lane spat the words over his shoulder, stumping away, the bristle of his gray beard standing out like an angry porcupine’s quills.
“I don’t allow anybody to put them words on me!” roared MacLeod.
“You don’t, heh?” Lane whirled and stumped back. He bent down and set his face close to the saplings, his eyes narrowing like a cat’s, his nose wrinkling in mighty anger. “You can steal time paid for by Pulaski D. Britt, and hang around Misery Gore, and coax on an ignorant girl into a worse hell than she’s living in now”—he pointed a quivering finger at the smoke-wreathed valley—“when you know and I know, and everyone on these mountain-tops of the Umcolcus knows and gossips it with the settlements, that you’ve picked her up only to throw her farther into the wallow where you found her. It’s the Ide girl you’re courtin’. It’s poor little Kate of Misery that you’re killin’. There isn’t another man in the north woods mean enough to steal from a girl as poor as she is—steal love and hope and faith. It’s all she’s got, MacLeod, and you’ve taken all.”
The young man grunted a sullen oath.
“There’s a lot I could say to you,” raged Lane, “but I ain’t going to waste time doing it. I’ll simply express my opinion of you by—”
He spat squarely into the convulsed face of MacLeod, and went away into his cabin.