"You know what I mean!" cried the squaw, her voice quivering with anger, "You white men are devils! You come, and you stay a while, and then you go your way, and you stop again, and your trail is a trail of misery—of misery, and of father-less half-breed babies! I wish she had killed you that day you stood out there in the snow! Maybe the harm has been already done——"
"What do you mean?" roared Brent, overturning the bench and towering above the little stove in his rage. "You can't talk to me like that! Out with it! What do you mean?"
The squaw, also, was upon her feet, cowering at the side of the bunk, as she hurled her words into
Brent's face. "Where were you last night? And, where was she?"
Two steps and Brent was before her, his face thrust to within a foot of her own: "We were together," he answered in a voice that cut cold as steel, "In a wikiup that we built in the blinding snow and the darkness to protect us from the storm. Half of the night, while she slept upon her robe, I sat and tended the fire, and then, because she insisted upon it, she tended the fire while I slept." As the man spoke never for a moment did the glittering eyes of the squaw leave his close-thrust, blazing eyes, and when he finished, she sank to the bunk with an inarticulate cry. For in the righteous wrath of the blazing eyes she had read the truth—and in his words was the ring of truth.
"Can it be?" she faltered, "Can it be that there is such a white man?"
The anger melted from Brent's heart as quickly as it had come. He saw huddled upon the bunk not a poison-tongued, snake-eyed virago, but a woman whose heart was torn with solicitude for the welfare of her child. But, was Snowdrift her child? Swiftly the thought flitted into Brent's brain, and as swiftly flashed another. Her child, or another's—what matter? One might well question her parentage—but never her love.
Gently his hand went out and came to rest upon the angular shoulder. And when he spoke the tone of his voice, even more than his words, reas
sured the woman. "There are many such white men," he said, soothingly. "You need not fear. I am your friend, and the friend of Snowdrift. I, like yourself, am here to find gold, and like yourself, I too, hate the traders of hooch—and with reason." He stepped to the stove, upturned the bench and recovered his cap. And as the old woman rose to her feet, Brent saw that the look of intense hatred had been supplanted by a look, which if not exactly of friendliness, was at least one of passive tolerance. At the doorway he paused, hesitated for a moment, and then, point blank, flashed the question that for days had been uppermost in his mind: "Who is Snowdrift?"
Wananebish leaned against a stanchion of the bunk. Instinctively, her savage heart knew that the white man standing before had spoken the truth. Her eyes closed, and for a moment, in the withered breast raged a conflict. Then her eyes opened, her lips moved, and she saw that the man was straining eagerly toward her to catch the words: "Snowdrift is my daughter," she said.