"We got to let him go. Put back his little two ounces, so he won't suspicion nothin'. Then, when he wakes up, I'll slip him a bottle of hooch fer a present, an' he'll hit fer camp and start in on it. It won't last long, an' then you an' me an' Scroggs
will happen along with more hooch to sell him. When he digs up the dust to pay fer it, I'll tend to him. You two git the Injun—but he's mine. I've got a long score to settle with him—an' I know'd if I waited long enough, my time would come."
CHAPTER XVIII
LOST
Brent was conscious of a drone of voices. They came from a great distance—from so great a distance that he could not distinguish the words. He half-realized that somewhere, men were talking.
Befuddled, groping, his brain was struggling against the stupor that had held him unconscious for an hour. Two months before, half the amount of liquor he had taken into his system would have drugged him into a whole night's unconsciousness, but the life in the open, and the hard work in the gravel and on the trail, had so strengthened him physically that the rum, even in the poisonous air of the cabin could not deaden him for long. Gradually, out of the drone of voices a word was sensed by his groping brain. Then a group of words. Where was he? Who were these men? And why did they persist in talking when he wanted to sleep? His head ached, and he was conscious of a dull pain in his cramped neck. He was about to shift into an easier position, when suddenly he realized where he was. He was drunk—in the filthy cabin
of the Belva Lou—and the voices were the voices of Claw, and the mate, and the Captain, who were still at their liquor. A wave of sickening remorse swept him. He, Carter Brent, couldn't keep away from the hooch. Even in the vile cabin of the Belva Lou, he had fallen for it. It was no use. He would kill himself—would blow his worthless brains out and be done with it, rather than face—A sudden savage rage obsessed him. Kill himself, he would, but first—he would rid the North of these vultures.
He was upon the point of leaping to his feet, and with his fists, his chair—anything that came to hand, annihilating the brutish occupants of the cabin, when the gruff voice of the Captain cut in upon Claw's droning monotone.
"An' when we git him an' his Injun planted, me an' Asa'll take his dogs an' hit back here, an' you kin strike east along the coast till you pick up another woman. It's a damn outrage—that's what it is! Chargin' me fifty dollars apiece fer greasy old pelters like them, that ain't worth the grub they eat! What I want is a young one—good lookin' an' young."
"You had yer pick out of the eight," growled Claw.