"Why should you try? I ask no one to understand me. I care not what people think."
"About the Indians, I mean——"
"The Indians? What do you know of my viewpoint in regard to the Indians?" The man's face had hardened at her mention of the Indians.
"I know this!" exclaimed the girl. "That you are trading them whiskey! With my own eyes I saw Mr. Lapierre smash your kegs—the kegs that were cunningly disguised as bales of freight and marked with your name, and I saw the whiskey spilled out upon the ground."
She paused, expecting a denial, but MacNair remained silent and again she saw the peculiar twinkle in his eye as he waited for her to proceed. "And I—you, yourself told me that you would kill some of Mr. Lapierre's Indians! Do you call that justice—to kill men because they happen to be in the employ of a rival trader—one who has as much right to trade in the Northland as you have?"
Again she paused, but the man ignored her question.
"Go on," he said shortly.
"And you told me your Indians had to work so hard they had no time for book-learning, and that the souls of the Indians were black as—as hell."
"And I told you, also, that I have never owned any whiskey. Why do you believe me in some things and not in others? It would seem more consistent, Miss Chloe Elliston, for you either to believe or to disbelieve me."
"But, I saw the whiskey. And as for what you, yourself, told me—a man will scarcely make himself out worse than he is."