He went to Little Mystery, and his stern face relaxed into a smile as she put up her arms to greet him.
“So it’s you, is it?” he asked again, taking her warm little face and soft curls between his two hands. “They want you, an’ they want you bad. Well, they can have grub, an’ they can have me, but”— he looked up to meet Pelliter’s eyes— “I’m damned if they can have you,” he finished.
Suddenly the night was broken by another sound, the sharp, explosive crack of rifles. They could hear the beat of bullets against the log wall of the cabin. One crashed through the door, tearing away a splinter as wide as a man’s arm, and as MacVeigh nodded to the path of the bullet he laughed. Pelliter had heard that laugh before. He knew what it meant. He knew what the death-whiteness of MacVeigh’s face meant. It was not fear, but something more terrible than fear. His own face was flushed. That is the difference in men.
MacVeigh suddenly darted across the danger zone to the opposite half of the cabin.
“If that’s your game, here goes,” he cried. “Now, damn y’, you’re so anxious to fight— get at it ’n’ fight!”
He spoke the last words to Pelliter. Billy always swore when he went into action.
XI
THE NIGHT OF PERIL
On his own side of the cabin Pelliter began tugging at a small, thin block laid between two of the logs. The shooting outside had ceased when the two men opened up the loopholes that commanded a range seaward. Almost immediately it began again, the dull red flashes showing the location of the Eskimos, who had drawn back to the ridge that sloped down to the Bay. As the last of five shots left his Remington Billy pulled in his gun and faced across to Pelliter, who was already reloading.
“Pelly, I don’t want to croak,” he said, “but this is the last of Law at Fullerton Point— for you and me. Look at that!”