"I sent my gal a letter," elucidated Nick. "Your pop Lucky put it in writin' fer me, Missy. That's it you got in your hand."
"This letter! And that villain made me believe—— Oh, oh, oh!" Evelyn burst into a flood of humiliated tears.
"You black scoundrel; you'd 'a' deceived her as you deceived my gal!" Nick made a blind rush at Raish, but was held back by his custodians. "Sure as thar's a God in Heaven, Raish," he vowed, as they restrained him, "I'll live ter kill ye yet!"
Vain threat! A sharp sound cleft the crystal air and, echoing, died away in soft detonations among the hills. The Dandy threw up his hands as he had forced so many luckless travelers to do in his career of highway robbery, and fell, gracefully, as he did everything, face downward, with a little trickle of blood, upon the snow. With a shriek of anguish a girl in a red cloak, who had been speeding up the hill, threw herself beside him, calling his name with all the loving epithets that even the lowest of the low seems able to win from some woman's heart.
Tears wrung from his being's depths for baffled retribution coursing down his rough cheeks, the Bully lifted pinioned hands to Heaven and uttered the one prayer of his life: "O Almighty Gawd, with all respect, why did You butt in? O Gawd! I've made cold meat of a score o' men on end from fust ter last! But they was jes' accident or playfulness, d'ye see? This here skunk were the only livin' thing I ever hankered fer ter kill! And Thou hast called my bluff, and took the wind outen my sails by puttin' the shootin'-iron of my vengeance inter another's hand! Thar ain't no four-flushin' Thee, O Gawd! Thou hast plumb squared the reckonin' fer all my sins, past and ter come, world without end. Amen."
Whose the hand that shot Dandy Raish no one ever knew, though many a young fool, in his cups, boasted of the high distinction. In the case of a man so universally detested perhaps official enquiry thought it policy to rest. But, possessed at the moment by a literal interpretation of duty, with a heavy heart the good minister sought his favorite Indian proselyte.
Sitting beside him, where he found him whittling peaceably in the shelter of the Customs water-butt, "O Joseph, Chilkat Jo," sighing, he began. "My son, if on your hands there be blood-guiltiness, you must repent, confess!"
The soft shavings slithered, curled and fell, as the emblem of the Raven and the Frog grew beneath the skilful knife. Then, in unimpassioned monotone, the Indian remarked, "Some day, when I velly old, old chief, I lepent, confess, make godam-hellan-blazes Clistian deathbed. But now——" He paused to twist the weird features of his tribal god into an inscrutable smile. "Now, I mally Gelly."
It was the cool of the evening. From behind the mountains northern lights shot up in streamers of living green and rose. There was a sound of bells, and "mushing," as the drivers harnessed up their dog-teams to carry the picnickers back to camp. Scarlett looked over at Evelyn with an odd contraction of the heart, where the bud of hope was trembling for life under the icy hand of circumstance, but as she did not appear to notice him he turned and went on his own road without farewell.
Then Evelyn went to Gelly where, the violence of her grief spent, she still crouched beside her lover's stiffening form. Putting an arm about her, "Come. Come home with me to live," she said. "Yes." For Gelly looked up with resentment changing to incredulity. "Please. As a favor to me. I have so much to learn. I need you."