Ned Quin hadn't been down in the coast country for years. Indeed, the last time he had been in New Westminster he had gone there by coach. Now it was a new world for him, a world of strange hurry and excitement. B.C. was in a hurry: the people of the East were in a hurry: the very river in the roaring Fraser Cañon seemed to run faster. And he, of all the world, was the one thing that seemed to go slow, he and his train. He was sober now, and in terror of what he had done.
"By God, they'll hang me," he said. They hanged men for murder in British Columbia, hanged them quickly, promptly, gave them a short quick trial, and short shrift.
"I wish I was over the Line," said Ned, as he huddled in a corner seat and nursed his chin almost on his knees. Across the Line they didn't hang men quick, unless they stole horses and were exceedingly bad citizens who wouldn't take a clean cut threat as a warning. "I wish I was over the Line."
And the 49th Parallel wasn't far away. Yet to get to it wasn't easy. He had galloped from what he believed a house of death with no money in his pocket. He had borrowed from the skipper of the sternwheeler, which took him from Kamloops to the Ferry, enough to pay his fare down to Port Moody. He must go to George's to get more.
"They'll catch me," said Ned Quin, "they'll catch me: they'll hang me by the neck. That's what they say—'by the neck till you are dead'—I've heard Begbie say it, damn him!"
Yes, that was what Judge Begbie said to men who cut their klootchmen to pieces with a shovel.
"I—I was drunk," said old Ned. "Poor Mary."
She had been as good a klootchman as there was in the country, sober, clean, kind, long-suffering. He knew in his heart how much she had endured.
"Why didn't she leave me?" he whined. Whenever the train stopped he looked up. He saw men he knew, but no one laid his hand on his shoulder. Few spoke to him: they said that it was as clear as mud that he was rotten with liquor and half mad. They left him alone. He wanted them to speak to him, for he saw Mary on the floor of his shack. He saw the shovel.
"Pete will find her," said Ned. "He said he'd kill me if I hurt her. He'll take her horse and ride to Kamloops and tell 'em, and they'll telegraph and catch me, they'll catch me!"