"I wonder if he's done with Pitt River Pete, yet," wondered a third. "D'ye think he druv them steers into the cañon?"
"Who else? No, Ned Quin ain't through with Pete. Now I like Pete, he's a first-class Siwash, not bad by no means. And I never cottoned to Ned. He's got religion now, eh? Oh, shucks!"
So the fates and men disposed of things even at the time that the Kamloops sternwheeler came sweeping west through the quiet waters of the lakes and the quick stream of the connecting river, bearing Pete and his strange fortunes.
He fell instantly among such thieves of reputation, such usual slanderers of hope in sorrowful men, and heard the worst there was to hear, made better by no kindly word. Perhaps they knew well in their hearts that reformation was a vain thing: they scorned Ned's efforts to be better, and made the worst, as the world is apt to do, of all he had done. They drew frenzying pictures of Mary with the half-hid face: they told Pete of her sad aspect, and related, in gross passages of bloody words, exaggerations constructed out of stories from the hospital of mercy.
As if their incitements were insufficient, the coast talk of George and Jenny came up stream to him.
"Him and her's havin' a hell of a good time, Pete. He took your pretty klootchman over to Victoria as bold as brass, as if he was Lord High Muckamuck and she my Lady Dandy oh! Druv her araound in carriages, little Jenny as we knowed in Mis' Alexander's kitchen: she ez praoud ez any white woman, dressed to kill, and no fatal error. He's giv' her silks and satins like as if she wuz his wife, and she gigglin' happy. I say it's a dern shame for a man to kapsualla a chap's klootchman. Bymby he'll throw her over, chuck her out. And they say she's got a kid now, and it ain't yours, Pete."
There was love of offspring deep in Pete's heart, hidden from himself till this moment. He ran out of the shanty into the street.
"There ain't no need to fill the boy up the way you're doin'," said one of the loafers uneasily. "If ain't no good to make him so ez he'll murder them Quins."
The others laughed.
"None of us is stuck on the Quins," they declared. "And if Pete is burro enough to bray too loud and kick up his heels, forgettin' he's only a Siwash, they'll fill him up with lead. And even in this yer British Columbia, which is a dern sight too law-abidin' for a man, we reckon that self-defence is a good defence sometimes. Here's the worst of luck to Judge Begbie, anyhaow."