She crept to his knee, and laid her head on his hand. She got more beautiful every day, more gentle, more tender.
"There's not a spark of vice in the little woman," said her man, with tears in his eyes. He said he was a damn fool and spoke gruffly next time. But she understood her Chief, her great man, and was pleased to serve his gruffest speech.
"If only that cursed Siwash was dead," said George.
But if he wasn't he would either be in the "pen" for years or would be seen no more on the Fraser River. That seemed certain.
And still George was uneasy. It was impossible to say where the man was. The belief of the police that he had escaped out of the country went for nothing. British Columbia might be a mouse-trap, but it was a handy place for holing up in, and the brush alongside the river would have hidden a thousand. George had a talk about the matter with Long Mac, who was the only one of the workers in his Mill who had brains beyond his daily task.
"What do you think, McClellan?" asked the Tyee.
Mac's eyes showed that he could think.
"He's a dangerous skunk, that's my tumtum, Mr. Quin," said Mac. He told him what Ginger White had said and Quin frowned heavily.
"Fire my Mill!"
The Mill was his life, and till Jenny had borne him a child it had been his true and lasting passion. There was a fascination about it and the work of it that he loved. The scent of the lumber: the sound of the saws: the rush of the work: the hustling of the men, made something beyond words. The Mill was a live thing, warm, strong, adequate, equal to its work. It filled Quin's alert, strong mind.