The prey of the strongest

by Morley Roberts

To Quin, Pete had become the very incarnation of the devil, and he was wholly unconscious now that he had ever wronged him. The fact that he had stolen Jenny from him was but an old story. And Pete had brought it upon himself. No one but Quin in the whole world could have known (as Quin did know) that any kindness, any decency of conduct, in Pete would have secured Jenny to him against the world itself. She was pure faithfulness and pure affection, and malleable as wax in any warmth of heart. But Pete had been even as his fellows. He should have wedded some creature of the dust like Annawillee, to whom brutality was but her native mud. And Jenny was a strange blossom such as rarely grows in any tribe or race of men.

It was not of Jenny that Quin thought. He forgot her very danger that night and forgot his own. He even forgot his child. He remembered nothing but the burnt Mill, nothing but the spiked logs. Oh, but he "had it in" for Pete!

"He's burnt my Mill," said Quin. In spite of any help the loss would be heavy, but it was not the loss that Quin thought of: it was of the Mill itself. So fine a creature it was, so live, so quick, so wonderful. Rebuilt it might be, but it would no longer be the Mill that he had made: that he had picked up a mere foundling, as a derelict of the river, and turned to something so like a living thing that he came to love it. Now it was hot ashes, burning embers: the wind played with it. It was dead!

There was no sign of red fire behind them now, but the fire burnt within Quin. The fire was out in Pete. He wished he had never seen Jenny, never seen the Mill, never played the fire. He went blind as he paddled, ever and ever more feebly. If Quin had called to him then the Siwash would have given in: he would have said——

"All right, Mista Quin, I'm done!"

That was his nature: the nature of the Coast Indians, as Long Mac knew it. There wasn't in him or his tilikums, pure-blooded or "breeds," the stuff to stand up against the bitter, hardy White, who had taken their country and their women, and had made a new world where they speared salmon, or each other. He knew he had no chance.

But Quin never spoke, even when he was within twenty yards of his prey.

The terror of the white man got hold of Pete, and the terror of his silence maddened him anew. There was not so much as a grunt out of his pursuer. Pete saw a machine coming after him. It was not a man, it was a thing that ran Indians down and drowned them. So might a steamer, a dread "piah-ship," run down the dug-out of some poor wild Siwash in some unexplored creek. Quin was not a man, or a white man, he was the White Men: the very race. There had always been a touch of the wild race in Pete: an underlying hint of the wrath of those who go under. He had avenged himself, but it was still in vain. The last word was, it seemed, with the deadly thing behind him.

Of a sudden Pete howled. It was a horrid cry: like the cry of a solitary coyoté on a bluff in moonlight on a prairie of the South. The very forests echoed with it, as they had echoed in dim ages past with the war-whoops of other Indians. It made Quin turn his head as he rowed. It was just in time, for with one sweep of his paddle Pete had turned his canoe. The next instant it ran alongside the boat, and Pete with one desperate leap came on board with his bare knife in his hand. He fell upon his knees and scrambled to his feet as Quin, loosing his oars, got to his. The capsized dug-out floated side by side with the boat.

"I fix you," said Pete. Even in the darkness Quin could see the white of his eye, the uplifted hand, the knife. The boat swayed, nearly went over, Pete struck and missed, staggered, threw out his left arm and Quin caught it. The next moment they were both in the river, fighting desperately.