"If Pete——"
It didn't bear thinking of, so Quin wouldn't think of it. He was jealous, hideously jealous. He could have torn Pete asunder with his powerful hands. He felt his nerves in a network within him, and in his skin. They thrilled like fire.
"My poor little Jenny!"
Why, the fact was that he loved her! When one comes to think of it, this was a monstrous discovery for him to make. He had really never loved anyone, certainly not dead Lily, more certainly not that white woman over in Victoria, though he thought he had. What he felt for Jenny was a revelation; it made him a saint and a devil at once, as passion does even the best and worst of men. And Quin had force and fire, and bone, and muscle and a big heavy head and hands like clip-hooks. Now passion shook him as if he were a rag in the wind.
He came down to Shack-Town, and stopped. He was hot but again he sweated ice. He looked down the road and saw figures moving.
"Which is the shack?" he asked himself.
He went past Wong's house, where Jenny lay on a table with ten jabbering Chinamen around her. He heard a high-low sing-song of their chatter and cursed his boy Sam for leaving the house as he had done.
"I'll kick the damn stuffin' out of him," said Quin savagely.
He passed Indian Annie's and saw the group beyond it, standing about Pete's recumbent body. Skookum Charlie was almost in tears to think that Pete would be hanged. Annie wiped her bloody face with her skirt. Annawillee, howling curses at Pete, sat by her.
"What's all this?" said Quin, coming out of the darkness. He saw Pete, or rather saw a body. He spoke hoarsely.