So he was to forswear this vengeance, which was no vengeance after all, but in verity a just punishment. They asked him—a man—a man’s man—a Northman—to do this, and for what? For no reward, but on the contrary to insure himself lasting bitterness. He strove to look at the proposition calmly, clearly, but it was difficult. If only by freeing this other villain as well as her uncle he would do a good to her, then he would not hesitate. Love was not the only thing. He marvelled at his own attitude; this could not be his old self debating thus. He had asked for another chance to show that he was not the old Roy Glenister; well, it had come, and he was ready.
Roy dared not look at Helen any more, for this was the hardest moment he had ever lived.
“You ask this for your uncle, but what of—of the other fellow? You must know that if one goes free so will they both; they can’t be separated.”
“It’s almost too much to ask,” the Kid took up, uncertainly. “But don’t you think the work is done? I can’t help but admire McNamara, and neither can you—he’s been too good an enemy to you for that—and—and—he loves Helen.”
“I know—I know,” said Glenister, hastily, at the same time stopping an unintelligible protest from the girl. “You’ve said enough.” He straightened his slightly stooping shoulders and looked at the unopened package wearily, then slipped the rubber band from it, and, separating the contents, tore them up—one by one—tore them into fine bits without hurry or ostentation, and tossed the fragments away, while the woman began to sob softly, the sound of her relief alone disturbing the silence. And so he gave her his enemy, making his offer gamely, according to his code.
“You’re right—the work is done. And now, I’m very tired.”
They left him standing there, the glory of the dying day illumining his lean, brown features, the vision of a great loneliness in his weary eyes.
He did not rouse himself till the sky before him was only a curtain of steel, pencilled with streaks of soot that lay close down above the darker sea. Then he sighed and said, aloud:
“So this is the end, and I gave him to her with these hands”—he held them out before him curiously, becoming conscious for the first time that the left one was swollen and discolored and fearfully painful. He noted it with impersonal interest, realizing its need of medical attention—so left the cabin and walked down into the city. He encountered Dextry and Simms on the way, and they went with him, both flowing with the gossip of the camp.
“Lord, but you’re the talk of the town,” they began. “The curio hunters have commenced to pull Struve’s office apart for souvenirs, and the Swedes want to run you for Congress as soon as ever we get admitted as a State. They say that at collar-an’-elbow holts you could lick any of them Eastern senators and thereby rastle out a lot of good legislation for us cripples up here.”