He turned away and glanced out of window. Then his eyes came back claimed by the magnetism which the girl exercised.
"You know, Nancy, our war is over. The war between you and me. We declared war, didn't we? We declared it in Quebec, and we both promised to do our best, or—worst. It was a sort of compact. We made it meaning it, and understanding the meaning of it. If you got the drop on me you were to use it. The same with me. It was one of those friendly things, between friends, which might easily mean life or death. We knew that, and were ready to stand just for whatever came along. Well, we fought our battle. It's over. It's done. Now for God's sake let's forget it. It's easy for me. You see, I'm a rough, hard sort of product of these forests that doesn't worry with scruples and things. I'm not a woman who's full of the notions belonging to her sex. I can wipe the whole thing out of my mind. I can feel glad for the scrap you put up. I can think one hell of a great piece of you for it. Maybe it's different with you, being a woman. I guess it's not going to be easy forgiving the way I had to handle you back out there on the trail. Or the way you were forced to live our camp life on the way down here. Or how I've had to hold you prisoner in a rough household of rougher men. I get all that. I know the thing it is to a woman. All it means. Still, it must have been plain to you the chances of that sort of thing before you started in. That is if I was worth my salt as a fighter. Well, can you kind of forgive it? Can't you try to forget? Can't you figger the whole darn thing's past and done with, and we're back at where we were in those days in Quebec, when you didn't hate me to death, and felt good taking dinner in my company? Say, do you remember the old Myra you'll soon be boarding again? You remember our talk on the deck, when the howling gale hit us? We were talking of the sense of things in Nature, and how she mussed them up. And how we'd have done a heap better if the job had been ours. Well?" His smile deepened. "Here we are standing in the sort of fool position of—what'll I call it? Antagonism? Anyway we agreed to fight, and stand for all it meant to us, and we're both feeling all broken up at the way we had to act to hurt each other most." He shook his head. "Where's our boasted sense of things? We ought to be sitting right here talking it over, and laughing to beat the band, that I had to treat you like a dangerous bunch of goods li'ble to get me by the throat, and choke the life out of me, while you were chasing every old notion folks could stuff into your dandy head to set me broke and busted so I wouldn't know where to collect a square feed once a week. That's what we ought to be doing, if we had the sense we guess. Instead of that you're feeling badly at me for the things I had to do to you. And I'm worried to death I'll never get a laugh from you for the fool talk I don't know better than to make. You need me to send that message to Peterman. Why, sure I'll send it, even if it's to tell him how mighty glad you are to be quitting the prison I'd condemned you to, and the joy it's going to hand you to see his darnation Teuton face again. Sure I'll send it. It's the least I can do to make up to you for those things I've done to you. But—but for God's sake don't ask me to read it."
The man concluded with a gesture that betrayed his real feelings. He was in desperate earnest for all his attempt at lightness. His words came swiftly, in that headlong fashion so characteristic of his most earnest mood. And Nancy listening to him, caught something of that which lay behind them. The faintest shadow of a smile struggled into her eyes. She shook her head.
"I haven't a thought in my head about you—that way," she said. "It's not been that way with me. No." She averted her gaze from the eager eyes before her. "It's the thing I've done and been. It's the thing you, and every other honest creature, must feel about me. Oh, don't you see? The killing, the bloodshed and suffering—But I can't talk about it even now. It's all too dreadful still. I'm quitting when Father Adam goes, and—and—But believe me no judgment you can pass on me can begin to express the thing I feel about myself. Please don't think I bear one single hard thought against you."
The man laughed outright. The buoyancy of that moment was supreme. Bat Harker was again in his mind. Bat, with all his quaint, crude philosophy.
"Say, that beats everything," Bull cried. "My judgment of you. And all this time I've been guessing—Oh, hell! Say, do you know, it gets me bad when I think of you going back to Peterman and his crew? It sets me well-nigh crazy. Oh, I know. I've no right. None at all. But it don't make me feel any better. Here, I'll tell you about it. I'm not going to take to myself virtues I don't possess, and have no right to anyway. I wanted to win out in the fight against the Skandinavia because I'm a bit of a fighting machine. I wanted to win out for the dollars I'm going to help myself to. But I also wanted to win out because of the great big purpose that lies behind these mills of Sachigo. I want you to get right inside my mind on that thing so you'll know one of the reasons why I hate that you're sending word to Peterman. You'll maybe understand then the thing that made me fight you, a woman, as well as the others, and treat you in a fashion that's made me hate myself ever since. I'm going to say it as bluntly as I know how. It'll be like beating you, a helpless victim, right over the head with a club. I've acted the brute right along to you, an' I s'pose I best finish up that way. You were doing your best to sell your birthright, my birthright, to the foreigner. You were helping the alien, Peterman, and his gang, to snatch the wealth of our forests. Why? You didn't think. You didn't know. There was no one to tell you. You simply didn't know the thing you were doing.
"This man Peterman was good to you. He held out prospects that glittered. It was good enough. And all the time he was looking to steal your birthright. The birthright of every Canadian. That makes you feel bad. Sure it does. I can see it. But I got to tell it that way, because—Here, I'm on the other side. It was chance, not virtue set me there. But once there the notion got me good. Sachigo was built to defend the great Canadian forests against the foreigner. That slogan got a grip on me. Yes, it got me good. I could scrap with every breath in my body for that. Well, now we've got the Skandinavia beat, and in a year or so they'll be on the scrap heap, ready to sell at scrap price. That's so. I know. Sachigo will be the biggest thing of its kind in the world next year, and there won't be any room for the Skandinavia. That's a reason I hate for you to go back to Peterman—one reason."
"But I'm not going back," Nancy cried vehemently.
Bull stared wide-eyed.
"You're not going back?" he echoed stupidly. Then of a sudden he held out his hand. "Say, pass that message right over. Why in—Guess I'm crazy to read it—now."