The boy's face was alight with good feeling. He sat up eagerly.
"That's just how I thought," he cried. "I——" A knock at the door was followed by the entrance of a bell-boy with the cocktail. Alec seized it, and drank thirstily.
Kars looked on. He gave no sign.
"That feller knows his job," he said, as the boy withdrew.
Alec laughed. He was feeling in better case already.
"Sure he does. A single push on that bell means one cocktail. He generally makes the trip twice in the morning. But say, talking of Murray, one of these days I'm going to make a big talk with him and just tell him what I feel 'bout things. I've got to tell him I've just bin a blamed young fool and didn't understand the sort of man he was."
"Then you've had trouble with him—again?" Kars' question had a sudden sharpening in it. He was thinking of what Bill had told him.
"Not a thing. Say, we haven't had a crooked word since we quit the old Fort. He's a diff'rent guy when he gets away from his—store. No, sir, Murray's wise. He guesses I need to see and do things. And he's helped me all he knows. And he showed me around some dandy places before I got wise."
He laughed boisterously, and his laugh drove straight to the heart of the man who heard it.
Kars was no moralist, but he knew danger when he saw it, moral or physical. The terrible danger into which this youth, this foolish brother of Jessie, had been plunged by Murray McTavish stirred him as he had not been stirred for years. Women, gaming, drink. This simple, weak, splendid youth. Leaping Horse, the cesspool of the earth. A mental shudder passed through him. But the acutest thought of the moment was of the actions of Murray McTavish. Why had he shown this boy "places"? Why had he financed him privately, and not left it to Ailsa Mowbray? Why, why, had he lied to Bill on the subject of a quarrel with Alec?