"Well?"
"What is it that saves our souls, young feller, the cross, or the man on the cross?"
"The God on the cross."
"Well, I ain't got your God handy, so a man on the cross is as far as I'm prepared to go. I'm putting up a handicap in favor of your side. That's what I calls a sporting proposition. Now, isn't it?"
"I am no judge," Storm answered, and the trader chuckled. His manner was friendly, almost confiding.
He carried in his hands and clanked together four spikes such as are used to pin the rails down to the ties or sleepers on an American railroad. They had served in his camp for tent pegs—a sign of riches that, and many had been the attempts to steal such treasures.
"These here spikes," he said, "is to nail you good and hard to this cross. Then I'll turn my god loose, and you can do the same. You and your woman here can preach all you've a mind to. Only, I stake my life and a quarter of a million dollars that your God's dead."
It was then that Rain grasped his meaning, and screamed again and again for mercy, offering her body as her husband's ransom.
But the sacred woman's appeal had stirred the dying embers of her brother's manhood. Heap-of-dogs took station in front of Rain, blustering, pot-valiantly defiant, offering battle to the Crow or anybody who should dare to touch her.
At a sign from the trader, one of his bartenders poured two or three drops of a drug into a pint of fire water, then brought it running to Heap-of-dogs, who swallowed the whole at a draught. Afterwards he stood rocking backwards and forwards, wondering who it was he wanted to kill, babbling invitations to anybody who would like to have a battle.