"Curse him and welcome," Whaley replied. "But don't fool yourself
about him. He's a go-getter. Didn't he go up Peace River after Pierre
Poulette? Didn't he drag him back with cuffs on 'most a year later?
That's what you've got against you, three hundred red-coats like him."
"You tryin' to scare me?" demanded West sullenly.
"I'm trying to hammer some common sense into your head. Your chance for a safe getaway rests on one thing. You've got to have friends in the Lone Lands who'll hide you till you can slip out of the country. Can you do that if the trappers—friends of McRae, nearly all of 'em—carry the word of what you did to this girl?"
"I'm gonna take her with me." West stuck doggedly to his idea. He knew what he wanted. His life was forfeit, anyhow. He might as well go through to a finish.
From where she sat before the great fire Jessie's whisper reached Whaley. "Don't let him, please." It was an ineffective little wail straight from the heart.
Whaley went on, as though he had not heard. "It's your deal, not mine. I'm just telling you. Take this girl along, and your life's not worth a plugged nickel."
"Hell's hinges! In two days she'll be crazy about me. Tha's how I am with women."
"In two days she'll hate the ground you walk on, if she hasn't killed herself or you by that time."
Waves of acute pain were pricking into Jessie's legs from the pink toes to the calves. She was massaging them to restore circulation and had to set her teeth to keep from crying.
But her subconscious mind was wholly on what passed between the men. She knew that Whaley was trying to reëstablish over the other the mental dominance he had always held. It was a frail enough tenure, no doubt, likely to be upset at any moment by vanity, suspicion, or heady gusts of passion. In it, such as it was, lay a hope. Watching the gambler's cold, impassive face, the stony look in the poker eyes, she judged him tenacious and strong-willed. For reasons of his own he was fighting her battle. He had no intention of letting West take her with him.