The two in the cabin looked at each other. One was white to the lips. The other smiled grimly. It was the gambler that spoke their common thought.
"Bully West, by all that's holy!"
CHAPTER XXIV
WEST MAKES A DECISION
Came to those in the cabin a string of oaths, the crack of a whip lashing out savagely, and the yelps of dogs from a crouching, cowering team.
Whaley slipped a revolver from his belt to the right-hand pocket of his fur coat.
The door burst open. A man stood on the threshold, a huge figure crusted with snow, beard and eyebrows ice-matted. He looked like the storm king who had ridden the gale out of the north. This on the outside, at a first glance only. For the black scowl he flung at his partner was so deadly that it seemed to come red-hot from a furnace of hate and evil passion.
"Run to earth!" he roared. "Thought you'd hole up, you damned fox, where I wouldn't find you. Thought you'd give Bully West the slip, you'n' that li'l' hell-cat. Talk about Porcupine Creek, eh? Tried to send me mushin' over there while you'n' her—"
What the fellow said sent a hot wave creeping over the girl's face to the roots of her hair. The gambler did not speak, but his eyes, filmed and wary, never lifted from the other's bloated face.
"Figured I'd forget the ol' whiskey cache, eh? Figured you could gimme the double-cross an' git away with it? Hell's hinges, Bully West's no fool! He's forgot more'n you ever knew."