"Am I?"
"I know what I'm talking about. Nine out of ten of the men think you tried to murder Macdonald after you had robbed him and that your nerve weakened on the job. This seems to some of the most lawless to give them a moral right to put you out of the way. Anyhow, it is a kind of justification, according to their point of view. I'm not defending it, of course. I'm telling you so that you can appreciate your danger."
"You have done your duty, then, Peter."
"But you don't intend to take my advice?"
"I'll tell you what I told you last time when you warned me. I'm going through with the job I've been hired to do, just as you would stick it out in my place. I don't think I'm in much danger. Men in general are law-abiding. They growl, but they don't go as far as murder."
Peter gave him up. After all, the chances were that Gordon was right. Alaska was not a lawless country. And it might be that the best way to escape peril was to walk through it with a grin as if it did not exist.
The next issue of the Kusiak "Sun" contained a bitter editorial attack upon Elliot. The occasion for it was a press dispatch from Washington to the effect that the pressure of public opinion had become so strong that Winton, Commissioner of the General Land Office, might be forced to resign his place. This was a blow to the coal claimants, and the "Sun" charged in vitriolic language that the reports of Elliot were to blame. He was, the newspaper claimed, an enemy to all those who had come to Alaska to earn an honest living there. Under indictment for attempted murder and for highway robbery, this man was not satisfied with having tried to kill from ambush the best friend Alaska had ever known. In every report that he sent to Washington he was dealing underhanded blows at the prosperity of Alaska. He was a snake in the grass, and as such every decent man ought to hold him in scorn.
Elliot read this just as he was leaving for the Willow Creek Camp. He thrust the paper impatiently into his coat pocket and swung to the saddle. Why did they persecute him? He had told nothing but the truth, nothing not required of him by the simplest, elemental honesty. Yet he was treated as an outcast and a criminal. The injustice of it was beginning to rankle.
He was temperamentally an optimist, but depression rode with him to the gold camp and did not lift from his spirits till he started back next day for Kusiak. The news had been flashed by wire all over the United States that he was a crook. His friends and relatives could give no adequate answer to the fact that an indictment hung over his head. In Alaska he was already convicted by public opinion. Even the Pagets were lined up as to their interests with Macdonald. Sheba liked him and believed in him. Her loyal heart acquitted him of all blame. But it was to the wooing of his enemy that she had listened rather than to his. The big Scotchman had run against a barrier, but his rival expected him to trample it down. He would wear away the scruples of Sheba by the pressure of his masterful will.
In the late afternoon, while Gordon was still fifteen miles from Kusiak, his horse fell lame. He led it limping to the cabin of some miners.