"I can guess his reason," jeered the Scotchman. "But I'd like to hear you put a name to it."
Holt grinned maliciously and waved a hand toward the girl who was pillowing the head of her lover. "The name of his reason is Sheba O'Neill, but it's goin' to be Sheba Elliot soon, looks like."
"You mean—"
The little miner took the words triumphantly out of his mouth. He leaned forward and threw them into the face of the man he hated. "I mean that while you was dancin' and philanderin' with other women, Gordon Elliot was buckin' a blizzard to save the life of the girl you both claimed to love. He was mushin' into fifty miles of frozen hell while you was fillin' up with potted grouse and champagne. Simultaneous with the lame goose and the monkey singlestep you was doin,' this lad was windjammin' through white drifts. He beat you at your own game, man. You're a bear for the outdoor stuff, they tell me. You chew up a blizzard for breakfast and throttle a pack of wolves to work up an appetite for dinner. It's your specialty. All right. Take your hat off to that chechacko who has just whaled you blind. He has outgamed you, Colby Macdonald. You don't run in his class. I see he is holding his haid up again. Give him another half-hour and he'd be ready to go to the mat with you again."
The big Alaskan pushed away a fear that had been lingering in his mind ever since he had stumbled on that body buried in the snow yesterday afternoon. Was his enemy going to escape him, after all? Could Holt be telling the true reason why they had left town so hurriedly? He would not let himself believe it.
"You ought to work up a better story than that," he said contemptuously. "You can throw a husky through the holes in it. How could Elliot know, for instance, that Miss O'Neill was not safe?"
"The same way you could' a' known it," snapped old Gideon. "He 'phoned to Smith's Crossin' and found the stage hadn't got in and that there was a hell of a storm up in the hills."
Macdonald set his face. "You're lying to me. You stumbled over the stage while you were making your getaway. Now you're playing it for an alibi."
Elliot had risen. Sheba stood beside him, her hand in his. She spoke quietly.
"It's the truth. Believe it or not as you please. We care nothing about that."