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"Ygerne," cried Drennen harshly, "why do you travel with men like that Sefton and Lemarc?" Her voice was cool, her eyes were cool, as she answered him. "Marc Lemarc is my cousin. Captain Sefton is his friend. Is that reason enough?" "No. What have the three of you in common?" She caught up one knee between her clasped hands, once more seated, and looked up at him curiously.
When later men learned that that blood was drawn in riotous, converging currents from unconquerable fighting Scotch highlanders and from a long line of French nobility there came no surprise in the discovery. Men and women together, Kootanie George and Ernestine, Garcia and Drennen, Père Marquette and Mère Marquette, felt the difference between her and themselves.
He could make out a plume of smoke where the impatience of Max and George would be bestirring Itself. Ahead and below lay Red Deer Lake, a thousand dizzy feet down, seeming impossible of achievement from where Drennen stood. He pushed a stone over the rocks with his boot. He saw it leap outward and drop, plummet wise, saw the white spray of the lake leap upward as the stone plunged into the water.
Ten minutes after leaving Drennen he had sent a man on horseback scurrying down the hundred miles of trail to Lebarge. The man carried a letter to the General Manager. The letter ran in part: ". . . I don't know whether the man is crazy or not. Having seen his specimens I'm rather inclined to think he's not. But he's fool enough to have shown the stuff before filing on his claim.
We are just in the forests together, and the solitude and the starlight up yonder and the bigness of the open night are working their wills upon us. Just remember one thing, Max," and his voice grew a shade sterner, "when the hard time comes don't let your heart-strings get mixed up with your sworn duty. If you did I'd be ashamed of you, not proud, my boy." Drennen slipped away through the dark.
You have made me love you, me, David Drennen, who knows there is no such thing as love in a rotten world! I want you in my arms; I want to kiss that red mouth of yours; I want to kill any man who so much as looks at you! My life was as I would have it; in a few days I would be a rich man with all of the power of a rich man; . . . and then you came.
But they wondered, looking at him and then at the other, if he understood the thing standing unhidden in Kootanie George's eyes. Yes, he understood. For, just the wee fraction of a second before the Canadian struck, Drennen jerked up his own hands, ready for him. And the two struck at the same instant. There was to be no finesse of boxing; these men had no knowledge of fistic trickery.
Even a few pesos had found their way from Garcia's pockets and were accepted without challenge. For fifteen minutes the game was quiet and slow enough. Then at a smiling suggestion from the Mexican the original bet was doubled. It was poker dice now, having begun as razzle dazzle. There were no horses since horses delayed matters. Beside Drennen and Garcia there were five other men playing.
Dave Drennen was a big man, no man here so big save Kootanie George alone, who was two inches the taller and fully thirty pounds the heavier. The Canadian stood four inches better than six feet in his squat, low-heeled boots and must turn sideways to get his massive shoulders through most doors hereabouts.
Frayne . . . or Sefton . . . while nominally first vice-president was in actuality the manager of Eastern Mines. He had always been a man without principle but John Harper Drennen had believed in him. There came a time when the Eastern Mines threw a new scheme upon the market. Frayne had engineered the plan and had made John Harper Drennen believe in it.
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