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Mocha's words added to Rouletta's terror, for it showed that other minds ran as did hers. Already, it seemed to her, Pierce Phillips had been adjudged guilty. Through the murk of fright, of apprehension in which her thoughts were racing there came a name 'Poleon Doret. Here was deep trouble, grave peril, a threat to her newfound happiness.
If Doret figures to start a barber-shop with her for his masseur, why, we'll have to lay him low with one of his own razors." Mr. Bridges nodded his complete approval of this suggestion. "Right-o! I'll bust a mirror with him myself. Them barber-shops is no place for good girls."
Into this atmosphere of constraint came 'Poleon Doret, and, had it not been for his own anxieties, he would have derived much amusement from the situation. As it was, however, he was quite blind to it, showing nothing save his own deep feeling of concern. "M'sieu's," he began, hurriedly, "dat gal she's gettin' more seeck. I'm scare' she's goin' die to-night. Mebbe you set up wit' me, eh?"
He began to resent it keenly. Even Doret and the trader seemed to share the general feeling, hence the thought of the long, lonesome winter approaching reduced the Lieutenant to a state of black despondency, deepened by the knowledge that he now had an open enemy in camp in the person of Runnion. Then, too, he had taken a morbid dislike to the new man, Stark.
Napoleon Doret had seen the manner of the stranger's surrender of his gun, and, realizing too late what it meant, had acted. At the very instant of the fellow's treachery, Doret struck with his bottle just in time to knock the weapon from his hand, but not in time to prevent its discharge. The bullet was lodged in the wall a foot from where Gale stood.
"Let me tell you what I saw with my own eyes. I knew a girl once that was just as good and pure as Necia, and just as pretty, too yes, and a thousand times prettier." "Ho, ho!" laughed Doret, sceptically. "She was an Eastern girl, and she come West where men were different to what she'd been used to.
"She's on her way to Dyea," Pierce insisted. "She can't be far " 'Poleon Doret was angry. "I don' listen to no woman be joke 'bout, you hear? Dis boy spik true. He was in Linderman las' night, for I seen him on top of Chilkoot yesterday myse'f, wit' pack on his back so beeg as a barn." "Do you know the accused?" queried the spokesman. 'Poleon turned with a shrug. "Non! No!
By this time Doret had finished with their blankets, and the four set out for town, but instead of following the others they accepted Necia as guide and chose the trail to Black Bear Creek. They had not gone far before she took occasion to lag behind with the Lieutenant. "I couldn't thank you before all those people they would have read our secret but you know how I feel, don't you, Meade?" "Why!
He made no sound in reply, but drove his canoe shoreward with quicker strokes. It was evident he would effect his landing near the lower end of the spit, for now he was within hearing distance, and driving closer every instant. Necia heard the gambler call: "Sheer off, Doret! You can't land here!"
She recalled the old Corporal's words of a few weeks ago, and her conversation with Stark came back to her. What if it were true that which Runnion implied? What if he did not intend to ask her, after all? What if he had only been amusing himself? She cried out sharply at this, and when Doret staggered in beneath a great load of skins he found her in a strange excitement.
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