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Updated: June 19, 2025
"Your horses are up the hill, Mr. West," he said pointedly. It is doubtful whether the trader heard. He could not keep his desirous eyes from the girl. "Is she a half or a quarter-breed?" he asked McRae. "That'll be her business and mine, sir. Will you please tak the road?" The hunter spoke quietly, restraining himself from an outbreak. But his voice carried an edge.
The warm-faced man, Bill Brown, put the quarter-breed through the customary direct examination, which served to strengthen his testimony and to bring out the fact that a terrible struggle must have taken place in the killing of Borg. The heavy table was smashed, the stool and the bunk-board splintered, and the stove over-thrown.
"She is a quarter-breed, and, moreover, the esteem in which she is held by the skulking inhabitants of the camp inclines me to the belief that er judicious er handling " "You mean that through her we might obtain the information we require?" Horrocks punctuated the other's deliberate utterances with hasty eagerness.
A half-dozen scouts were sent out to surround the plateau, with orders to report immediately anything of importance. Old Elk was detailed to follow the trail of Lapierre's sled to the very walls of the stockade. For well MacNair knew that the crafty quarter-breed was quite capable of side-stepping the obvious and carrying the girl to some rendezvous unknown to any one but himself.
"With these in your storehouse you may well expect to seriously menace the trade of both MacNair and the Hudson Bay Company's post at Fort Rae." Chloe glanced at the list indifferently. "It seems, Mr. Lapierre, that your mind is always upon trade when it is not upon the killing of men." The quarter-breed was quick to note the disapproval of her tone, and hastened to reply.
Accusations and recriminations had passed between them, with the result that MacNair, rough, bluff, and ready to fight at any time, had pounded the quarter-breed to within an inch of his life, and then, to the undisguised delight of the men of the H.B.C., had dragged him out and pitched him ignominiously into the lake. Either could have killed the other then and there.
"Good and hard, except for the slush at the Boiler and another stretch just below the Cascade." Lapierre rolled a cigarette. "Hear you caught MacNair with the goods at last," he ventured. Ripley nodded. "Looks like it," he admitted. "But what do you mean, 'at last'?" The quarter-breed laughed lightly and blew a cloud of cigarette-smoke ceilingward.
Her hatred for MacNair was real enough now. That hatred, the shame and humility, and the fact that Lapierre was pleading with her as he had never pled before, were going far to convince the girl that her previous estimate of the quarter-breed had been a mistaken estimate, and that he was in truth the fine, clean, educated man of the North which on the surface he appeared to be.
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