“I never heard that a feller was any less dead because an Injun or a girl shot him,” the lank smuggler retorted.

“Be reasonable, Bully,” urged Barney with his ingratiating whine.  “We come out to fix the red-coat.  We figured he was alone except for Tom, an’ o’ course Tom’s with us.  But this here’s a different proposition.  Too many witnesses ag’in’ us.  I reckon you ain’t tellin’ us it’s safe to shoot up Angus McRae’s daughter even if she is a metis.”

“Forget her,” the big whiskey-runner snarled.  “She won’t be a witness against us.”

“Why won’t she?”

“Hell’s hinges!  Do I have to tell you all my plans?  I’m sayin’ she won’t.  That goes.”  He flung out a gesture of scarcely restrained rage.  He was not one who could reason away opposition with any patience.  It was his temperament to override it.

Brad Stearns rubbed his bald head.  He always did when he was working out a mental problem.  West’s declaration could mean only one of two things.  Either the girl would not be alive to give witness or she would be silent because she had thrown in her lot with the big trader.

The old-timer knew West’s vanity and his weakness for women.  From Tom Morse he had heard of his offer to McRae for the girl.  Now he had no doubt what the man intended.

But what of her?  What of the girl he had seen at her father’s camp, the heart’s desire of the rugged old Scotchman?  In the lightness of her step, in the lift of her head, in speech and gesture and expression of face, she was of the white race, an inheritor of its civilization and of its traditions.  Only her dusky color and a certain wild shyness seemed born of the native blood in her.  She was proud, passionate, high-spirited.  Would she tamely accept Bully West for her master and go to his tent as his squaw?  Brad didn’t believe it.  She would fight—­fight desperately, with barbaric savagery.

Her fight would avail her nothing.  If driven to it, West would take her with him into the fastnesses of the Lone Lands.  They would disappear from the sight of men for months.  He would travel swiftly with her to the great river.  Every sweep of his canoe paddle would carry them deeper into that virgin North where they could live on what his rifle and rod won for the pot.  A little salt, pemmican, and flour would be all the supplies he needed to take with them.

Brad had no intention of being a cat’s-paw for him.  The older man had come along to save Tom Morse from prison and for no other reason.  He did not intend to be swept into indiscriminate crime.

“Don’t go with me, Bully,” Stearns said.  “Count me out.  Right here’s where I head for Whoop-Up.”

He turned his horse’s head and rode into the darkness.

West looked after him, cursing.  “We’re better off without the white-livered coyote,” he said at last.

“Brad ain’t so fur off at that.  I’d like blame well to be moseyin’ to Whoop-Up my own self,” Gosse said uneasily.