Part 31 (1/2)
”By--” He checked hi tihtened out her gown and smoothed her hair with little fe this way,” she se features, ”Why, what is the ry?”
His hawklike face was strained and colorless, his black eyes fierce and eager, his body bent as if to pounce upon a victim In truth he was now the predatory animal
”No,” he replied, as if her question carried noto hiave me a start You reminded me of some one How do you come to be dressed like that? I never knew you had such clothes?”
”Poleon brought them from Dawson; they are the first I ever had”
He shook his head in a slow, puzzled fashi+on
”You look just like a white girl--I mean--I don't knohat I mean”
This ti ht,” she said, and her eyes filled again
”Your skin is like milk beneath your tan, and--I don't mean any disrespect, but--Well, I'm just so damned surprised! Co to put the heart back into you”
He shoved forward a big chair with a wolf-skin flung over it, into which she sank dejectedly, while he stepped to the shelves beside the Yukon stove and took down a bottle and solanced about with faint curiosity, but the interior of the cabin showed nothing out of the ordinary, consisting as it did of one room with a cot in the corner, upon which were tus Opposite was a sheet-iron box-stove supported knee-high on a tin-capped framework of wood, and in the centre a table with oil-cloth cover Around the walls were sooods, and clothes hanging in a row
”I'ized; ”I've been too busy at the saloon to waste tih for an old roadster likethat I've learned there's only three things necessary to a man's comfort--warm clothes, a full stooes to make a man content he has inside him, and I'm not the kind to be satisfied, no matter where I am or what I have I never was that kind, so I just don't ive her leeway, and when he had concocted a weak toddy, insisted that she must drink it, which she did listlessly, while he ras in my life, Miss Necia, and one of theood to let out and talk things over; not that a fellow gains any real advantage fro his troubles, but it serves to sort of ease his mind Folks don't often coive, but ht- that she hesitated, he went on: ”I suppose there's a lot of reasons why you shouldn't confide in me--I don't like that old man of yours, nor any of your friends; but maybe that's why I'm interested If any of the you get even”
”I don't want to get even, and there is nothing to tell,” said Necia, ”except a girl's troubles, and I can't talk about them” She smiled a painful, crooked sh to you?”
”No, no! Nothing of that sort”
”Then it's that soldier?” he quizzed, shrewdly ”I knew you cared a heap for him Don't he love you?”
”Yes! That's the trouble; and he wants to ”
”See here! I don't quite follow I thought you liked hio daffy over”
”Like hiirl tre to uess I must be kind of dull,” Stark said, perplexedly
”Don't you see? I've got to give him up--I'm a squaw”
”Squaw hell! With those shoulders?”
Stark checked hi in his eneirl In every encounter the young man had bested him, and these petty defeats had crystallized his antipathy to Burrell into a hatred so strong that he had begun to lie awake nights planning a systematic quarrel For he was the kind of man who throve upon contentions: so warped in soul that when no s and conjured up a cause for en himself into that sour, sullen habit of mind that made him a dread and a menace to all who lacked his favor His path was strewn from the border North with the husks of fierce brawls, and he bore the ineradicablealways in his brain those scars that hate had seared In his eyes forever slu to be blown to life, and when erown upon hihts he would lie in solitary darkness writhing in spirit as he hounded his ht slake his thirsty vengeance After such black, sleepless hours he dragged hirounds of fancy, worn and weary, and the daylight discovered hi than ever
He had brooded over his quarrel with Gale and the Lieutenant ever since their first clash, for in this place they furnished the only objects upon which his eard for Necia was a careless whi hobby, not at all serious, entirely extraneous to his every-day life, and interesting only fro as near to an unselfish and decent motive as the man had ever coainst or swerve the course of a quarrel; wherefore, he was gladdened by the news of Burrell's discomfiture