The Fur Bringers Part 24

"There is no wrong!" she cried. "What do you know about conditions here?"

"They come to my camp," he said simply, "one after another to beg me to help them."

"And you were not above it," she flashed back, "murderers and others!"

An honest anger fired Ambrose's eyes. "You're talking wildly," he said sternly. "I'm trying to help you."

Colina laughed.

With a great effort he commanded his temper, "What do you see yourself in your rides about the settlement?" he asked. "Poverty and wretchedness! How do you explain it when times are good--when this is known as the richest post in the north?"

Colina would have none of his reasoning. "These are just the dangerous ideas my father warned me against!" she cried pa.s.sionately. "This is how you make the natives discontented and unruly!"

"You will not listen to me!" he cried in despair.

"Listen to you! I see him lying there--helpless. I am sick with compa.s.sion for him and with hatred against the creatures who did it.

And you dare to attack him, to excuse them! I will not endure it!"

"I am not attacking him. Right or wrong, he has brought about a disastrous situation. He's the first to suffer. We're all standing on the edge of a volcano. We are five whites here, and three hundred miles from the nearest of our kind. If we want to save him and save ourselves we've got to face the facts."

Of this Colina heard one sentence. "Do you mean, to say that father brought this on himself?" she demanded, breathlessly angry.

Ambrose made a helpless gesture.

"I am to understand that you justify the breed?" she persisted.

"You have no right to put words into my mouth!"

Colina repeated like an automaton. "Do you think the breed was justified in shooting my father?"

"I will not answer."

"You've got to answer--before you and I go any farther!"

"Colina, think what you're doing!" he cried. "We must not quarrel."

"I'm not quarreling," she said with an odd, flinty quietness. "I'm trying to find out something necessary for me to know. You might as well answer. Do you think the breed was justified in shooting my father?"

Ambrose, baited beyond endurance, cried: "I do! He went into the man's house and laid hands on his property. Even a breed has rights."

Colina bowed her head as if in polite acceptance. "You had better go,"

she said in soft tones more terrible than a cry. "I am sorry I ever saw you!"

The bitterness of lovers' quarrels is in ratio with their pa.s.sion for each other. These two loved with complete abandon, consequently each could wound the other maddeningly.

But the plant of their love, vigorous as it was, was not rooted in old acquaintance. When the top withered under the blasts of anger there was no store of life below. Now each was secretly terrified by the strangeness of the being to whom he had yielded his soul.

Ambrose, wild with pain, no longer recked what he said. "You make a man mad!" he cried. "You will not listen to reason. A thing must be so just because you want it that way. I rack my brains for words to save your feelings, and this is what I get! Very well, you shall have the bald truth."

"Leave the house!" cried Colina.

"Not until I have spoken out!"

She clapped her hands over her ears.

"That is childis.h.!.+" he said scornfully. "You can hear me! Throughout the whole north your father is called the slave-driver!"

Colina faced him still and white. This was the very incandescence of anger. "Go!" she said. "I'm done with you!"

"One thing more," he said doggedly. "The price of wheat. I shouldn't have said anything about justice. Putting that aside, it will be good business for you to pay the farmers their price. Otherwise you'll have red rebellion on your hands!"

As Ambrose made for the door he met Gordon Strange coming in.

"Wait!" Colina commanded. "I want you to hear this."

It was impossible to tell from her set face what she meant to do, Ambrose waited, hoping against hope.

"You want to know about the wheat?" said Colina.

"First, your father," said Strange, anxious and compa.s.sionate.

"He is not dangerously ill," said Colina.

"Ah!" said Strange. "Yes, the farmers are waiting."

Colina said clearly: "The price is to be one-fifty per bushel."

"That's what I thought," said Strange. "I will tell them." He went.

"Ah, Colina!" cried Ambrose brokenly.

She left the room slowly, as if he had not been there.

Ambrose could not have told how he got out of the house.

CHAPTER XIV.

SIMON GRAMPIERRE.

Ambrose lay in his tent with his head hidden in his arms, trying not to think. Job licked his hand unheeded. A hail from the river forced him to rouse himself. As he crawled out he instinctively cast a glance at the sun. It was mid-afternoon.

Tole Grampierre landed on the stones. "You are seeck!" he exclaimed, seeing Ambrose's face.

Though life loses all its savor, it must be carried on with a good air.

"_Mal de tete_!" said Ambrose, making light of it. "It will soon pa.s.s."