" He paused to let that sink in, then
continued: "Besides, you won't see a white face before spring; then
only by accident. No one in the North, outside of a few Indians, has
ever seen this cabin or knows where it stands."
She sat there, dumb, raging inwardly. For the minute she could have
killed Roaring Bill. She who had been so sure in her independence
carried, whether or no, into the heart of the wilderness at the whim of
a man who stood a self-confessed rowdy, in ill repute among his own
kind. There was a slumbering devil in Miss Hazel Weir, and it took
little to wake her temper. She looked at Bill Wagstaff, and her breast
heaved. He was responsible, and he could sit coolly talking about it.
The resentment that had smoldered against Andrew Bush and Jack Barrow
concentrated on Roaring Bill as the arch offender of them all. And
lest she yield to a savage impulse to scream at him, she got up and ran
into the bedroom, slammed the door shut behind her, and threw herself
across the bed to muffle the sound of her crying in a pillow.
After a time she lifted her head. Outside, the wind whistled gustily
around the cabin corners. In the hushed intervals she heard a steady
pad, pad, sounding sometimes close by her door, again faintly at the
far end of the room.
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