"I brought that from the Southland. I failed many times before I found a kind that would grow. It is little I can do for her, and she does not know, but, somehow, it has made me feel--easier--I cannot tell you exactly. I come here often."
"I think she _does_ know," said Chloe softly, and brushed hot tears from her eyes. Could _this_ be the man whose crimes against the poor, ignorant savages were the common knowledge of the North? Could this be he whom men called Brute--this simple-spoken, straightforward, boyish man who had endured hardships and spared no effort, that the mother he had never known might lie in her eternal rest beneath the green sod of her native land, far from the sights, and sounds that, in life, had become a torture to her soul, and worn her, at last, to the grave?
"Mr.--MacNair." The hard note--the note of uncompromising antagonism--had gone from her voice, and the man looked at her in surprise. It was the first time she had addressed him without prefixing the name Brute and emphasizing the prefix. He stood, regarding her calmly, waiting for her to proceed. Somehow, Chloe found that it had become very difficult for her to speak; to say the things to this man that she had intended to say. "I cannot understand you--your viewpoint."
"Why should you try? I ask no one to understand me. I care not what people think."
"The Indians? What do you know of my viewpoint in regard to the Indians?" The man's face had hardened at her mention of the Indians.
"I know this!" exclaimed the girl. "That you are trading them whiskey! With my own eyes I saw Mr. Lapierre smash your kegs--the kegs that were cunningly disguised as bales of freight and marked with your name, and I saw the whiskey spilled out upon the ground."
She paused, expecting a denial, but MacNair remained silent and again she saw the peculiar twinkle in his eye as he waited for her to proceed. "And I--you, yourself told me that you would kill some of Mr. Lapierre's Indians! Do you call that justice--to kill men because they happen to be in the employ of a rival trader--one who has as much right to trade in the Northland as you have?"
Again she paused, but the man ignored her question.
"And you told me your Indians had to work so hard they had no time for book-learning, and that the souls of the Indians were black as--as hell."