bunch out of his own dip, and stood good for
a few odd debts! Murray! Get a line on it. Can you beat it? And
Murray figgers more on dollars than any feller I know."

"You never know your friends till you get a gun-hole in your stomach,"
Kars laughed. "Murray's more of a sport than you guessed. He
certainly don't unroll easy."

The boy's face was alight with good feeling. He sat up eagerly.

"That's just how I thought," he cried. "I----" A knock at the door
was followed by the entrance of a bell-boy with the cocktail. Alec
seized it, and drank thirstily.

Kars looked on. He gave no sign.

"That feller knows his job," he said, as the boy withdrew.

Alec laughed. He was feeling in better case already.

"Sure he does. A single push on that bell means one cocktail. He
generally makes the trip twice in the morning. But say, talking of
Murray, one of these days I'm going to make a big talk with him and
just tell him what I feel 'bout things. I've got to tell him I've just
bin a blamed young fool and didn't understand the sort of man he was."

"Then you've had trouble with him--again?" Kars' question had a sudden
sharpening in it. He was thinking of what Bill had told him.

"Not a thing. Say, we haven't had a crooked word since we quit the old
Fort. He's a diff'rent guy when he gets away from his--store. No,
sir, Murray's wise. He guesses I need to see and do things. And he's
helped me all he knows. And he showed me around some dandy places
before I got wise."

He laughed boisterously, and his laugh drove straight to the heart of
the man who heard it.

Kars was no moralist, but he knew danger when he saw it, moral or
physical. The terrible danger into which this youth, this foolish
brother of Jessie, had been plunged by Murray McTavish stirred him as
he had not been stirred for years. Women, gaming, drink. This simple,
weak, splendid youth. Leaping Horse, the cesspool of the earth. A
mental shudder passed through him. But the acutest thought of the
moment was of the actions of Murray McTavish. Why had he shown this
boy "places"? Why had he financed him privately, and not left it to
Ailsa Mowbray? Why, why, had he lied to Bill on the subject of a
quarrel with Alec?

But these things, these thoughts found no outward expression. He had
his purpose to achieve.

He nodded reflectively.

"Murray's got his ways," he said. "Guess we most have. Murray's ways
mayn't always be our ways