fool," he chuckled. He rubbed his huge hands together and turned
out more liquor. "Dam' fool!" he repeated. "Any man's a dam' fool to
turn down a pretty woman, eh, Mac? An' she was pretty, he says. _My_
girl's mother, you know. She must have been pretty. It was off there--in
the bush country--years ago. The kid you brought in to-day was a baby
then--alone with her mother. Ho, ho! deuced easy--deuced easy! But he
was a darn' fool!"

He drank with incredible slowness, it seemed to David. It was torture to
watch him, with the fear, every instant, that Hauck would come.

"What happened?" he urged.

"Bucky--my friend--in love with that woman, O'Doone's wife," resumed
Brokaw. "Dead crazy, Mac. Crazier'n you were over the Breed's woman,
only he didn't have the nerve. Just moped around--waiting--keeping out
of O'Doone's way. Trapper, O'Doone was--or a Company runner. Forgot
which. Anyway he went on a long trip, in winter, and got laid up with a
broken leg long way from home. Wife and baby alone, an' Bucky sneaked up
one day and found the woman sick with fever. Out of her head! Dead out,
Bucky says--an' my Gawd! If she didn't think he was her husband come
back! That easy, Mac--an' he lacked the nerve! Crazy in love with her,
he was, an' didn't dare play the part. Told me it was conscience. Bah!
it wasn't. He was afraid. Scared. A fool. Then he said the fever must
have touched him. Ho, ho! it was funny. He was a scared fool. Wish _I'd_
been there, Mac; wish _I_ had!"

His eyes half closed, gleaming in narrow, shining slits. His chin
dropped on his chest. David prodded him on.

"Bucky got her to run away with him," continued Brokaw. "Her and the
kid, while she was still out of her head. Bucky even got her to write a
note, he said, telling O'Doone she was sick of him an' was running away
with another man. Bucky didn't give his own name, of course. An' the
woman didn't know what she was doing. They started west with the kid,
and all the time Bucky was _afraid_! He dragged the woman on a sledge,
and snow covered their trail. He hid in a cabin a hundred miles from
O'Doone's, an' it was there the woman come to her senses. Gawd! it must
have been exciting! Bucky says she was like a mad woman, and that she
ran screeching out into the night, leaving the kid with him. He followed
but he couldn't find her. He waited, but she never came back. A snow
storm covered her trail. Then Bucky says _he_ went mad--the fool! He
waited till spring,