e, too, because I knew that I was
certainly not welcome even if they were willing to take my money for a
meal. And I came away all up in the air. There was something about
you--the tone of your voice, the way your proud little head is set on
your shoulders, your make-up in general--that sent me away with a
large-sized grouch at myself, at Cariboo Meadows, and at you for coming
in my way."

"Why?" she asked in wonder.

"Because you'd have believed what they told you, and Cariboo Meadows
can't tell anything about me that isn't bad," he said quietly. "My
record there makes me entirely unfit to associate with--that would have
been your conclusion. And I wanted to be with you, to talk to you, to
take you by storm and make you like me as I felt I could care for you.
You can't have grown up, little person, without realizing that you do
attract men very strongly. All women do, but some far more than
others."

"Perhaps," she admitted coldly. "Men have annoyed me with their
unwelcome attentions. But none of them ever dared go the length of
carrying me away against my will. You can't explain or excuse that."

"I'm not attempting excuses," Bill made answer. "There are two things
I never do--apologize or bully. I dare say that's one reason the
Meadows gives me such a black eye. In the first place, the confounded,
ignorant fools did me a very great injustice, and I've never taken the
trouble to explain to them wherein they were wrong. I came into this
country with a partner six years ago--a white man, if ever one
lived--about the only real man friend I ever had. He was known to have
over three thousand dollars on his person. He took sick and died the
second year, at the head of the Peace, in midwinter. I buried him;
couldn't take him out. Somehow the yarn got to going in the Meadows
that I'd murdered him for his money. The gossip started there because
we had an argument about outfitting while we were there, and roasted
each other as only real pals can. So they got it into their heads I
killed him, and tried to have the provincial police investigate. It
made me hot, and so I wouldn't explain to anybody the circumstances,
nor what became of Dave's three thousand, which happened to be five
thousand by that time, and which I sent to his mother and sister in New
York, as he told me to do when he was dying. When they got to hinting
things the next time I hit the Meadows, I started in to clean out the
town. I think