It was a reminiscent, horrible sort of leer, not a
smile--the expression of a man who gloats over a revolting and
unspeakable thing.
"She's mine--been mine ever since she was a baby," he confided, leaning
again over the table. "Good friend, give her to me, Mac--good friend but
a dam' 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.
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