His fingers gripped Jan's arm, his eyes were blazing.
"If you're getting the wrong end of anything up there," he cried
fiercely; "if you're in trouble, and they're taking the blood out of
you--tell me and I'll put the clamps on 'em, so 'elp me God! They'll
buck the devil when they buck Jack Thornton, and if it needs money to
show 'em so, I've got half a million to teach 'em the game!"
"Thanks, m'sieur," struggled Jan, striving to keep a lump out of his
throat. "It's nothing like that. I don't need money. Half a million
would just about buy--what I've given away up there."
He clutched his hand for an instant to the empty pocket where the
papers had been.
CHAPTER XXVI
TEMPTATION
That night, leaving Thornton still at supper in the little old Windsor
Hotel, Jan slipped away, and with Kazan at his heels, crossed the
frozen Saskatchewan to the spruce forest on the north shore. He wanted
to be alone, to think, to fight with himself against a desire which
was almost overpowering him. Once, long ago, he had laid his soul bare
to Jean de Gravois, and Jean had given him comfort. To-night he longed
to go to Thornton, as he had gone to Jean, and to tell him the same
story, and what had passed that day in the office of the sub-
commissioner.
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