Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/441

Rh "Ah!" Dick's lids flickered again. "You are not a sophist, Sergeant."

"Why—I guess I'm not exactly certain what that is."

"Pray your gods you never may be. Have you any gods, though?" "Well—I reckon I've been wonderin' that too. My Miralma says I've got to have hers. An' I don't know. Likely I have when I come to think of it. A man does a lot of thinkin' up here, an' she's maybe right. Wonderful what a woman can do wi' a man, now. I get to thinkin' that, too."

Dick glanced again at the woman on the wall. With that face and that name anything might be expected of Baxter's Miralma—anything except teaching a hard-bitten old campaigner like Baxter to get down on his stiff knees before her beliefs.

"It is wonderful," he assented. "But they corral us with other things besides religion, you know."

"If you think as she ever tried to get me"

"No, no. I am sure it was mutual attraction. Like to like. I was thinking more of myself than of you just then."

Baxter grunted, contemplating the strong easy body flung back in the big chair that was made from a cut-down whale-oil barrel. Dick looked very well and vigorous. The hard work and the open air had given him the last hallmark of health, and if his indifference and cynicism were less carefully veiled than in earlier days Baxter was not the man to notice it.

Baxter stuffed some more wood into the stove, and shrugged his shoulders as the wind bellowed at the windows.

"Any whaler tryin' to get in to-night'll have to watch out," he said. "Was Selkirk bakin' when you were in the kitchen?"

"He was. And Brayne was splicing a shovel-handle. They're a handy pair."

"They have to be. Do you know what else I've been thinkin'? What my Miralma calls God is not mighty unlike what I call conscience."

"Really? Not the conscience you have to live with all the year round?"