It would please me very much to
have that message sent. Say, I wasn't thinking the way you reckoned. I
wasn't thinking of the message at all."

"Then you will read it?" The girl came back readily.

"Why should I?" Bull asked smilingly. "Say, a friend asking me to send a
message for him, a message no concern of mine, what would you think,
what would he feel, if I demanded to read its contents?"

He ran the fingers of one hand through his mane of hair and stood
smiling down into the girl's pretty eyes.

"You know this thing makes me want to talk. I've just got to talk. The
position's sort of impossible as it stands. Maybe you don't guess the
thing I'm feeling, and maybe I don't just know how it is with you. We've
got to talk right out and show down our hands. If we don't--"

He turned away and glanced out of window. Then his eyes came back
claimed by the magnetism which the girl exercised.

"You know, Nancy, our war is over. The war between you and me. We
declared war, didn't we? We declared it in Quebec, and we both promised
to do our best, or--worst. It was a sort of compact. We made it meaning
it, and understanding the meaning of it. If you got the drop on me you
were to use it. The same with me. It was one of those friendly things,
between friends, which might easily mean life or death. We knew that,
and were ready to stand just for whatever came along. Well, we fought
our battle. It's over. It's done. Now for God's sake let's forget it.
It's easy for me. You see, I'm a rough, hard sort of product of these
forests that doesn't worry with scruples and things. I'm not a woman
who's full of the notions belonging to her sex. I can wipe the whole
thing out of my mind. I can feel glad for the scrap you put up. I can
think one hell of a great piece of you for it. Maybe it's different with
you, being a woman. I guess it's not going to be easy forgiving the way
I had to handle you back out there on the trail. Or the way you were
forced to live our camp life on the way down here. Or how I've had to
hold you prisoner in a rough household of rougher men. I get all that. I
know the thing it is to a woman. All it means. Still, it must have been
plain to you the chances of that sort of thing before you started in.
That is if I was worth my salt as a fighter. Well, can you kind of
forgive it? Can't you try to forget? Can't you figger the whole darn
thing's past and done with, and we're back at where we were in those
days in Que