They were
extraordinary eyes. Cameron remembered them like dagger points behind
the pistol and then like kindly lights in a dark window when he had
smiled. Just now as he sat eating with eager haste the eyes were staring
forward into the fire out of deep sockets, with a far-away, reminiscent,
kindly look in them. The lumberman's heavy skin-lined jacket and the
overalls tucked into boots could not hide the athletic lines of the
lithe muscular figure. Cameron looked at his hands with their long,
sinewy fingers. "The hands of a gentleman," thought he. "What is his
history? And where does he come from?"
"London's my home," said the stranger, answering Cameron's mental
queries. "Name, Raven--Richard Colebrooke Raven--Dick for short;
rancher, horse and cattle trader; East Kootenay; at present running in
a stock of goods and horses; and caught like yourself in this beastly
blizzard."
"My name's Cameron, and I'm from Edinburgh a year ago," replied Cameron
briefly.
"Edinburgh? Knew it ten years ago. Quiet old town, quaint folk. Never
know what they are thinking about you."
Cameron smiled. How well he remembered the calm, detached, critical but
uncurious gaze with which the dwellers of the modern Athens were wont to
regard mere outsiders.
"I know," he said. "I came from the North myself.
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