"Oh, Christ!" said those who saw. At Quin's red feet, a bloody corpse lay, for the saw had sliced Skookum nigh in two, shearing through flesh and bones, ribs and spine. For one moment he was helped to his feet by the thing that cut his life out, and he stood upon the log, with a howl torn out of his very lungs, and then pitched headlong on the floor. There came screams from the far end of the Mill, for another segment of the saw had flown out straight, and, striking a roller, came up slanting from it, and disembowelled a wretched Chinaman. He stood and squealed lamentably and then looked at himself and lay down and died. And all the Mill ceased and men came running even from below. "My God," said Quin. But Ginger said nothing. Terror had hold of him. He leant against the deadly log and vomited. Every lamp in the Mill was held up in two circles, one about Skookum and the other about the Chinaman. Faces as white as the dead men's looked at the dead. That night Skookum's klootchman sat with loosed hair howling over the body of her good and stupid man. And by her Annie and Annawillee mourned. And many thought of Pete. Among them were Quin and his klootchman Jenny, who understood the nature of the man who had been her man and was now no better than a murderer. "I done it, I," said Jenny; "if I stay with Pete this no happen!" She cried all night and "Tchorch" could not comfort her. Nor could he sleep till in his rage he cursed her, and came nigh to striking her. Then she crept into his arms and tried to soothe him, and wept no more. The next day Pete started up-country, for Kamloops. "I never mean to kill Skookum," he said with a white face. "I never mean to keel him. I lik' Skookum." The poor fool cried. XIV The story of the disaster at the Mill followed Pete and passed him as he made his way to Yale, having screwed a dollar or two out of old Smith. Indeed he got more than he had a right to, for old Smith wasn't a man to squeeze a dollar till the eagle squealed, by any means. The day after the news came of the split saw Pete had boarded the boat for Yale and was put out at the mountain town in a storm of rain. And Pete hated the wet as a saw-mill man must, or as one who had worked in the Dry Belt where the rain is scarce and the fattening grasses dry.