He went to the Kamloops Mill to look for work. They were full up and couldn't give him a show. But one of the men who knew him gave him a dollar and that made Pete happier. He raised a drink with it, a whole bottle of liquid lightning, and he didn't start for Cultus's ranche that day. It was an awful pity he didn't. For Cultus had been in town that morning and had taken two bottles back with him. He had been drinking for weeks and was close upon delirium tremens. He had horrid fits of shaking. Ned Quin was ten years George's senior, and had been in British Columbia for thirty years. He had been married to a white woman, whose very name he had forgotten. For the last ten years, or eight at least, he had lived with Mary, whom the previous owner of his ranche had taken from the kitchen of the Kamloops Hotel when she was twenty. Now he lived in a rude shanty over toward the Nikola, "nigh on" to twenty miles from Kamloops. He had a hundred and fifty steers upon the range, and made nothing out of them. The Mill, in which he had an interest, kept him going. He wanted nothing better. He was very fond of Mary, and often beat her. Mary was a tall and curiously elegant woman for an Indian or a half-caste. By some strange accident, perhaps some inheritance from her unknown white father, she was by nature refined. She had a sense of humour and a beautiful smile. She talked very good English, which is certainly more than her brother did, who had no language of his own and knew the jargon best of all. Mary was a fine horse-woman and rode like a man, straddling, as many of the Dry Belt women do. She could throw a lariat with some skill. She walked with a certain free grace which was very pleasant to see. And she loved her white man in spite of his brutality. For when Ned was good, he was very good to her. "Now he beats poor me," she said. Perhaps she took a certain pleasure in being his slave. But she knew, and more knew better, that she lived on the edge of a precipice. More than once Ned had beaten her with the flat of a long-handled shovel. More than once, since Pete left, he had threatened to give her the edge and cut her to rags. It was a great pity Pete had that dollar given him at the Kamloops Mill. He got drunk, of course, and only started for the ranche a little before noon next day. It was a clear and cloudless sky he walked under as he climbed the winding road up from the town by the Lake. There was a touch of winter in the air and the road was still hard. The lake was quite blue, beyond it the hills seemed close: the North Fork of the Thompson showed clear: the Indian reservation on the other side seemed near at hand. But of those things Pete thought nothing. He wanted to see his sister, he groaned that he hadn't a cayuse to ride.