But when finally he did get work in a big stable helping the head stableman who looked after some of the C.P. Syndicate's horses, he found many who remembered or had heard, or had just learned all about Jenny and Mary. That's the best or the worst of B.C., as I said some time ago, everyone knew everyone and all about them. They talked scandal like a lot of old or young women: told you about this man's wife or that: they raked up the horrid true story of Ned Quin's killing one poor klootchman by kicking her. They asked Pete for information about Mary. When some were drunk they mentioned Jenny. They never gave poor Pete a chance to forget, and over and above the mere mischief of drunken scandalous chatter, there were one or two who hated the Quins. Neither of them hesitated about downing a man by way of business, though of late years Ned had been no more than a shooling no-good-sort of man all round. So one or two said: "Say, Pete, you ain't let up on them Quins, hev you? Them Quins are two damn smart-alecks, that's what they are! I say they're mean, oh, mean ain't the word. I hear Ned Quin cut your sister to slivers with an axe. Is it true?" They got him crying about Mary and Jenny, and presently it was understood that Pete had forgotten nothing. All he was after was a few dollars. Why? "Well, to tell the trewth, tilikums, I believe, straight, that the boy's idea is to kill one or both o' them Quins and then skip across the forty-ninth Par'lel and away." They put that into Pete's head: told him it was easy to skip out. They knew better. But one man, named Cumberland, who had been done in a deal by George and done pretty badly, cheated, in fact, and outfaced, egged the boy on daily. Cumberland had all the desire to be "a bad man" without the pluck, or grit, or sand to be an imitation of one. But he never forgot. In all the fume and roar of this short-lived Town it was easier to get money than to save it. Everything cost money, cost dollars; "two bits" was the least coin that went, and that's a quarter of a dollar. Pete had an Indian's thirst, and drank more than was good for him. If it hadn't been that the rush of work handling hay-bales, sacks of oats, maize, flour, mats of sugar, cases of dynamite, and tools and all the rest, sweated the alcohol out of him he would have got the sack promptly, the Grand Bounce. As it was he stayed, being really a worker, and as nice a boy to work alongside as one could wish.