"It's fonny t'ing how two brown eyeWas changin' everything—De cloud she's no more on de sky,An' winter's jus' lak' springDey mak' my pack so very light,De trail, she's not so long—I'd walk it forty mile to-nightFor hear her sing wan songBut now I'm busy mak' fortuneFor marry on dat girl,An' if she's tole me yass, dat's soon,Bonheur! I'm own de worl'!"
Poleon Doret sang gayly as the trader came towards him through the open grove of birch, for he was happy this afternoon, and, being much of a dreamer, this fresh enterprise awoke in him a boyish pleasure. Then Necia had teased him as he came away, and begged him, as was always her custom, to take her with him, no matter whence or whither, so long as there was adventure afoot. Well, it would not be long now before he could say yes, and he would take her on a journey far longer than either of them had yet taken—a journey that would never end. Had not the gods looked with favor, at last, upon his long novitiate, and been pleased with the faith he had kept? Had not this discovery of "No Creek" Lee's been providentially arranged for his own especial benefit? A fool could see that this was a mark of celestial approbation, and none but a fool would question the wisdom of the gods. Had he not watched the girl grow from a slip of thirteen and spoken never a word of his love? Had he not served and guarded her with all the gentle chivalry of an olden knight? Of course! And here was his reward, a gift of wealth to crown his service, all for her. Now that she was a woman, and had seen him tried, and knew he was a man, he would bring his burden of prosperity and lay it at her feet, saying:
"Here is another offering, my Necia, and with it go the laughter and the music and the heart of Poleon Doret."
Sacré! It would not take her long to wake up after that! The world was very bright indeed this afternoon, and he burst again into song in company with the voices of the forest people:
"Chanté, rossignol, chanté!Toi qui à le coeur gai;Tu as le coeur à rireMai j' l' ai-tà pleurer,Il y a longtemps que j' t'aimeJamais je ne t'oublierai."
[Footnote:"Sing, little bird, oh, sing away!You with the voice so light and gay!Yours is a heart that laughter cheers,Mine is a hearts that's full of tears.Long have I loved, I love her yet;Leave her I can, but not forget."]
"Whew!" said Gale, slipping out of his pack-straps, "the skeeters is bad."
"You bet your gum boots," said Poleon. "Dey're mos' so t'ick as de summer dey kill Johnnie Platt on de Porcupine." Both men wore gauntleted gloves of caribou-skin and head harnesses of mosquito-netting stretched over globelike frames of thin steel bands, which they slipped on over their hats after the manner of divers' helmets, for without protection of some kind the insects would have made travel impossible once the Yukon breezes were left behind or once the trail dipped from the high divides where there was no moss.
"Let's see. It was you that found him, wasn't it?" said Gale.
"Sure t'ing! I'm comin' down for grub in my canoe, w'en I see dis feller on de bank, walkin' lak' he's in beeg horry. 'Ba Gar!' I say, 'dere's man goin' so fast he'll meet hese'f comin' home!' Den he turn roun' an' go tearin' back, wavin' hees arms lak' he's callin' me, till he fall down. Wen I paddle close up, I don' know 'im no more dan stranger, an' me an' Johnnie Platt is trap togeder wan winter. Wat you t'ink of dat?"
"I saw a fellow killed that way at Holy Cross," interpolated the trader.
"'Hello,' I say, 'w'at's de matter?' An' den I see somet'ing 'bout 'im dat look familiar. Hees face she's all swell' up an' bleedin' lak' raw meat." The Frenchman curled his upper lip back from his teeth and shook his head at the remembrance.
"Jesu, dat's 'orrible sight! Dem fly is drive 'im crazee. Hees nose an' ears is look lak' holes in beeg red sponge, an' hees eye are close up tight."
"He died before you got him in, didn't he?"
"Yes. He was good man, too. Some tam' if I ever have bad enemy w'at I like to see catch hell I'm goin' turn 'im loose 'mong dose skeeter-bug."
"Holy Mackinaw!" ejaculated Gale. "Who'd ever think of that? Why, that's worse than dropping water on his skull till he goes crazy, like them Chinamen do."
The Frenchman nodded. "It's de wors' t'ing I know. Dat's w'y I lak' to geeve it to my enemy."
"Imagine fightin' the little devils till they stung you crazy and pizened your eyes shut!"
Gale fell to considering this, while Poleon filled his pipe, and, raising his veil, undertook to smoke. The pests proved too numerous, however, and forced him to give it up.
"Bagosh! Dey're hongry!"
"It will be all right when we get out of the woods," said the elder man.
"I guess you been purty glad for havin' Necia home again, eh?" ventured the other after a while, unable to avoid any longer the subject uppermost in his mind.
"Yes, I'm glad she's through with her schooling."
"She's gettin' purty beeg gal now."
"That's right."
"By-an'-by she's goin' marry on some feller—w'at?"
"I suppose so. She ain't the kind to stay single."
"Ha! Dat's right, too. Mebbe you don' care if she does get marry, eh?"
"Not if she gets a man that will treat her right."
"Wal! Wal! Dere's no trouble 'bout dat," exclaimed Doret, fervently. "No man w'at's livin' could treat her bad. She's too good an' too purty for have bad husban'."
"She is, is she?" Gale turned on him with a strange glare in his eyes. "Them's the kind that get the he-devils. There's something about a good girl that attracts a bad man, particularly if she's pretty; and it goes double, too—the good men get the hellions. A fellow can't get so tough but what he can catch a good woman, and a decent man usually draws a critter that looks like a sled and acts like a timber wolf."
"Necia wouldn't marry on no bad man," said Doret, positively.
"No?" said Gale. "Let me tell you what I saw with my own eyes. I knew a girl once that was just as good and pure as Necia, and just as pretty, too—yes, and a thousand times prettier."
"Ho, ho!" laughed Doret, sceptically.
"She was an Eastern girl, and she come West where men were different to what she'd been used to. Those were early days, and it was a new country, where a person didn't know much about his neighbor's past and cared less; and, although there were a heap of girls thereabouts, they were the kind you'll always find in such communities, while this one was plumb different. Man! Man! But she was different. She was a WOMAN! Two fellows fell in love with her. One of them lived in the same camp as her, and he was a good man, leastways everybody said he was, but he wasn't wise to all the fancy tricks that pretty women hanker after; and, it being his first affair, he was right down buffaloed at the very thought of her, so he just hung around and slept late so that he might dream about her and feel like he was her equal or that she loved back at him. You know! The other fellow came from a neighboring town, and he wasn't the same kind, for he'd knocked around more, and was a better liar, but he wasn't right. No, sir! He was sure a wrong guy, as it came out, but he was handsomer and younger, and the very purity and innocence of the girl drew him, I reckon, being a change from what he had ever mixed up with."
"W'y don' dis good man tak' a shot at him?" asked Poleon, hotly.
"First, he didn't realize what was going on, being too tied up with dreaming, I reckon; and, second, neither man didn't know the other by sight, living as they did in different parts; third, he was an ordinary sort of fellow, and hadn't ever had any trouble, man to man, at that time. Anyhow, the girl up and took the bad one."
"Wat does de good man do, eh?"
"Well, he was all tore up about it, but he went away like a sick quail hides out."
"Dat's too bad."
"He heard about them now and then, and what he heard tore him up worse than the other had, for the girl's husband couldn't wear the harness long, and, having taken away what good there was in her, he made up in deviltry for the time he had lost. She stood it pretty well, and never whimpered, even when her eyes were open and she saw what a prize-package she had drawn. The fact that she was game enough to stand for him and yet keep herself clean without complaint made the man worse. He tried to break her spirit in a thousand ways, tried to make her the same as he was, tried to make her a bad woman, like the others he had known. It appeared like the one pleasure he got was to torture her."
"W'y don' she quit 'im?" said Doret. "Dat ain' wrong for quit a man lak' him."
"She couldn't quit on account of the kid. They had a youngster. Then, too, she had ideas of her own; so she stood it for three years, living worse than a dog, till she saw it wasn't any use—till she saw that he would make a bad woman of her as sure as he would make one of the kid—till he got rough—"
"No! No! You don' mean dat? No man don' hurt no woman," interjected Doret.
"By God! That's just what I mean," the trader answered, while his face had grown so gray as to match his brows. "He beat her."
Poleon broke into French words that accorded well with the trader's harsh voice.
"The woman sent for the other man after that, for he had been living lonely, loving her all the time, and you'd better believe he went."
"Ha! Dat's fine! Dat's dam' fine!" said the other. "I'll bet dere's hell to pay den—w'at?"
"Yes, there was a kind of reckoning." The old man lapsed into moody silence, the younger one waiting eagerly for him to continue, but there came the sound of voices down the trail, and they looked up.
"Here comes Lee," said Gale.
"Wat happen' den? I'm got great interes' 'bout dis woman," insisted Poleon.
"It's a long story, and I just told you this much to show what I said was true about a good girl and a bad man, and to show why I want Necia to get a good one. The sooner it happens the better it will suit me."
Neither man had ever spoken thus openly to the other about Necia before, and although their language was indirect, each knew the other's thought. But there was no time for further talk now, for the others were close upon them. As they came into view, Gale exclaimed:
"Well, if he hasn't brought Runnion along!"
"Humph!" grunted Doret. "I don' t'ink much of dat feller. Wat's de matter wit' 'No Creek,' anyhow?"
The three new arrivals dropped down upon the moss to rest, for the up-trail was heavy and the air sultry inside the forest. Lee was the first to speak.
"Did you get away without bein' seen?" he asked.
"Sure," answered Gale. "Poleon has been here two hours."
"That's good; I don't want nobody taggin' along."
"We came right through the town boldly," announced Stark; "but if they had seen you two they would have suspected something, sure."
Runnion volunteered nothing except oaths at the mosquitoes and at his pack-straps, which were new and cut him already. As no explanation of his presence was offered, neither the trader nor Doret made any comment then, but it came out later, when the old miner dropped far enough behind the others to render conversation possible.
"You decided to take in another one, eh?" Gale asked Lee.
"It wasn't exactly my doin's," replied the miner. "Stark asked me to let Runnion come 'long, bein' as he had grub-staked him, and he seemed so set on it that I ackeressed. You see, it's the first chance I ever had to pay him back for a favor he done me in the Cassiar country. There's plenty of land to go around."
It was Lee's affair, thought the trader, and he might tell whom he liked, so he said no more, but fell to studying the back of the man next in front, who happened to be Stark, observing every move and trick of him, and, during the frequent pauses, making a point of listening and watching him guardedly.
All through the afternoon the five men wound up the valley, following one another's footsteps, emerging from sombre thickets of fir to flounder across wide pastures of "nigger-heads," that wobbled and wriggled and bowed beneath their feet, until at cost of much effort and profanity they gained the firmer footing of the forest. Occasionally they came upon the stream, and found easier going along its gravel bars, till a bend threw them again into the meadows and mesas on either hand. Their course led them far up the big valley to another stream that entered from the right, bearing backward in a great bow towards the Yukon, and always there were dense clouds of mosquitoes above their heads. At one point Stark, hot and irritable, remarked:
"There must be a shorter cut than this, Lee?"
"I reckon there is," the miner replied, "but I've always had a pack to carry, so I chose the level ground ruther than climb the divides."
"S'pose dose people at camp hear 'bout dis strike an' beat us in?" suggested Poleon.
"It wouldn't be easy going for them after they got there," Stark said, sourly. "I, for one, wouldn't stand for it."
"Nor I," agreed Runnion.
"I don't see how you'd help yourself," the trader remarked. "One man's got as good a right as another."
"I guess I'd help myself, all right," Stark laughed, significantly, as did Runnion, who added:
"Lee is entitled to put in anybody he wants on his own discovery, and if anybody tries to get ahead of us there's liable to be trouble."
"I reckon if I don't know no short-cut, nobody else does," Lee remarked, whereupon Doret spoke up reassuringly:
"Dere's no use gettin' scare' lak' dat, biccause nobody knows w'ere Lee's creek she's locate' but John an' me, an' dere's nobody w'at knows he mak' de strike but us four."
"That's right," said Gale; "the only other way across is by Black Bear Creek, and there ain't a half-dozen men ever been up to the head of that stream, much less over the divide, so I don't allow there's any use to fret ourselves."
They went on their way, travelling leisurely until late evening, when they camped at the mouth of the valley up which the miner's cabin lay. They chose a long gravel bar, that curved like a scimitar, and made down upon its outer tip where the breeze tended to thin the plague of insects. They were all old-stagers in the ways of camplife, so there was no lost motion or bickering as to their respective duties. Their preparations were simple. First they built a circle of smudges out of wet driftwood, and inside this Lee kindled a camp-fire of dry sticks, upon which he cooked, protected by the smoke of the others, while Gale went back to the edge of the forest and felled a dozen small firs, the branches of which he clipped. These Poleon and Runnion bore down to the end of the spit for bedding, while Stark chopped a pile of dry wood for the night. Gale noted that the new man swung an axe with the free dexterity of one to whom its feel was familiar, also that he never made a slip nor dulled it on the gravel of the bar, displaying an all-round completeness and a knack of doing things efficiently that won reluctant approval from the trader despite the unreasoning dislike he had taken to him.
Lee was ready for them by the time they had finished their tasks, and, fanned by the breeze that sucked up the stream and lulled by the waters, they ate their scanty supper. Their one-eyed guide had lived so long among mosquitoes and had become so inoculated with their poison that he was in a measure impervious to their sting, hence the insects gathered on his wrinkled, hair-grown hide only to give up in melancholy disgust and fly to other and fuller-blooded feeding-grounds. Camp had been made early, at Gale's suggestion, instead of pushing on a few miles farther, as Lee had intended; and now, when the cool evening fell and the draught quickened, it became possible to lay off gloves and head-gear; so they sat about the fire, talking, smoking, and rubbing their tired feet.
It is at such hours and in the smoke of such fires that men hark backward and bring forth the sacred, time-worn memories they have treasured, to turn them over fondly by the glow of dying embers. It is at such times that men's garrulity asserts itself, for the barriers of caution are let down, as are the gates of remembrance, and it is then that friends and enemies are made, for there are those who cannot listen and others who cannot understand.
"No Creek" Lee, the one-eyed miner who had made this lucky strike, told in simple words of his long and solitary quest, when ill-luck had risen with him at the dawn and misfortune had stalked beside him as he drifted and drank from camp to camp, while the gloom of a settled pessimism soured him, and men began to shun him because of the evil that seemed to follow in his steps.
"I've been rainbow-chasin' forty years," he said, "and never caught nothin' but cramps and epidemics and inflammations. I'm the only miner in Alaska that never made a discovery of gold and never had a creek named after him."
"Is that how you got your name?" asked Runnion.
"It is. I never was no good to myself nor nobody else. I just occupied space. I've been the vermifuge appendix of the body politic; yes, worse'n that—I've been an appendix with a seed in it. I made myself sore, and everybody around me, but I'm at the bat now, and don't you never let that fact escape you."
"How are you going to spend your money?" inquired Stark.
"I'm goin' to eat it up! I've fed on dried and desiccated and other disastrous and dissatisfactory diets till I'm all shrivelled up inside like a dead puff-ball; now it's me for the big feed and the long drink. I'm goin' to 'Frisco and get full of wasteful and exorbitant grub, of one kind and another, like tomatters and French vicious water."
Poleon Doret laughed with the others; he was bubbling with the spirits of a boy whose life is clean, for whom there are no eyes in the black dark that lies beyond a camp-fire, and for whom there are no unforgettable faces in its smoke. When Lee fell silent the trader and Stark resumed their talk, which was mainly of California, it seemed to the Frenchman, who also noted that it was his friend who subtly shaped the topics. In time their stories revived his memory of the conversation in the birch grove that morning, and when there occurred a lapse in the talk he said:
"Say, John, w'at happen' to dat gal we was talkin' 'bout dis mornin'?"
Gale shook his head and turned again to his companion, but the young man's mind was bent on its quest, and he continued:
"Dat was strange tale, for sure."
"What was it?" questioned Runnion.
"John was tell 'bout a feller he knowed w'at marry a good gal jus' to mak' her bad lak' hese'f."
"How's that?" inquired Stark, turning curiously upon the old man; but Gale knocked the ashes from his pipe and replied:
"Oh, it's a long story—happened when I was in Washington State."
Poleon was about to correct him—it was California, he had said—when Gale arose, remarking sleepily that it was time to turn in if they wished to get any rest before the mosquitoes got bad again, then sauntered away from the fire and spread his blanket. The rest followed and made down their beds; then, drawing on gloves and hat-nets, and rolling themselves up in their coverings, fell to snoring. All except the trader, who lay for hours on his back staring up at the stars, as if trying to solve some riddle that baffled him.
They awoke early, and in half an hour had eaten, remade their packs, and were ready to resume their march. As they were about to start, Gale said:
"I reckon we'd better settle right now who has the choice of locations when we get up yonder. I've been on stampedes where it saved a heap of hard feeling."
"I'm agreeable," said Stark. "Then there won't be any misunderstanding."
The others, being likewise old at the game, acquiesced. They knew that in such cases grave trouble has often occurred when two men have cast eyes on the same claim, and have felt the miner's causeless "hunch" that gold lies here or there, or that the ground one of them covets is wanted by the other.
"I'll hold the straws," said Lee, "and every feller will have an even break." Turning his back on the others, he cut four splinters of varying lengths, and, arranging them so that the ends peeped evenly from his big hand, he held them out.
"The longest one has the first choice, and so on," he said, presenting them to Gale, who promptly drew the longest of the four. He turned to Doret, but the Frenchman waved him courteously to Stark, and, when both he and Runnion had made their choice, Lee handed him the remaining one, which was next in length to that of the trader. Stark and Runnion qualified in the order they drew, the latter cursing his evil luck.
"Never min', ole man," laughed Poleon, "de las' shot she's de sure wan."
They took up their burdens again, and filed towards the narrow valley that stretched away into the hazy distances.
Not until his dying day will Burrell lose the memory of that march with Necia through the untrodden valley, and yet its incidents were never clear-cut nor distinct when he looked back upon them, but blended into one dreamlike procession, as if he wandered through some calenture where every image was delightfully distorted and each act deliriously unreal, yet all the sweeter from its fleeting unreality. They talked and laughed and sang with a rush of spirits as untamed as the waters in the course they followed. They wandered, hand-in-hand, into a land of illusions, where there was nothing real but love and nothing tangible but joy. The touch of their lips had waked that delight which comes but once in a lifetime and then to but few; it was like the moon-madness of the tropics or the dementia of the forest folk in spring. A gentle frenzy possessed them, rendering them insensible to fatigue and causing them to hurry the more breathlessly that they might sooner rest and sit beside each other. At times they fell into sweet silences where the waters laughed with them and the trees whispered their secret, bowing and nodding in joyous surprise at this invasion; or, again, the breezes romped with them, withdrawing now and then to rush out and greet them at the bends in boisterous pleasure.
They held to the bed of the stream, for its volume was low and enabled them to ford it from bar to bar. Necia had been raised in the open, with the wild places for her playground, and her muscles were like those of a boy, hence the two swung merrily onward, as if in playful contest, while the youth had never occasion to wait for her or to moderate his gait. Indeed, her footing was more sure than his, as he found when she ventured out unhesitatingly upon felled logs that lay across swift, brawling depths. The wilderness had no mystery for her, and no terrors, so she was ever at his side, or in advance, while her eyes, schooled in the tints of the forest, and more active than those of a bird, saw every moving thing, from the flash of a camp-robber's wing through some hidden glade to the inquisitive nodding of a fool hen where it perched high up against the bole of a spruce. They surprised a marten fishing in a drift-wood dam, but she would not let the soldier shoot, and made him pass it by, where it sat amazed till it realized that these were lovers and resumed its fishing. Gradually the stream diminished, and its bowldered bed became more difficult to traverse, until, assuming the airs of a leader, the girl commanded him to lay off his pack, at which he pretended to obey mutinously, though thrilling with the keenest delight at his own submission.
"What are you going to do?" he inquired.
"Mind your own business, sir," she commanded, sternly.
From her belt she drew a little hunting-knife, with which she cut and trimmed a slender birch the thickness of his thumb, whereupon he pretended great fright, and said:
"Please! please! What have I done?"
"A great deal! You are a most bold and stubborn creature."
"All pack animals are stubborn," he declared. "It's the only privilege they have."
"You are much too presumptuous, also, as I discovered in your quarters."
"My only presumption is in loving you."
"That was not presumption," she smiled; "it was pre-emption. You must be punished."
"I shall run away," he threatened. "I shall gallop right off through the woods and—begin to eat grass. I am very wild."
As she talked she drew from her pocket a spool of line, and took a fly-hook from her hat; then, in a trice, she had rigged a fishing-rod, and, creeping out upon a ledge, she whipped the pool below of a half-dozen rainbow trout, which she thrust into his coat while they were still wriggling. Then she as quickly put up her gear, and they resumed their journey, climbing more steeply now, until, when the sun was low, they quit the stream-bed and made through the forest towards the shoulder of an untimbered ridge that ran down into the valley. And there, high up on the edge of the spruce, they selected a mossy shelf and pitched their camp.
They had become so intimate by now as to fall into a whimsical mode of speech, and Necia reverted to a childish habit in her talk that brought many a smile to the youth's face. It had been her fancy as a little girl to speak in adjectives, ignoring many of her nouns, and its quaintness had so amused her father that on rare occasions, when the humor was on him, he also took it up. She now addressed herself to Burrell in the same manner.
"I think we are very smarts to come so far," she said.
"You travel like a deer," he declared, admiringly. "Why, you have tired me down." Removing his pack, he stretched his arms and shook out the ache in his shoulders.
"Which way does our course lie now, Pathfinder?"
"Right up the side of this big, and then along the ridge. In two hours we come to a gully running so"—she indicated an imaginary direction—"which we go down till it joins another stream so, and right there we'll find old 'No Creek's' cabin, so! Won't they be surprised to see us! I think we're very cunning to beat them in, don't you?" She laughed a glad little bubbling laugh, and he cried:
"Oh, girl! How wonderful you are!"
"It's getting very dark and fierce," she chided, "and all the housework must be done."
So he built a fire, then fetched a bucket of water from a rill that trickled down among the rocks near by. He made as if to prepare their meal, but she would have none of it.
"Bigs should never cook," she declared. "That work belongs to littles," then forced him to vacate her domain and turn himself to the manlier duties of chopping wood and boughs.
First, however, she showed him how to place two green foot-logs upon which the teapot and the frying-pan would sit without upsetting, and how long she wished the sticks of cooking-wood. Then she banished him, as it were, and he built a wickiup of spruce tops, under the shelter of which he piled thick, fragrant billows of "Yukon feathers."
Once while he was busy at his task he paused to revel in the colors that lay against hill and valley, and to drink in the splendid isolation of it all. Below lay the bed of Black Bear Creek, silent and sombre in the creeping twilight; beyond, away beyond, across the westward brim of the Yukon basin, the peaks were blue and ivory and gold in the last rays of the sun; while the open slopes behind and all about wore a carpet of fragrant short-lived flowers, nodding as if towards sleep, and over all was the hush of the lonely hills. A gust blew a whiff of the camp smoke towards him, and he turned back to watch Necia kneeling beside the fire like some graceful virgin at her altar rites, while the peculiar acrid out-door odor of burning spruce was like an incense in his nostrils.
He filled his chest deeply and leaned on his axe, for he found himself shaking as if under the spell of some great expectancy.
"Your supper is getting cold," she called to him.
He took a seat beside her on a pile of boughs where the smoke was least troublesome; he had chosen a spot that was sheltered by a lichen-covered ledge, and this low wall behind, with the wickiup joining it, formed an enclosure that lent them a certain air of privacy. They ate ravenously, and drank deep cupfuls of the unflavored tea. By the time they were finished the night had fallen and the air was just cool enough to make the fire agreeable. Burrell heaped on more wood and stretched out beside her.
"This day has been so wonderful," said the girl, "that I shall never go to sleep. I can't bear to end it."
"But you must be weary, little maid," he said, gently; "I am."
"Wait, let me see." She stretched her limbs and moved slightly to try her muscles. "Yes, I am a very tired, but not the kind of tired that makes you want to go to bed. I want to talk, talk, talk, and not about ourselves either, but about sensibles. Tell me about your people—your sister."
He had expected her to ask this, for the subject seemed to have an inexhaustible charm for her. She would sit rapt and motionless as long as he cared to talk of his sister, in her wide, meditative eyes the shadow of a great unvoiced longing. It always seemed to make her grave and thoughtful, he had noticed, so he had tried lately to avoid the topic, and to-night in particular he wanted to do so, for this was no time for melancholy. He had not even allowed himself to think, as yet, and there were reasons why he did not wish her to do so; thought and realization and a readjustment of their relations would come after to-night, but this was the hour of illusion, and it must not be broken; therefore he began to tell her of other people and of his youth, making his tales as fanciful as possible, choosing deliberately to foster the merry humor in which they had been all day. He told her of his father, the crotchety old soldier, whose absurd sense of duty and whose elaborate Southern courtesy had become a byword in the South. He told her household tales that were prized like pieces of the Burrell plate, beautiful heirlooms of sentiment that mark the honor of high-blooded houses; following which there was much to recount of the Meades, from the admiral who fought as a boy in the Bay of Tripoli down to the cousin who was at Annapolis; the while his listener hung upon his words hungrily, her mind so quick in pursuit of his that it spurred him unconsciously, her great, dark eyes half closed in silent laughter or wide with wonder, and in them always the warmth of the leaping firelight blended with the trust of a new-born virginal love.
Without realizing it, the young man drifted further than he had intended, and further than he had ever allowed himself to go before, for in him was a clean and honest pride of birth, like his mother's glory in her forebears, the expression of which he had learned to repress, inasmuch as it was a Dixie-land conceit and had been misunderstood when he went North to the Academy. In some this would have seemed bigoted and feminine, this immoderate admiration for his own blood, this exaggerated appreciation of his family honor, but in this Southern youth it was merely the unconscious commendation of an upright manliness for an upright code. When he had finished, the girl remarked, with honest approval:
"What a fine you are. Those people of yours have all been good men and women, haven't they?"
"Most of them," he admitted, "and I think the reason is that we've been soldiers. The army discipline is good for a man. It narrows a fellow, I suppose, but it keeps him straight."
Then he began to laugh silently.
"What is it?" she said, curiously.
"Oh, nothing! I was just wondering what my strait-laced ancestors would say if they could see me now."
"What do you mean?" the girl asked, in open-eyed wonderment.
"I don't care," he went on, unheeding her question. "They did worse things in their time, from what I hear." He leaned forward to draw her to him.
"Worse things? But we are doing nothing bad," said Necia, holding him off. "There's no wrong in loving."
"Of course not," he assured her.
"I am proud of it," she declared. "It is the finest thing, the greatest thing that has ever come into my life. Why, I simply can't hold it; I want to sing it to the stars and cry it out to the whole world. Don't you?"
"I hardly think we'd better advertise," he said, dryly.
"Why not?"
"Well, I shouldn't care to publish the tale of this excursion of ours, would you?"
"I don't see any reason against it. I have often taken trips with Poleon, and been gone with him for days and days at a time."
"But you were not a woman then," he said, softly.
"No, not until to-day, that's true. Dear, dear! How I did grow all of a sudden! And yet I'm just the same as I was yesterday, and I'll always be the same, just a wild little. Please don't ever let me be a big tame. I don't want to be commonplace and ordinary. I want to be natural—and good."
"You couldn't be like other women," he declared, and there was more tenderness than hunger in his tone now, as she looked up at him trustingly from the shelter of his arms. "It would spoil you to grow up."
"It is so good to be alive and to love you like this!" she continued, dreamily, staring into the fire. "I seem to have come out of a gloomy house into the glory of a warm spring day, for my eyes are blinded and I can't see half the beautifuls I want to, there are so many about me."
"Those are my arms," interjected the soldier, lightly, in an effort to ward off her growing seriousness.
"I've never been afraid of anything, and yet I feel so safe inside them. Isn't it queer?"
The young man became conscious of a vague discomfort, and realized dimly that for hours now he had been smothering with words and caresses a something that had striven with him to be heard, a something that instead of dying grew stronger the more utterly this innocent maid yielded to him. It was as if he had ridden impulse with rough spurs in a fierce desire to distance certain voices, and in the first mad gallop had lost them, but now far back heard them calling again more strongly every moment. A man's honor, if old, may travel feebly, but its pursuit is persistent. It was the talk about his people that had raised this damned uneasiness and indecision, he thought. Why had he ever started it?
"The marvellous part of it all," continued the girl, "is that it will never end. I know I shall love you always. Do you suppose I am really different from other girls?"
"Everything is different to-night—the whole world," he declared, impatiently. "I thought I knew myself, but suddenly I seem strange in my own eyes."
"I've had a big handicap," she said, "but you must help me to overcome it. I want to be like your sister."
He rose and piled more wood upon the fire. What possessed the girl? It was as if she knew each cunning joint of his armor, as if she had realized her peril and had set about the awakening of his conscience, deliberately and with a cautious wisdom beyond her years. Well, she had done it—and he swore to himself. Then he melted at the sight of her, crouched there against the shadows, following his every movement with her soul in her eyes, the tenderest trace of a smile upon her lips. He vowed he was a reprobate to wrong her so; it was her white soul and her woman's love that spoke.
When she beheld him gazing at her, she tilted her head sidewise daintily, like a little bird.
"Oh, my! What a fierce you are all at once!"
Her smile flashed up as if illumined by the leaping blaze, and he crossed quickly, kneeling beside her.
"Dear, wonderful girl," he said, "it is going to be my heart's work to see that you never change and that you remain just what you are. You can't understand what this means to me, for I, too, was blinded, but the darkness of the night has restored my vision. Now you must go to sleep; the hours are short and we must be going early."
He piled up a great, sweet-scented couch of springy boughs, and fashioned her a pillow out of a bundle of smaller ones, around which he wrapped his khaki coat; then he removed her high-laced boots, and, taking her tiny feet, one in the palm of either hand, bowed his head over them and kissed them with a sense of her gracious purity and his own unworthiness. He spread one of the big gray blankets over her, and tucked her in, while she sighed in delightful languor, looking up at him all the time.
"I'll sit here beside you for a while," he said. "I want to smoke a bit."
She stole a slim, brown hand out from beneath the cover and snuggled it in his, and he leaned forward, closing her lids down with his lips. Her utter weariness was manifest, for she fell asleep almost instantly, her fingers twined about his in a childlike grip.
At times a great desire to feel her in his arms, to have her on his breast, surged over him, for he had lived long apart from women, and the solitude of the night seemed to mock him. He was a strong man, and in his veins ran the blood of wayward forebears ho were wont to possess that which they conquered in the lists of love, mingled with which was the blood of spirited Southern women who had on occasion loved not wisely, according to Kentucky rumor, but only too well. Nevertheless, they were honest men and women, if over-sentimental, and had transmitted to him a heritage of chivalry and a high sense of honor and courage. Strange to say, this little, simple half-breed girl had revived this honor and courage, even when he tried most stubbornly to smother it. If only her love was like her blood, he might have had no scruples; or if her blood were as pure as her love—even then it would be easier; but, as it was, he must give her up to-night, and for all time. Her love had placed a barrier between them greater and more insurmountable than her blood.
He sat for a long time with the dwindling firelight playing about him, his manhood and his desires locked in a grim struggle, wondering at the hold this forest elf had gained upon him, wondering how it was that she had stolen into his heart and head and taken such utter possession of him. It would be no easy task to shut her out of his mind and put her away from him. And she...?
He gently withdrew his fingers from her grasp, and, seeking the other side of the wickiup, covered himself over without disturbing her, and fell asleep.
It was early dawn when Necia crept to him.
"I dreamed you had gone away," she said, shivering violently and drawing close. "Oh, it was a terrible awakening—"
"I was too tired to dream," he said.
"So I had to come and see if you were really here."
He quickly rekindled the fire, and they made a hasty breakfast. Before the warmth of the rising sun had penetrated the cold air they had climbed the ridge and obtained a wondrous view of broken country, the hills alight with the morning rays, the valleys misty and mystical. They made good progress on the summit, which was paved with barren rock and sparsely carpeted with short moss, while there was never a hint of insects to annoy them. Merrily they swung along, buoyed up by an unnatural exaltation; yet now and then, as they drew near their destination, the young man had a chilling premonition of evil to come, and wondered if he had not been foolhardy to undertake this rash enterprise.
"I wish Stark was not one of Lee's party," he said once. "He may misunderstand our being together this way."
"But when he learns that we love each other, that will explain everything."
"I'm not so sure. He doesn't know you as Lee and Poleon and your father do. I think we had better say nothing at all about—you and me—to any one."
"But why?" questioned the girl, stopping abruptly. "They will know it, anyhow, when they see us. I can't conceal it."
"I am wiser in this than you are," the soldier insisted, "and we mustn't act like lovers; trust this to me."
"Oh, I won't play that!" cried Necia, petulantly. "If all this is going to end when we get to Lee's cabin, we'll stay right here forever."
He was not sure of all the logic he advanced in convincing her, but she yielded finally, saying:
"Well, I suppose you know best, and, anyhow, littles should always mind."
They clung to the divide for several hours, then descended into the bed of a stream, which they followed until it joined a larger one a couple of miles below, and there, sheltered in a grove of whispering firs, they found Lee's cabin nestling in a narrow, forked valley. Evidently the miner had selected a point on the main creek just below the confluence of the feeders as a place in which to prospect, and Burrell fell to wondering which one of these smaller streams supplied the run of gold.
"There's no one here," said Necia, gleefully. "We've beat them in! We've beat them in!"
They had been walking rapidly since dawn, and, although Burrell's watch showed two o'clock, she refused to halt for lunch, declaring that the others might arrive at any moment; so down they went to the lower end of "No Creek" Lee's location, where Burrell blazed a smooth spot on the down-stream side of a tree and wrote thereon at Necia's dictation. When he had finished, she signed her name, and he witnessed it, then paced off four hundred and forty steps, where he squared a spruce-tree, which she marked: "Lower centre end stake of No. I below discovery. Necia Gale, locator." She was vastly excited and immensely elated at her good-fortune in acquiring the claim next to Lee's, and chattered like a magpie, filling the glades with resounding echoes and dancing about in the bright sunlight that filtered through the branches.
"Now you stake the one below mine," she said. "It's just as good, and maybe better—nobody can tell." But he shook his head.
"I'm not going to stake anything," said he.
"You must!" she cried, quickly, the sparkle dying from her eyes. "You said you would, or I never would have brought you."
"I merely said I would come with you," he corrected. "I did not promise to take up a claim, for I don't think I ought to do so. If I were a civilian, it would be different, but this is government land, and I am a part of the government, as it were. Then, too, in addition to the question of my right to do it, there would be the certainty of making enemies of your people, old "No Creek" and the rest, and I can't afford that now. With you it is different, for you are entitled to this ground. After Lee's friends have shared in his discovery I may change my mind."
All arguments and pleading were in vain; he remained obdurate and insisted on her locating two other claims for herself, one on each of the smaller creeks where they came together above the house.
"But nobody ever stakes more than one claim on a gulch," objected the girl. "It's a custom of the miners."
"Then we'll call each one of these branches a different and separate creek," he said. "The gold was carried down one of those smaller streams, and we won't take any chances on which one it was. When a fellow plays a big game he should play to win, and, as this means such a great deal to you, we won't overlook any bets."
Necia consented, and when her three claims had been properly located the couple returned to the cabin to get lunch and to await with some foreboding the coming of the others and what of good or ill it might bring.