THE CHEECHAKOS
THE CHEECHAKOS
THE CHEECHAKOS
The man was standing at the edge of the river landing gazing out across the broad waters as they drifted slowly by, a calm, gentle flood undisturbed by the rushing freshet of spring, which had already spent its turbulent life leaving the sedate Hekor embraced in the gentler arms of advancing summer.
The landing was little better than a wreck. The green log piles were awry. There were rifts where last summer’s timbers had been carried bodily away by the crash of ice at winter’s break up. For the annual rebuilding necessitated by the tremendous labour at the birth of the Arctic spring had been dispensed with. There was no longer any need for it.
The man’s gaze was far-searching. It was seriously ruminating. Perhaps, even, it was regretful. For he knew that in a few hours all that he had looked out upon for the past seven years would lay behind him, possibly never to be looked upon again.
The mile-wide river lay open to the caressing sunlight. It was unshaded anywhere. The far bank rose in a gentle slope, a perfect carpet of wild flowers, and beyond, as the valley rose upwards, the shimmer of summer heat bathed the purpling distance in an almost dazzling haze. Away to his left, beyond the waters, stood the dark spread of Fox Bluff, which gave the place its name, a wide stretch of tattered forest, isolated on an undulating plain many miles in extent. And the ruins of the old Mission House, long since burned out by the Euralian marauders, still stood gaunt and bare, a monument to the tragedy that was now some fifteen years old.
Behind him, well above the highest water level of the river, the staunch walls of the stockade of old Fort Cupar still sheltered the frame building which was about to be abandoned. But already the place had assumed something of the lifelessness which human desertion leaves in its wake. There were no Eskimo encampments gathered about its timbers. There were no columns of smoke arising from camp fires. The familiar yelp of trail dogs, and the shrill voices of native children were silent. There was no life anywhere but in the presence of the man on the landing, and in that of the girl clad in native buckskin standing beside him, and in the slow movements of five Indians and half-breeds who, under the guidance of the factor, were completing the stowage of cargo in the three canoes moored to the derelict landing.
It was the day of the great retreat. It was the final yielding after years of struggle. It was the giving up of that last thread of hope which is the most difficult thing in human psychology.
Old Ben Needham was more than reluctant. He was a hard-bitten fur-trader of the older school. A man of force and wide experience. A man bred to the work, acute, rough, and not too scrupulous. He had been born in the Arctic, schooled in the Arctic, and only when the needs of his trade demanded had he ever passed out of that magic circle. He was a man approaching sixty, full of an aggressive fighting spirit which usually modifies in men of advancing years. And he knew that he was about to acknowledge complete defeat after seven years of battling against invisible odds. He knew that the company had selected him out of all their army of servants to attempt the rehabilitation of the fortunes of Fort Cupar, and he had utterly and completely failed. And so, as he stood on the landing superintending the last removal of stores, and contemplating the return with his story of failure to those who had sent him on his forlorn hope, his mood was uneasy, his temper was sour and inclined to violence.
The voice of the girl beside him roused him out of his contemplation of the familiar scene.
“You need Mum here to put heart into you, Ben,” she said with a smile that masked her own feelings. “You know, Mum’s the wisest thing in a country where fools are dead certain to go under. She’d tell you there’s nothing so bad in the world as flogging a dead mule. The feller who acts that way most generally gets kicked to death by a live one. Which, I guess, is only another way of saying it’s a fool’s game anyway.”
“Does she say that, Kid?”
The man turned from the scene that had so preoccupied him, and his deep-set, hard grey eyes surveyed the speaker from beneath his bushy, snow-white brows. For all his mood there was a sort of mild tolerance in his tone.
The girl he addressed as Kid smiled blandly into his unresponsive face, and her wide blue eyes were full of girlish raillery. For all the sunburn on her rounded cheek, and the rough make of her almost mannish clothing, or perhaps because of these things, she was amazingly attractive. She was young. Something less than twenty. But she was tall, taller than the broad figure of the man beside her. And there was physical strength and vigour in her graceful girlish body.
She was clad in buckskin from her head to the reindeer moccasins on her shapely feet. Her tunic, or parka, was tricked out with beads and narrow fur trimmings in truly Indian fashion. And the leather girdle about her slim waist supported a long sheath knife, much as the native hunters were equipped. But she was white, with fair curling hair coiled in a prodigal mass under her fur cap, with wide, smiling eyes that rivalled the blue of the summer sky, and a nose as perfectly modelled, and lips as warm and ripe as any daughter of the more southern latitudes. Her manner was easy and self-reliant. It was full of that cool assurance bred of the independence which the hard life of the Northland forces upon its children. Nature had equipped her with splendid generosity, and the man understood that her sex robbed her of nothing that could make her his equal in understanding of the conditions in which their lives were cast.
The girl laughed gaily.
“She says a whole lot of things, Ben,” she cried. “But then you see she’s the mother of six bright kids who’re yearning to learn, and she doesn’t guess to let them down, or have them tell her instead. Yes, she said that sure, when we were wondering how your quitting was going to fix us. You see, I’ve depended on your store for trade. I guess I was the only supply of pelts that came your way. And you were the only supply for our needs. Your folks are right,” she added, with a sigh. “You can’t run a trading post to hand out to a bunch of kids the stuff that makes life reasonable, and for the sake of the few bales of furs we’re able to snatch before they fall into the hands of foreign poachers. It was sure flogging a dead mule. But it’s going to be tough. It’s going to be tough for us, as well as for you and your folk. I’ve tried to look ahead and see what’s to be done, but I can’t see all I’d like to. Mum reckons we’ll get through, but she leaves it to Providence and me to say how.”
The man bit off a chew of tobacco and shouted some orders at the men stowing the last of the stores. His words came forcefully amidst a shower of harsh expletives. Then he turned again to the girl.
“I’d say your Mum’s as bright a woman as the good God ever permitted to use up his best air,” he said, with a shake of his grey head. “But I just can’t see how trading reindeer with the fool Eskimo up north’s goin’ to feed a whole bunch of hungry mouths, and clothe a dandy outfit of growin’ bodies right, if there ain’t a near-by market for your goods, and a store to trade you the things you need. There ain’t a post from here to Placer, which is more than three hundred and fifty miles by the river. It kind o’ looks bad to me.”
“Yes.”
The smile had passed out of the girl’s eyes, and her fair brows had drawn slightly together under the rim of her fur cap.
“You see, Kid,” the man went on, in a tone that was almost gentle for all the natural harshness of his voice, “I’d be mighty glad to fix you as right as things’ll let me. We’ve figgered on this thing all we know, you and me, and you’ve a year’s store of canned goods and groceries by you paid for by your last bunch of pelts. But after that—what?”
The swift glance of the Kid’s eyes took in the earnest expression of the man’s rugged face. She realised his genuine concern in spite of all the worries with which his own affairs beset him. And forthwith she broke into a laugh that completely disarmed.
“We’ll need to feed caribou meat,” she said. “The farm’s plumb full of it. Mum says the good God’s always ready to help those who help themselves. And I guess the bunch at home’ll do that surely when they find their vitals rattling in the blizzard. Don’t just worry a thing, Ben. You’ve done the best for us, you know. For all the grouch you hand out to most folk you’re white all thro’. You’re forgetting there’s Usak and me. If it means Placer for trade and food for the bunch I guess we’ll make it.”
The girl’s laugh, and her lightness of manner in her dismissal of the threat overshadowing her future and that of those who were largely her care made their talk easy. But there was seriousness and a great courage lying behind it. She knew the nightmare this break up of her market was to all those she cared for. But she had no intention of adding one single moment of disquiet to the burden of the man’s concern for his own future.
“But it’s a hell of a long piece, Kid,” the factor protested with a shake of his shaggy grey head. “Couldn’t you folks quit too?”
The girl shook her head while her blue eyes were turned on the broad expanse of water where it vanished in the south. Perhaps it was the trend of their talk which had attracted her gaze in that direction.
“Surely we could quit if—we had the notion,” she said, after a moment’s reflection. “But what if we did? I mean how would it help? Maybe I don’t know. Placer? What if we made Placer where there’s food and trade? What could we do? There’s Mum, and my six little brothers and sisters, running up like a step-ladder from inches to feet. Then there’s Usak, an Indian man who’s got no equal as a pelt hunter and trailman. Here we’re lords over a limitless territory. We’ve a herd of deer that runs into thousands, and reindeer are the beginning and end of everything to the Eskimo, but wouldn’t be worth dog meat in Placer. Show me. I’m ready to think. We can go on making out right here if we only make one trip a year to Placer. If we quit, I guess there’d be nothing but the dance halls of Placer you’ve told me about for me and my little sisters as they grow up, while Usak, with a temper like a she-wolf, would run foul of half the city in a week. No. You said a thing once to me, Ben, that’s stuck in my stupid head since. What was it? ‘The North’s big, an’ free, an’ open, an’ clean. The longer you know it the more you’ll curse it. But the feller who’s bred to it can’t go back on it. There’s no place on God’s earth for him outside it but the hell of perdition.’ I guess that fits my notion of—Say, there’s an outfit coming up out of the south.”
The girl broke off.
She stood pointing out over the water where the river seemed to rise out of the distance between two low hill breasts. A group of canoes, infinitely small in the distance, had suddenly leapt into view.
The man became absorbed in the unaccustomed vision. He raised a gnarled hand, broad and muscular for all its leanness, and shaded his eyes from the sun-glare. After a moment he dropped it to his side. A grim, cynical light shone in his eyes.
“Cheechakos,” he said in profound contempt.
“How d’you know?” The girl was full of that interest and curiosity bred of the solitude in which she lived.
“They’re loaded down with truck so they look like swamping. It’s a big outfit, an’ they look mighty like they’ve bought up haf the dry goods the gold city can scratch together. Yes. They’re Cheechakos, sure. An’ they’re huntin’ the gold trail. I can locate ’em at a hundred miles. I’ve seen ’em come, but most generally go, on every blamed river runnin’ north of Dawson.”
The girl laughed lightly.
“To listen to you, Ben, folk might guess you hadn’t feeling softer than tamarack for a thing in the world. I want to laugh sure. Sometimes I feel I could shake you till the bones rattled in your tough old body. Then I remember. An’ I—I don’t want to do a thing but laff. If you’re not through with your outfit, and beating it down the river by the time those folk happen along I’ll gamble a caribou cow to a gopher you’ll be handing them just anything you reckon they need, if it’s only the wise old talk I know you’re full up to the brim with. You can’t bluff me.”
The girl shook her head and her eyes were full of a smiling, almost motherly tenderness for the strong man of many years who was tasting the bitterness of real defeat. She had known him from the day he first set foot at Fort Cupar with that sort of family intimacy which is part of the life of the great solitudes. She had been a child then. Now she was a grown woman with a mind that was simply serious despite her ready laugh, and a heart full of deep, womanly sympathy. All life and hope still lay before her. This man had gone far beyond the meridian of both. He was rapidly approaching those declining years with a great failure to his credit, and she realised the tragedy of it.
“No,” he said. “I guess I can’t bluff you, Kid. You’re kind of nimble.” His eyes were still on the approaching outfit. “I wonder,” he went on. “That wise old talk you reckon I’m full of. Do you fancy me passing it to you before I quit, instead of to that bunch of Cheechakos?”
The girl nodded with a twinkling smile.
“Sure,” she said. “I’d feel jealous you handing it to the others.”
Ben Needham laughed in that short, dry fashion which was his limit of hilarious expression.
“Well, you best pull your freight out of here before that bunch of Cheechakos come alongside. Ther’s a whole heap o’ things you know, but a sight bigger heap of the things you don’t know. The junk that comes up out of Placer is mostly junk, mean, human junk. The men of the gold trail ain’t like the metal they’re chasing, except in the colour of their livers. One of the things I haven’t figgered you’re wise to is you’re a gal of nigh twenty, and you’ve a face that smiles like spring sunshine, and the sort of eyes that makes a man feel like shooting up the other feller. Do you get me? Beat it, my dear. You’ve a Mum, an’ you’ve got a dandy bunch of brothers an’ sisters. You’ve got a home way out there on the Caribou River that ain’t ever known a thing but what a good woman can make it. Wal, keep things that way. But you won’t do it if the muck of the gold trail hits your tracks.”
The girl’s smile had passed as she watched the old man expectorate into the clear waters at his feet. She remained completely silent while, in an utterly changed tone, he hurled violent expletives at his workers. She looked on while he passed down to where the lashings were being made fast on the last canoe whose load had just been completed. When he came back her thoughtful mood had passed, and her smile was supreme once more.
“I’d wanted to see you start out, Ben,” she said gently. “You know it’s hard not to be able to speed a real friend, when—when— But there, it’s no use. The kids are needin’ me, so’s Mum, and Usak and the deer. You’re so slow getting away I just can’t stop.” Her gaze wandered again to the approaching outfit, and it was a little regretful, and something wistful. “Are all the men of the gold trail tough? I mean are they just all bad?”
The grey head denied her. The man’s cynical smile twinkled in his eyes.
“The men ain’t no better, an’ no worse than most of us,” he said slily. “That is till they get the yellow fever of it all. When that gets around they’re mighty sick folk till the fever passes. Guess your memory don’t carry you back to the days when you weren’t more than knee-high to a grasshopper. If it did maybe you’d be wise to the thing that’s got a mighty big place in your dandy life. It’s gold. The yarns I’m told say it was gold that robbed you of a father. It was gold that left you helpless, feed for the coyotes that didn’t find you. It was gold,” he went on, pointing across the river, “that left them burnt out sticks, which one time was your rightful home. Gold, I guess, has played a mighty tough part in your life, Kid, and maybe it ain’t goin’ to let up. That’s the way of things. I’d say you ain’t done with gold yet. You see, ther’s the story of that ‘strike’ your father made, an’—lost. No,” he added thoughtfully. “It’s goin’ to come back on you. An’ that’s why I say beat it. Don’t wait around for those folks comin’ up the river. They got the fever bad, I guess, or they wouldn’t be makin’ a country that’s cursed by the Euralian fur poachers. Yes. Beat it, Kid. Light out. They’re comin’ right in.”
The swift stroke reached its length. The Kid lifted the paddle from the water and laid it across the little vessel in front of her. Resting against the paddling strut she craned round and gazed back over the shining waters.
She had passed the wooded bend of the river, and the far-reaching shelter of Fox Bluff completely shut her off from observation at the Fort. The landing was hidden; so, too, were the three great canoes that were to carry the defeated factor and his outfit down the river to those who quite possibly would have no further use for his services.
Even the Fort itself, on the higher ground of the opposite bank, was no longer visible.
The girl was satisfied. She returned to her labours, for the drift of the stream had carried her canoe back some few yards.
It shot forward again, however, under the skilful strokes of her strong young arms, and the water rippled and sang as it smote the sharp cutwater that drove into it. Three miles farther on she had reached the limits of the great woods, and the turbulent rapids came into view.
They were the rapids at the junction of the two rivers. It was here that the Caribou River disgorged itself upon the flood of the greater river. A wide litter of frothing, churning popple disported itself over the shallows at the mouth of the invading stream. In the passage of time, the Caribou had battled its way up out of the south-east. It had broken into the sedate course of the Hekor diagonally, meeting its stream defiantly. Final overwhelming had been its lot, in the process of which a vast stretch of sheltering banks had been washed completely out and transformed into treacherous shoals. It was the girl’s immediate objective.
Again she ceased from her labours and gazed smilingly over the distant view. It was alight with a lavish wealth of colour, the vivid hues of Arctic blossoms with which the ripening sun of spring had set the whole country ablaze. Her smile was full of girlish enjoyment. For she was thinking of the wise, friendly, cynical old Ben Needham and his earnest warning.
She was thinking of him in no spirit of ridicule, but she knew she meant to disregard his warning utterly. It was the youth in her. It was the girlish curiosity and a spirit of independence that urged her. The world beyond was a sort of dream place of wonder to her; a book whose pages were sealed lest her eyes should seek the things that were there written. He had warned her that these folk coming up out of the south were the Cheechakos of the gold trail. He was probably right, but at least they were white folk who belonged to that world from which she was wholly cut off. It was an opportunity she had no intention of missing. She would transform herself into something resembling the creatures of the shy world to which she belonged. She would lie hidden, and gaze upon these strange and terrible people from another world, against whom she had been so gravely warned.
She turned her little vessel sharply towards the bank of the river where it rose high, and the last of Fox Bluff projected a dense mass of Arctic willow which hung down, a perfect screen, till the delicate foliage buried itself in the bosom of the stream. A few swift strokes of her paddle and she passed from view behind it.
The nose of her vessel was securely resting on the sticky mud of the bank. She had turned about. And now she sat waiting, peering out through the foliage as might some hunted silver fox, whose pelt was one of the chief objects of her trade. She gave no sign, she made no sound. She had no intention of revealing her presence. But she would see for herself the thing she must shun, the thing whose presence in her home she must always deny.
It was a long waiting, but it mattered nothing. The daylight was almost unending now, and anyway time had small enough bearing on the simple affairs of her life. She had time for the indulgence of every whim, and the youth in her prompted a full measure of such indulgence.
A happy excitement thrilled her. Everything that lifted her out of the humdrum routine of her life on the farm became an exhilarating excitement. She was completely happy in her life. She was happy in her support of the mother woman labouring in her home for her many offspring, she was happy in her association with the Indian, Usak, whose untiring labours had built up the great reindeer farm of which he had assured her she was mistress. But her mind was groping amongst a world of girlish dreams, yearning and full of unspoken, unadmitted desires. A subtle restlessness was at work in her, and it found expression in the impulse which had become so irresistible. All her life had been bounded by narrow limits of association. Her only human associations had always been those of her far-off home, and the trading post with its factor, and those men of the fur trail who foregathered about its staunch walls. Here, for the first time, was something new. And more than all it was something that was prohibited.
The two men were gazing out at the churning waters storming over the shoals, and the outlook was threatening. They were standing on the low bank, trampling underfoot the carpet of flowers which grew in profusion down to the very edge of the river. They were surveying the junction of the two rivers where the Caribou broke its way into the flood of the Hekor, and the endless battle of conflicting streams was being fought out. The cauldron of boiling rapids extended for nearly two miles.
Wilder raised a sunburnt hand and crushed the blood glutted bodies of half a hundred mosquitoes on the back of his powerful neck.
“It’s portage, sure, Chilcoot,” he said, with that finality which denoted a mind made up. “I don’t see a passage anywhere fit to take the big boats. I’d say the stream’s deep this side under the bank, but we can’t chance things.”
Chilcoot Massy chewed on for a moment in deep contemplation. He was a silent creature, squat, powerful and grey-headed, with the hard-beaten face of a pugilist. He was a product of the northern gold trail whose experience went far back to the first rush over the Skagway in ’98, and looked it all in the rough buckskin and cord clothing in which he was clad. He was Bill Wilder’s chief lieutenant; a man whose force and courage was unabated for all his years, and whose restless spirit denied him the comfort and leisure which the ample wealth he had achieved in association with his friend and one-time employer, entitled him to.
“It certainly looks that way,” he agreed. Then he demurred. “You never can tell on these rivers,” he said. “We’d have done a heap better breaking down our outfit, an’ takin’ on a bigger bunch of lighter canoes. Maybe we’ll run into this sort of stuff right away up the river as we get nearer the headwaters.”
Wilder shook his head.
“That trader feller didn’t reckon that way,” he said. “There isn’t a thing to worry from here to the Great Falls,” he said. “And Loon Creek is twenty miles this side of them. We’re liable to find it tough on the creek. But that’s not new. We’ll be at work then with a fixed headquarters, and we can travel light. Ben Needham said we could get through this stuff if we fancied taking a chance. He guessed if we knew it there wasn’t any sort of chance about it. Well, we don’t know it. And I’m taking no chances. You see, there’s more to this thing than chasing a simple gold trail.” He laughed. “Guess we aren’t civilians any longer. We’re police. You and me, and Mike. And we’ve got our orders from our superiors who don’t stand for disobedience. We’re being paid a dollar a day to make good. And I don’t reckon the police pay out such a powerful bunch of money to folks to make a failure. Come right on. We’ll get back and eat. Then we’ll start in on the portage.”
They re-traced their steps to the camp that had been pitched well below the rough waters.
It was a busy scene. The five great laden canoes were moored nose on to the bank, and two smaller vessels were drawn up clear of the water on the mud. It was an imposing fleet, equipped to the last detail, and old Ben Needham had done it less than justice when he had contemptuously characterised it for the benefit of the Kid. This was no Cheechako outfit laden with the useless equipment engendered of inexperience.
It was an equipment such as only the wide experience of Wilder and Chilcoot could have designed. It was made up of everything which the outlands of the North demanded, from dogs and sleds to a miniature army of Breeds and hard-living whitemen, armed to encounter human hostility as well as the fiercest onslaughts of Nature’s most antagonistic moods. Furthermore, full preparation for a long sojourn in an inhospitable region had been made.
Hot food had been made ready when they reached the camp, and dogs and men were busily engaged satisfying keen appetite for all the fierce heat of the day and the shadelessness prevailing everywhere. The leader’s camp had been set apart, and Red Mike, a red-haired, giant Irishman, whose only sober moments were breathed beyond the drink-laden atmosphere of the dance halls of Placer, was awaiting their return. He was third in command, and his responsibility was that of quartermaster, and river man, and for the discipline of the ruffian crew of the expedition. His greeting was characteristic.
“Chance is the salt of life,” he cried, in a pleasant brogue, addressing Wilder. “Are we takin’ it, boss?”
Wilder shook his head.
“No,” he said.
“Then sure you’ll set in an’ eat,” was the prompt retort. “Guess portage was invented by the divil himself, an’ the Holy Fathers don’t reckon we need to get in a hurry knockin’ at Hell’s gates. This sow-belly’s as tough as dried snakes. I don’t seem to notice even the flies yearning. Tea? Gee! It’s poor sort of hooch, even when you’ve skimmed the stewed flies clear. I—Mother of Snakes! Wher’ did that come from?”
The man’s blue eyes were turned on the shining waters. His roving gaze had been caught by the sight of a small hide kyak heading for the camp. It was propelled by a single paddle dipping in the noiseless fashion which belongs to the river Indians. And he squatted with a mouthful of sow-belly poised ready to be devoured.
Chilcoot had flung his length on the ground, but Bill Wilder was still standing. His eyes were turned at once on the approaching vessel.
Red Mike laughed.
“That trader guy’s sent us along a scout,” he said. “He’s a reas’nable sort of citizen. I guess that Injun’s goin’ to save us portage.”
Wilder shook his head.
“Needham was all in beating it down river. And anyway—”
“He wouldn’t be passin’ us along awhite galto show us them rapids.”
Chilcoot was sitting up. His hard face was wearing a grin that might well have seemed impossible to it. And he spoke with an assurance that brought the Irishman to his feet, with his food thrown aside as though it were the last thing to be desired at such a moment.
The kyak approached the bank within some twenty yards. Then with a thrust of the paddle the Kid held it up and sat contemplating the men on the shore.
The whole camp was agog. The crews lounging over their rough trail food watched the intruder curiously. But seemingly they had missed, in the sunburnt figure, clad in familiar mannish buckskin, the thing which the lightning eye of Chilcoot had discovered on the instant.
Wilder and Red Mike passed hastily down the bank while the older man followed more leisurely.
It was just a little difficult. Once the men reached the waterside Chilcoot’s assertion was left beyond question. Had the intruder been a man, greeting and possible invitation would have been forthcoming on the instant. As it was even the Irishman was reduced to silence in sheer amazement. The girl was less than twenty yards away beyond the vessels moored, a rampart between herself and the Cheechakos against whom the factor had warned her. Her beautiful blue eyes were unsmiling. Her sunburnt face was almost painfully serious. And her whole manner, and her attitude told the men on the bank that her approach had definite meaning which had nothing to do with idle curiosity. So they waited, and finally the difficulty was solved by the girl herself.
“You’re getting ready for portage?” she called across the water.
“That’s so.”
It was Wilder who replied to her, and a smile lit his angular face as he noted the sweetly girlish tones of the voice that reached him.
“You don’t need to,” came back the Kid’s prompt reply, and her paddle stirred in the water and her little vessel crept in towards the laden canoes. “There’s a deep channel. It’s right along under the bank, and it’ll take the biggest boat you’ve got without a worry.”
Wilder stepped on to the nearest vessel and moved down its length. The prow of the girl’s canoe had come within a yard of him, and he looked down into the wide eyes gazing so confidently up into his.
“That’s just kind of you,” he said, in a tone he intended should escape the listening ears behind him. “It’s a mighty big proposition portaging this outfit, and I was feeling kind of reluctant.” He withdrew his gaze from the fascinating picture of the white girl in the boat and glanced in the direction she had indicated. “The channel cuts in under this bank, you say? And it’s clear all the way?”
“Sure.”
The Kid’s bright eyes were measuring. In her mind was the haunting memory of old Ben’s warning, but somehow it was powerless before her inclination and the sight of this large man with his steady, good-looking eyes, and wholesome, clean-shaven face. Her confidence increased and her impulse became irresistible.
“If you feel like it I’ll give you a lead,” she said. “I know it by heart. You see,” she added, with simple conclusiveness, “I was raised on this river.”
Wilder nodded. His smiling eyes had come back again to the girl’s face as she sat with her paddle stirring in the water to keep her place against the stream.
“Did Ben Needham send you along?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” the Kid denied frankly. “I just saw you pass up stream and guessed you were strangers. So—” She broke off. In a moment she realised her mistake from the flash of inquiry she saw in the man’s eyes.
“I don’t remember passing you on the river,” he said quickly.
The girl’s moment of confusion passed, and frank impulse again took hold of her. She laughed happily, and the man felt the infection of it.
“I saw you coming an’ took cover,” she said simply. “I guessed you were Cheechakos and reckoned I’d take a look—at a distance.”
“Why did you take—cover? There wasn’t need?”
“No.” The Kid shook her head a little dubiously. “There wasn’t real need. Only—”
“Yes?”
“Well, anyway I’ll be glad to pass you through the rapids if it’ll help you. It’ll save you more than a day.”
“I’ll be grateful. I—wonder.”
“What?”
“You see, my name’s Wilder—Bill Wilder. And I was wondering what yours was.”
Again the girl broke into a happy laugh and the gold man, in sheer delight, joined in. Somewhere out of the blue a pretty white girl, with blue eyes and a wealth of fair hair, clad in the vividly ornamented buckskin which he associated only with the Indian, had descended upon him at a time and place when he had only looked for the roughness of the northern trail. It was all a little amazing. It was all rather absurd. And she was offering to pass him practical help in the work in which he had always believed himself complete master.
“I’m—the Kid,” she returned presently.
“Is that your name?”
The girl shook her head and her smile was irresistible.
“No,” she said. “But it’s how I’m known all along the river.”
“Then I guess it’s good enough for me.” Bill Wilder drew a quick breath. “Well, Kid,” he went on with a smile, “we were just about to eat. Will you step ashore and join us? Then, after, I’ll be mighty glad to have you pass us up those rapids.”
The smile died abruptly out of the girl’s eyes. She remembered Ben Needham and his warning.
“You’re Cheechakos—on the gold trail?” she asked.
Bill laughed. The whole position suddenly dawned on him.
“No,” he said. “No, Kid. We’re an outfit on the gold trail, sure,” he went on quite seriously. “But we’re decent citizens. And there’s not a thing to this camp to scare you. Will you come right ashore?”
For answer the girl’s paddle stirred more deeply and the nose of her canoe shot up to the vessel on which the man was standing. He held out one brown hand to assist her, but it was ignored. The Kid rose to her feet, tall and beautifully slim, and sprang on to the vessel beside him, carrying her own mooring rope of rawhide in her hand.
“I’m kind of glad you ain’t—Cheechakos,” she said.
And they both laughed as they passed back together over the bales of outfit with which the boat was laden, and reached the river bank where Chilcoot and Mike were waiting for them.