THE GREAT SAVAGE
THE GREAT SAVAGE
THE GREAT SAVAGE
Usak stood up from the camp fire that was more than welcome. He stood with his broad back to the shelter of low scrub to leeward of which the midday camp had been pitched, and gazed out over a wide expanse of barren, windswept country. The threat overhanging the grey world was very real. Winter was in the dense, ponderously moving clouds; it was in the bite of the northerly wind, which was persistent and found the weak spot in such human clothing as had not yet given place to the furs of winter. The light of noonday, too, was sadly dull. For the hidden sun had lost so much of its summer power, and its range of daily progress had narrowed down to a line that was low on the horizon.
But the savage was unconcerned for the outlook of the day. He was unconcerned for the sterile territory over which his long summer journey had carried him. The man’s whole being was focussed upon the needs of life. The needs of those who depended on him. The needs which were no less his own. And for once a sense of satisfaction, of ease, was all-pervading. His trade had been something more profitable than it had been for years, and he understood that the needs of the coming winter, and next year’s open season, looked like being comfortably provided for. Oh, yes, there was much labour ahead.
His trade must be translated into the simple provisions which must ultimately be obtained in far-off Placer. He knew all that. But it left his staunch, fierce spirit unafraid. The means of obtaining the things needed were in his hands. The rest was the simple battle with the winter elements which had no terrors for his unimaginative mind.
It was the last lap of a journey of several months. Night would find him in the shelter of his own home, with the voices of the white children, who had become so much a part of his life, ringing in his ears. And before he slept he knew that he would have witnessed the glad smile of welcome and satisfaction in the white girl who was as the sun, moon, and stars of his life. He would have told her of his good news, and together they would have examined and appraised the values with which he had returned from the far-off Eskimo camps which good fortune had flung into his path.
So the grey world looked good. Even the naked undulations amongst which the ribbon-like river wound its way had lost something of their forbidding aspect. It was the world he knew, the world he had battled with all his manhood. His satisfaction had translated it.
He stood for a moment or two, a figure of splendid manhood. His far-gazing eyes looked out with something in them akin to that which looks out of the sailor-man’s eyes. They were searching, reposeful and steady with quiet confidence.
He turned at last at the sounds of movement at the fire, and, for a moment, he watched the white youth, who was his companion, as he collected the chattels out of which they had taken their midday meal.
Then he moved quickly to the boy’s side and took the pan and camp kettle from his hands. And his actions were accompanied by a swift protest in a voice that rarely softened.
“Him Injun work,” he said gruffly. And the manner of it left no doubt as to the definite understanding of their relations. It was the man’s fierce pride that his mission was to serve the white folk entrusted to his care.
Clarence yielded, but his thin cheeks flushed. Then he laughed but without mirth. He was a strapping youth of unusual physique. At sixteen he was all the man his mother claimed for him, for somehow the hardship of the trail had eaten into his youthful character and robbed it of the boyhood his years should have made his. He was serious, completely serious, and his freckled face and brown eyes looked something weary of the labour thus early flung on him.
“It’s most always that way, Usak,” he grumbled sharply. “Nothin’s my work you’ve got time to do.”
The Indian made no reply. He moved quickly over to the three great caribou, standing ready for the trail, harnessed to their long, trailing carryalls. They were fine, powerful bucks, long-trained to the work, and their widespreading, downy antlers, now in full growth and almost ready for their annual shedding, indicated their tally of years in the service of the northern trail. He bestowed the gear in its allotted place in the outfit and returned to the fire.
For a few moments he held out his brown hands to the warming embers, squatting low on his haunches. Then he turned to the boy. His reply to the youth’s challenge had been carefully considered.
“What you mak him this word?” he said, in his harsh way. “You my white boss I lak him mak work for. It good. Oh, yes. Someday it come you grow big white man lak to the good boss, Marty. I know. Then you think ’em this dam Injun no good. Him mak white boy-work for him. No good. I, whiteman, no work for Injun man. Oh no.” His black eyes smiled, and his smile had no more softness in it than his frown. “I tell you,” he went on. “Ithink much big think. You mak big trail man bimeby. Bimeby Usak die dead. Maybe he get kill ’em all up on winter trail. Who knows? Then he think much for him Kid. He think much for him white-mother, Hesther. Him say, Usak all dead. No matter. Him Clarence big fine trail man. Him mak good all thing Usak no more do. So Usak not care the big spirit tak him. So. Whiteman tell Injun all time work. It so. The good boss, Marty, speak so. Injun man no good, never.”
Clarence turned quickly. He, too, was squatting over the welcome fire. A sharp retort was on his lips. He knew that the Indian was his master on the trail. He knew that the man was almost superhuman in his ability. He knew that the man’s desire was just as he said. But somehow the spirit in him refused to accept the other’s self-abnegation. Usak was his teacher, not his servant. And somehow he felt there was no right, no justice, for all the difference in colour, that this creature should so humble himself by reason of that absurd difference.
But his lips closed again without a spoken word. He was held silent under the sway of the man’s powerful influence. And so, as it was always, Usak had his way.
After a moment the white youth accepted the position thrust on him.
“We best pull out?” he said almost diffidently.
The Indian nodded. Then his dark eyes smiled again, and his powerful hands rubbed themselves together over the luxurious warmth.
“Iwait for that,” he said quietly. “You my boss. My good white boss. Same lak the white-girl, Kid, an’ the good Marty. Sure we pull out. We mak him the farm this night. It good. Much good.”
He rose to his full height without effort, and turned at once to the waiting caribou.
The night was dark but the burden of cloud had completely dispersed. In its place was a velvet sky studded with myriads of starry jewels. Then away to the north the world was lit by a shadowy movement of northern lights. The night was typical of the fall of the northern year, chill, still, haunted, for all its perfect calm, by the fierce threat of the approach of winter.
The ice-cold waters of the river lay behind the outfit. They had just crossed the shallow ford where the stream played boisterously over the boulder-strewn gravel bed. The labouring caribou were moving slowly up the gentle incline of lichen-covered foreshore. And the Indian on the lead, and the white youth trailing behind the last of the three beasts of burden, knew that in less than two hours the last eight miles or so of their summer-long journey would be accomplished.
Usak dropped back from his lead and permitted the caribou to pass him, and took his place beside the leg-weary youth. For some time they paced on in silence each absorbed in his own thought.
It was a great looking forward for both. Both were contemplating that modest home they were approaching with feelings of something more than content. Clarence was yearning for the boisterous companionship of his brothers and sisters. The boy in him was crying out for the youth which the rigours of the northern trail had so long denied him. The ramshackle habitation which was his home possessed for him just now a splendour of comfort, and ease, and delight such as only a starving imagination could create about it. He was heart-sick and bodily weary with the interminable labour which the long trail demanded.
With the Indian it was different. The joy of return for him had no relation to any weariness of body or spirit. He was contemplating only the good news which was carefully packed up on the primitive carryalls to which the caribou were harnessed, and the happiness he looked to see shining in the eyes of the whitewoman it was his mission to serve.
It was out of this spirit of happy satisfaction he had abandoned his place at the head of the outfit, and dropped abreast of his white companion. For once in his life it was his desire to talk. And the inspiration came from the fulness of his savage heart.
“The white mother much glad bimeby,” he said, in his curious halting fashion.
Clarence nodded. He paused a moment and ran his strong hands down the legs of his buckskin nether garments. The ice cold water of the river was partially squeezed out of them, but they remained saturated and chilly to the sturdy legs they covered.
“Sure,” he said in brief agreement.
“I think much,” Usak went on. “This winter trail. You mak him with me? Him Kid much good trail man. Plenty big white heart. She mak ’em good, yes. But she much soft white woman. Winter trail him hard. Placer long piece far. It no good. No. Clarence big trail man now. Snow. Ice. Storm. It nothing to big trail man Clarence—now. You come mak him with Usak? Then him Kid sleep good by the farm. All time much warm. All time much eat good. Yes?”
The boy looked up into the darkly shadowed face in the starlit night as they walked rapidly behind the great deer who were hurrying towards the homestead which they knew lay ahead. For all his weariness a great pride uplifted the youth. The desperate winter trail. The long trail which hitherto had been steadily denied him by reason of his youth and lacking experience. Usak had bid him face it. The vanity of the youth flamed up in him.
“You mean that, Usak?” he demanded sharply. And the Indian realised the tone.
“The winter trail for big man,” he said, subtly.
“Yes.”
Clarence drew a deep breath. Then after a moment he went on. And again the Indian recognised and approved the new tone that rang in his voice.
“That goes, Usak,” he said. Then with sudden passionate energy: “I’m no kid now,” he cried. “The winter trail I guess needs menfolk, not women or kids. I’m with you, sure. And I play my hand right through. Say, I go, but I go right. Ther’s goin’ to be no play. The work that’s yours is yours. The work that’s mine’s mine. An’ I don’t let any feller do my work on the trail. Not even you. Does that go? Say it right here an’ now.”
The smile that changed the Indian’s expression so little was there under cover of the shadows of night.
“Him go all time, sure. You big boss whiteman mak him trade by Placer. You say all time the thing we do. Oh, yes. That’s so. Usak—Sho!”
The man broke off and his final exclamation had in it the curious hiss so indicative of a mind started profoundly and unpleasantly. He had halted on the summit of a high ground roller and stood pointing out ahead, somewhere on the opposite shore of the river where the twinkling lights of camp fires were burning brightly. He stood awhile in deep, concentrated contemplation, and his arm remained out-flung for his companion’s benefit Clarence, too, was gazing at the amazing sight of the twinkling, distant camp fires.
The same thought was in the mind of each. But it was the uncompromising spirit of the savage that first gave it expression.
“Euralian!” he said, in a tone of devastating hatred.
Instantly the youth in the other cried out.
“Mum! She’s alone with the kids!”
Bill Wilder kicked the embers of the fire together. Then he leant over to the driftwood stack and clawed several sticks from the pile. He flung them on the fire and watched the stream of sparks fly upward on the still night air.
It was the second night of camping on the gravel flats of the Caribou River, and the last brief hour before seeking the fur-lined bags in which the northern man is wont to sleep. Chilcoot and Wilder were squatting side by side, Indian fashion, over the camp fire burning adjacent to the tent they shared with the Irishman. And the latter faced them beyond the fire, sprawled on the ground baked hard by the now departed summer heat.
Talk had died out. These men rarely wasted words. They had long since developed the silent habit which the northern solitudes so surely breed. But even so, for once there was a sense of restraint in their silent companionship. It was a restraint which arose from a sense of grievance on the part of both Chilcoot and the Irishman. And it had developed from the moment of quitting the mysterious habitation in the western hills.
The facts were simple enough from their point of view. Both the Irishman and Chilcoot had been left in complete ignorance of their leader’s adventures during his long night vigil in the deserted house. He had returned to them only to order a hurried departure, and had definitely avoided explanations in response to their eager inquiries by evasive generalisations.
“I just don’t get the meaning of anything, anyway,” he had declared, with a shake of the head. “Ther’s some queer secret to that shanty the folks who own it don’t reckon to hand out. If we’d the time to pass on up the creek maybe we’d locate the meaning of things. But we haven’t and seemingly that darn house is empty, and there isn’t a thing to it to tell us anything. No,” he said, “I’ve passed a long night in it and taken chances I don’t usually reckon to take, and I’ve quit it feeling like a feller who’s got through with a nightmare, an’ wonders what in hell he’s eaten to give it him. I’m sick to death chasing ghosts, and mean to quit right here. We’ll just need to report to our superiors,” he smiled, “an’ leave ’em to investigate. Meanwhile we’ll get right on after the stuff which seems to me to lie in one direction, and that’s the location where the dead missioner worked around. We’ll beat it down to the Caribou River for a last fling, and after that Placer’s the best thing I know.”
Chilcoot who understood his friend through long years of experience and association was by no means deceived. But his loyalty was the strongest part of him. He read behind the man’s words. He saw and appreciated the suggestion of excitement lying at the back of Wilder’s smiling eyes, and understood that the claimed unproductiveness of the night’s vigil was sheer subterfuge. Furthermore he realised that the hurriedly ordered departure had been inspired by the events of the night. But he attempted no further question. And even aided his friend in denying the torrent of questioning which the Irishman did not scruple to pour out.
Mike’s reminders of the obvious oil and coal wealth of the black, mysterious hills, and the queer soil of the whole region, left Wilder unmoved. He agreed simply. But he dismissed the whole proposition as being outside anything but the range of their natural curiosity. He reminded the persistent creature that the territory was Alaskan, and they were for the time being debarred from further investigation through being enrolled officers of the Canadian Police.
So he had had his way and the eastward journey was embarked upon. And as the waters of the oily creek passed away behind them, and the queer Fire Hills dropped back into the distance he hugged his secrets of the night to himself for the purpose of using them in the fashion he had already designed. Thus his companions were left puzzled and dissatisfied.
All the way down the great waterway of the Hekor, Wilder had pondered the position in which he found himself and the events which had led up to it. The figures of the blinded Japanese and his little wife haunted him. Then there was that carefully detailed chart which showed the locality of the dead missionary’s discovery to be on the Caribou River. And the thought of the Caribou had brought again into the forefront of his vision the memory of the fair young white girl who had passed him up the rapids which churned about its mouth, and with her parting farewell, had flung her invitation at him to that home which was ten miles up from the junction of the two rivers.
The memory of the Kid had been with him ever since he had first gazed down into her wonderful blue eyes, and had realised the perfect rounded figure of her womanhood under her mannish garb. He had always remembered those peeping golden strands of hair, which, despite her best effort to conceal them, never failed to escape from under the fur cap which was so closely drawn down over her shapely head. Then her wonderful skill on the water, her confidence and her pride in her achievement. He needed nothing beyond those things. The girl had held him fascinated. She had set all the youth in him afire. And now—now the wonder of it. The chances of those remote hills had sent him racing down towards her home full of a dream that surged through his senses with all the pristine fire of his hitherto unstirred manhood.
He was thinking of her now. He was thinking of his visit to her home that very noonday, the first of his arrival upon the river. As he sat over the fire silently contemplating the depth of its ruddy heart with calm unsmiling eyes, a passionate desire was stirring within him. Since the moment of return to his camp on the gravel flats, with the picture of that happy, unkempt home full of sturdy young life haunting him, he had been concerned only for the sweet, blue, smiling eyes of the girl of the northern wild.
He had heard the story of the courageous mother. He had heard the girl’s story from her own pretty lips as they had walked, to the bank of the river where he had left his canoe moored. And he had been filled with only the greater admiration for the simple strength and courage with which these devoted souls had embarked upon their tremendous struggle for existence.
At last he knocked out his charred pipe and thrust it away into a pocket. Again his hands were outspread to the blaze, but now his eyes were directed to the red-headed creature beyond the fire. Wilder suddenly cleared his throat. He began to speak, addressing himself to the Irishman. And Chilcoot looked round from his contemplation of the fire.
“You boys best listen awhile while I make a talk.” Wilder’s manner was quiet enough, but there was that in his tone which impressed his companions. “You’ve maybe both got a grouch on me. And I’ll admit I’d feel the same if I were you. You’re both of you guessing all sorts of bad med’cine about that business back there in the hills. You’re reckoning I got visions I haven’t figured to pass on to you. Well, I sort of feel like clearing things up some—I mean that old grouch.”
His eyes began to smile and he turned to the older man beside him and shook his head.
“No,” he went on, “I’m not going to say a word about that night I passed in that darn place. I’m just going to ask you boys to sort of forget it, and forget your grouch. You just got to trust me same as you’ve done right along, and maybe later, I’ll be able to hand you the story as I know it. You, Chilcoot, know me, and I guess you’ll act that way without a kick. It’ll be harder for Mike, who hasn’t worked with me the years you have. Still, maybe I can make it easy even for him.”
He thrust out a foot and kicked the fire together while the two men maintained their silent regard.
“The thing I’ve to talk about is the thing we got to do right here,” he went on. “I’ve got it planned, and I want to hand you the schedule of it. We’ve drawn a bad run of blanks for the stuff we’ve been chasing for the past year, but the run’s ended. The stuff’s in sight. It’s right here on these mud flats, for all the notion’ll seem plumb crazy to you boys.”
The Irishman stirred and sat up.
“Ther’s gold on this darn—creek?” he cried incredulously.
“There surely is.”
Wilder’s tone had suddenly hardened.
“How’d you know that?”
Quick as a flash came the red-headed man’s question.
Wilder’s eyes responded coldly to the challenge. He shook his head.
“Ther’s no reason for me to hand you that, Mike,” he said sharply. “Ther’s no reason for me to hand you a word that way. You signed a partnership in this layout, with me to lead without question. The thing that concerns you is the stuff. Here. You don’t believe that stuff is on this creek. That’s so. I say it is. Our partnership doesn’t quit till fall next year. Well, I guess I’m not yearning to hand you presents. Guess you haven’t found it my way—”
“No.”
Mike grinned as he punctuated the other’s remark.
“Just so,” Wilder nodded. “That being so it’ll make you appreciate the thing I’ll hand you now. I’ll pass you a bank draft for haf a million dollars the day we set foot in Placer if we haven’t located that missioner’s ‘strike’ somewhere along this mud-bottomed creek. An’ I’ll call Chilcoot to witness that goes.”
The two men gazed eye to eye through the haze of smoke. Mike made no movement, but a look of almost foolish doubt was in his mute regard of the man who made his amazing offer. It was different with Chilcoot. He turned almost with a jump.
“Say, you’re crazy, Bill,” he protested.
“I’m not,” Wilder snapped, while his gaze remained steadily fixed on the face of the man beyond the fire. “Does it go, Mike?” he asked. “And does it cut out your kick? That’s the thing I’m looking for. You get the thing we’re looking for under my leadership, or I hand you haf a million dollars a present. Well?”
The Irishman raised a hand and thrust his fur cap back from his forehead. His amazement was almost ludicrous.
“Chilcoot’s right,” he blurted at last.
“He isn’t.”
“You—mean that?”
“Sure.”
The Irishman suddenly broke into a laugh of derision. “Well,” he cried, “Chilcoot’s witness.” Then he flung up his hands. “Say, I haven’t any sort of kick left in me. I don’t care a curse if you passed the night in that darnation shanty with an army of murderin’ spooks. Gee! Haf a million dollars. I’d hate to death a sight of that missioner’s ‘strike’ between now an’ next fall. Hand out your dope, Bill. You’re boss of this layout. Haf a million! Gee!”
Wilder nodded. He turned at once to Chilcoot. He shook his head with quiet confidence.
“I’m not crazy, boy,” he cried, in a tone of pleasant tolerance. “Do you mind our ‘strike’ back there on Eighty-mile in those days when we were worried keeping our bellies from rattling against our backbones? Get a look into this darn swamp and think back. It’s twin to Eighty-mile. The formation is like as two beans. The same mud, an’ granite, with the same queer breaks of red gravel miles on a stretch. Ther’s that. But ther’s more. That missioner lived right on this creek. It was his home country. And he wasn’t the boy to chase around on a prospect. If he made a ‘strike’ it was on home territory that was always under his eye. And you’ll mind he never mentioned Caribou in his yarns. He said Loon Creek, which is far enough to keep prying eyes from getting around the real location. Maybe he was wise for all they beat him. There it is anyway. I’ve got a mighty hunch for this creek.”
He turned again to the fire, and thrust out his hands.
“An’ you reckon to stake a haf million on your notion?” Chilcoot cried uneasily.
“I’ll play my luck.” Wilder nodded. “I’ll go further. I know the stuff is here.”
“You know that?” Mike broke in.
“I surely do.”
“You reckon you ken set your finger on it?”
“More or less.”
The man with the flaming head suddenly sprang to his feet.
“More or—less!” he cried almost contemptuously in his headlong way.
Wilder remained unmoved.
“Here,” he said quietly spreading out his hand in an expressive gesture, “we only got a matter of weeks to the freeze-up. We’re liable to snow any day now, and every night ther’s frost. In awhile the ground’ll be solid so we can’t break into it without more dynamite than we got stowed. That being so, here’s the schedule. You, Mike, now you feel good about it, ’ll need to beat up stream and locate prospect ground for next spring. You’ll use the whole outfit and you’ll locate camp ground. That’s your billet till the freeze-up, and you’ll need to make right up to the head waters. Chilcoot and I’ll beat our own trail. An’ don’t forget it, boy, Chilcoot’s witness ther’s haf a million for you if we don’t make that ‘strike.’ Does it tickle you any?”
“Just plumb to death, chief.”
The Irishman was grinning from the roots of his flaming hair to a neck that was none too clean. The last shadow of his discontent had vanished from his expressive eyes. And even Chilcoot was smiling in his slow fashion.
“That’s good,” said Wilder. “Guess we can roll into our—Hello! What the—?”
He sat peering out down the river bank with a hand shading his eyes from the firelight. Chilcoot too had turned searching into the night. The Irishman, standing, was in possession of the better view.
“It’s two fellers comin’ up from the river,” he said. “An’ they got a small kyak drawn up on the shore.”
The gathering about Wilder’s camp fire had been augmented. Five men sat about it where before there had only been three. Of the newcomers one was a white youth and the other was an Indian, who left Wilder’s stature no more than ordinary. The newcomers were squatting on the river side of the fire, slightly apart from the others. And they sat side by side, closely, as though there remained a definite barrier of antagonism between them and the strangers they had found on the river.
Usak sat with his long old rifle laid across his knees. Clarence was armed, too, but his weapon was in the nature of a more modern sporting rifle. Of the gold men one at least realised the personality of these visitors in the night.
There had been no greeting. The Indian and his companion had approached watchfully. They had reached the fire without a word. But their eyes had been busy, and their minds full of searching questions. Forthwith they had squatted. But only on their recognition that their hosts were whitemen.
It was Wilder who broke up the strained silence. The moment the flame of fire had lit up the white youth’s face recognition had been instant. The likeness in it to the faces of those brothers and sisters he had encountered that noonday left the identity of both him and his dusky companion beyond question.
“You are Clarence,” he said, with quiet friendliness. Then his gaze rested thoughtfully upon the inscrutable eyes, and harshly moulded features of the Indian. “And you are Usak.”
It was the white youth who replied. He nodded while the Indian sat searching the whitemen’s faces with a gaze that was almost lost in eyes narrowed down to the merest slits.
“Yes. Who are you?”
“Gold men on the trail. My name’s Wilder. Bill Wilder.”
The Indian raised one arm and indicated the others.
“Him men, too? What you call ’em?”
His young white boss having answered the first question Usak had no scruple but to take up the rest of the matter himself.
“Chilcoot Massy and Red Mike Partners with me. And we come from Placer.”
Wilder’s ready reply was in studied friendliness. But his keen eyes searched the Indian’s face, which was completely expressionless. The dusky face had neither friendliness nor antagonism. Yet it was potential for either under the harsh mask which Nature had set upon it.
Chilcoot and Mike left the situation in the hands of their chief, and simply sat waiting and curious. The white boy afforded them little concern. It was the Indian, with his grim manner, and his long, old-fashioned rifle that claimed their whole attention, as it did their chief’s.
But Wilder was studying the man out of his knowledge of his malevolent reputation. He knew he was confronting the dreaded creature who had perpetrated his terrible vengeance upon those two people he had encountered at the house in the hills. He knew it at once when he recognised Clarence as one of the family he had visited that noonday. And he was anxious to discover the impression his presence on the river made upon the man.
He had not long to wait.
“You gold men,” Usak said, in a tone that was deep-throated and full of the latent savage in him. “You come for gold? You come to Caribou.” He shook his head, and his eyes suddenly opened wide, and their black depths were full of that fierce resentment which was to be feared like a cyclonic storm. “I tell you no!” he cried hotly. “Caribou is not for whiteman gold man. No. It is for the white girl the good boss Marty leave to the care of Usak. Him all mans quit Caribou quick. I say him. I—Usak. You’m go quick as you come. You not go, then all mans get kill up dead. It so. Him no gold on Caribou, an’ Caribou him for my good white-girl boss, Kid.”
With his last word the man stood erect and his movement was without any apparent effort. He stood a creature of mighty stature grasping a long rifle that was dwarfed beside him. He deliberately spat in the fire and turned away. Then it was, for the first time, he experienced the authority he had forced on his white companion’s shoulders. Clarence, too, had risen, but he did not turn away.
“Say, Usak, just stop right here,” he ordered sharply.
The Indian was startled. He turned again and waited at the boy’s bidding, while his passionate eyes narrowed on the instant.
Clarence gave him no time to speak. He passed round the fire to Wilder and thrust out a welcoming hand.
“I’m glad to meet you, sir,” he said, with an amiable boyish smile. “GuessI’monly a kid, but I can speak for my mother an’ the Kid. You see, Usak’s our guardian around here. He’s the best thing to us that was ever put into an Indian’s body. But he reckons this river and all the territory around it belongs to my mother an’ the Kid, an’ hates the sight of folks he thinks likely to do us hurt. You get that? But he don’t quite understand things between whitefolk. I’m glad to welcome you to our country, an’ I’ll be glad to welcome you by our home down the river. And I guess Mum, and the Kid’ll feel that way, too. Maybe you’ll forget Usak spat into your fire.”
Wilder took the boy’s hand in a powerful grip, and smiled up into his ingenuous tired face.
“Why, sure,” he cried. “You don’t need to say another word. I’ve been along this morning to pay my respects to your splendid mother, and your—Kid. And seeing I’m located on this river of yours for the next year, why, I’m hoping I’ll see a deal of you all. My friends here feel that way, too. We’re not pirates come to steal anything you reckon is yours, or to hand you a moment’s worry. That goes, an’ I guess your mother’ll tell you the same.”
The boy stood for a moment a little overwhelmed by the easy, friendly manner of the stranger. And in his confusion at his impulsive assertion of authority over the Indian he resorted to the only thing his wit suggested. He took refuge in a swift withdrawal.
“Thank you, sir,” he said lamely. “I guess we’ll get right on home. You see, we’re just in off a summer trail.” He turned away and looked squarely into the Indian’s face. “We’ll beat it home, Usak,” he said shortly.
They watched the shadowy figures in silence as they passed down the river bank and were swallowed up by the shadows of the chilly night.
Red Mike turned and grinned at his companions through the haze of smoke.
“That boy’s chock full of real sand,” he said with appreciation.
Chilcoot rubbed his gnarled hands.
“I’d sooner be up against the worst Euralian ever bred than that darn redskin,” he said meditatively.
Wilder nodded and extended his hands over the fire.
“Yes,” he said, regarding the fire with serious eyes. “Or a whole darn legion of ’em.”