DAYS OF PROMISE
DAYS OF PROMISE
DAYS OF PROMISE
The Kid stood up from her task. She was no longer in her working clothes, and the translation was something almost magical. Her tall, slim, yet beautifully rounded figure was clad in a simple shirtwaist of some cheap cotton material, which, with a plain, dark cloth, shortish skirt, completed the costume in which she loved to array herself at the close of her working day. She was smiling her delight, and her whole expression was radiant. Her pretty eyes were alight with all that satisfaction which Usak, in his simple mind, had dreamt he would witness in them. Her lips were parted for the eager talk which sprang so readily to them. And as the brooding eyes of the savage gazed upon her he felt that his reward was ample.
They were in the leanto storehouse built against the log shanty which was Usak’s own abode. It was all a part of the ramshackle homestead which housed them all, but it was set apart and without communication with the abode given up to the white folks of the queerly assorted household.
An oil lamp lit the place with its inadequate yellow light, and produced profound shadows amongst the general litter. It was set on an up-turned packing case which was part of the stock-in-trade for transport. The dry mud floor was littered with the result of the Indian’s summer trade, the extent and quality of which was far more generous than the girl had hoped would be the case. There were a number of pelts amongst which were several white and red fox. There were two or three freshwater seals, some beaver and fishers, and a makeweight of wild cat. But best of all were several ivory walrus tusks, and the prize of all prizes to the pelt hunter, which the girl was holding in her brown hands and stroking gently in her delight. It was a jet black fox. And she knew its value to be far more than the rest of the trade put together.
“It’s a wonderful, wonderful skin, Usak,” she said, her eyes feasting on the crudely dried fur, which, even in its rough state was still soft, and thick, and full of promise. “Whoever took it was a swell hunter,” she declared, scrutinising it with the eye of an expert. “Trapped. And not a scar to show how. My, but it’s worth a pile. How much?”
She raised her delighted eyes to the dark face of the big man standing by.
“Sho!” The Indian shrugged. “I not say him. Tousand dollar, maybe. Him much plenty good pelt. Oh, yes.”
“Thousand?” The girl’s tone was scornful. “More like fifteen hundred. We’ll get that in Placer, sure. An’ these ivories,” she went on. “Oh, it’s a good trade.” She laid the skin aside reluctantly and smiled again into the man’s face. “Guess if I know a thing we haven’t a worry for a year an’ more. Mum’ll sleep easy for a year certain, I guess. An’ Perse’s pants won’t always have her figgering.”
Then the woman in her became uppermost as she contemplated the further meaning of the Indian’s success.
“Mum’ll get a new outfit. And so will Mary Justicia. An’ we can fix up all the others, the boys as well, I mean. It’s just great, Usak. You’re—you’re a wonder. How did you do it? Did you locate a bunch of Euralian robbers, an’—”
The Indian shook his head. But he offered no verbal denial. Truth to tell the girl’s curiosity and obvious desire for the story of his summer-long labours made no appeal to him. For all his satisfaction at the Kid’s readily expressed delight he had been robbed of more than half his joy of return by that final incident of his journey home. His passionate heart was full of a sort of crazy resentment at the presence of the outfit of white intruders on the river. And even as the girl talked and questioned he remained absorbed in, and nursing his bitter grievance.
His silence and lack of interest were too painfully obvious to be missed. And the Kid suddenly dropped to a seat on a box beside the beautiful fur she had laid aside.
“What is it, Usak?” she asked, with that quick return to the authority which existed between them. “Ther’s things worrying. I can see it in your face. Best tell it right away. Is it Clarence? Has he failed after the good things you hoped of him? Yes. Best tell it. I can stand things to-night with a clean up of trade like this around me.”
The Indian moved away. He squatted himself on an upturned sled awaiting repairs to its runners. And the girl watched him closely.
Young as she was there was much that the Kid understood instinctively. She had not spent all her childhood’s days with this great savage without learning something of his almost insanely passionate moods, and the potentialities of them. To her he was just a savage watch-dog, loyal from the crown of his black head to the soles of his moccasined feet. But she understood that his curious ferocity was none the less for it. There was one thing in him that never failed to stir her to some alarm. It was the narrowing of his black eyes, which, in his more violent moods, had a knack of closing to mere slits. His eyes were so closed just now.
While she waited for him to speak she watched him reach out and possess himself of his beloved rifle which had been stood against the wall of the leanto. He took it, and laid it across his knees, and his powerful fingers caressed the quaint old trigger-guard. It seemed to her that never in her life had she observed him in so ominous a mood.
“Well?” she demanded sharply, and her alarm added a strident ring to her voice.
The man looked up.
“You mak him this question?” he demanded, without softening. “This thing I mak to myself. Oh, yes. It for me. I feel him all here,” he beat his chest with one clenched fist to indicate his bosom. “I mak him no say. Not nothing. Clarence him big whiteman. Much good trail man. So. I mak you big trade. Plenty food come next year. Plenty good thing much. So. You lak him? Oh, yes. It good. Then why you mak him this question?”
The man’s jaws seemed literally to shut with a snap.
The Kid smiled with an effort. She was without personal fear. Her smiling blue eyes confronted and held him as she determined they should.
“I’m waiting,” she said. “If I wait here all night in the cold you’ll surely have to say it. What’s troubling?”
The girl’s power over the savage was tremendous. In a curious negative sort of way she understood that this was so. She never looked for the reason, simply accepting the obvious fact, and sometimes rejoicing in it.
For all her youth she understood the danger of his untamed spirit. And many times in her young life she had learned the value of the restraining influence she exercised over him.
The man knew his weakness in confronting her. There were times when his hot soul rebelled at his own powerlessness. It was that way now. But through it all a subtle gladness never failed to soften the irritation their clashes of will were wont to inspire. The truth was his utter and complete worship of her was irresistible. As an infant the Kid had caught the rebound of his devotion to his murdered wife, Pri-loo, and the perfect loyalty that had been his for her father. From the moment of the passing of these two creatures, who had bounded the whole of his life’s horizon, he had found salvation from the wreckage of his savage passions in the infant life that had been flung into his empty arms. Perhaps his worship of her was a sheer insanity. But it was an idolatry of parental purity.
He chafed under her insistence. Once he sought to avoid those compelling eyes. He gazed about among the shadows of the hut in a helpless fashion that was almost pathetic, whilst his great hand fondled the breech of his beloved weapon. But he returned to the magnet that never failed to claim him as surely held as any bond-slave.
“Tcha!” The exclamation was the man’s final, ungracious yielding. He flung his rifle aside and stood up. And in a moment he was rapidly pacing the narrow limits of the hut. “You ask him this? I tell you, ‘no.’ No good. So I tell you.” He paused and flung out an arm pointing in the direction of the river. “This white-man. Bimeby I go kill ’em all up.”
He remained pointing. His eyes were wide now and full of deadly purpose. A volcanic rage was consuming him.
The Kid’s eyes also widened for an instant. She remained unmoving. Then a smile dawned about her lips and presently illuminated her whole face. She raised one hand and thrust out a pointing finger at him, and a clear, happy, ringing laugh broke from her parted lips.
“You kill up these whitemen?” she cried. “These folks who’ve just come along up the river? No,” she said, suddenly sobering, and shaking her head. “If you kill them you kill me, too. They’re all my good friends, Usak. An’ if you hurt a hair of their heads I’ll just hate you to death for ever an’ ever.”
It was a tense moment. The man had come to a standstill, staring incredulously down at the fair-haired creature who was his whole earthly delight. For all her laugh there was fear in the Kid’s heart. The impulse had been irresistible. There could be no half measures. The situation had called for strong and definite challenge.
“You say him this?” The man’s tone was like the threatening growl of a wild beast. “This whitemans all your good friend? I tell you—No! Him mans your enemy. Him come steal all things what are yours. Him river. Him land. Him—gold. Usak know plenty much. Him no damfool Injun man. Oh, no. Him wise plenty. Him say this whitemans no good friend. Only big thief come steal all thing. So I kill ’em up, sure.”
The Kid breathed a deep sigh. The joy of this wild man’s return had lost its glamour. Deepening fear gripped her heart. And it was for the whiteman with the grey eyes that smiled so gently, and reflected so clearly the big, honest soul behind them.
“You just got to listen, Usak,” she cried urgently, stifling the fear which was striving to display itself in eye and voice. “An’ when I’ve done my talk you’ll need to quit that wicked spirit that’s always wanting to kill when folks offend you. I didn’t know you’d had time to locate these folks. But it don’t matter a thing. I tell you they’re friends—of mine. I’ve known Bill Wilder since two summers back. I found him in trouble with his outfit on the river below the rapids, and passed him right up through the channel on his way north. And I asked him right then, when he got along down, to come up the Caribou an’ make a friendly visit. He’s come along because I asked him. He’s my friend an’—”
“You lak him, this man? Him your man? You marry him same lak Pri-loo was my woman?”
The man’s tone had changed to one of simple wonder and almost of incredulity. His understanding had only one interpretation for a man and woman’s friendship, and perhaps he was the wiser for it. But his savage, untutored directness of expression sent the hot blood of shame to the simple girl’s cheeks. The yellow lamp-light revealed the flushed cheeks and the half closed eyelids that sought to defend the woman’s secret from the man’s searching gaze.
The Kid shook her head, and denial cost her an effort. “It’s not that way with white-folk,” she said endeavouring to evade direct denial. “Maybe I just like him. He’s big, an’ strong, an’ good. I like his talk. So I think Mum an’ the children like him, too.”
“So you say this man to come by Caribou—that you see him some more? Oh, yes. So white mother Hesther may lak him, too? An’ those others?”
The man’s eyes were no longer fierce. They were smiling derisively out of his savage wisdom.
The Kid stirred restlessly under his words and manner. His smile, which was intended for no unkindness, became a hateful thing to her. And she understood the reason. She knew that her explanation was without truth. She had trapped herself into foolish evasion. She knew she had desired herself to see this man again. She knew— But she permitted herself no further admission. Anger rose swiftly in her, and she sprang to her feet. Her pretty eyes flashed in the yellow light and for the first time in his life the Indian realised something of that which centuries of civilization has bred into the white-woman.
“How dare you say that to me?” she cried. “You—an Indian!” She laughed a curious shrill sort of laugh. “What is it you say? ‘Injun man no good.’ Maybe you’re right. I’m your good boss Marty’s daughter. Remember that. I’m your boss. Your white boss. And now I tell you to obey. You leave that whiteman, all those whitemen alone. I tell you this. Who’re you to say who comes on this river? Who’re you anyway? Usak, the Indian. An Indian—the servant of my dead father, and now my servant. Remember!”
She stood in the fitful light a tall slim figure of angry authority and outraged womanhood. And the great Indian stood cowed before the torrent of her scorn and wrath. No longer was the smiling derision in his eyes. No longer was that blaze of volcanic wrath in them. She had smote him in the most vulnerable joint of his armour. His worshipped idol had turned and rended him, and spurned him as she might some pariah.
The great fellow’s eyes avoided the girl’s. His simian length of arms left his great hands hanging seemingly helpless by his sidies. His great size reduced him to a painful picture of pathetic dejection. The Kid’s swift scorn had beaten him as nothing else in the world could have beaten him.
She moved towards the door without a further glance in his direction. Her body was erect, and her heart was hard set and coldly determined. There was no pause or further word. But she knew.
It came as she reached the door. There was a sound behind her. The next moment Usak was beside her holding out the precious black fox skin she had left.
“You tak him this?” he said, in a tone of humility and appeal that was irresistible to the girl who knew so well all he had always been to her. “I mak him this trade for the white boss, Kid. I see ’em five Euralian by the camp. I kill ’em all up dead. So I mak tak ’em this black fox, an’ this ivory. Oh, yes. I kill ’em all man’s for white boss, Kid. All time I do this. I do all thing for Kid. So as she say—all time.”
The girl looked up into the man’s dark eyes. In a moment her heart melted. She took the priceless skin from his hands and laid it over her arm with one hand resting caressingly upon it.
“You killed five Euralian men for this?” she said.
“I kill ’em, yes,” the man returned simply.
The girl shook her head, and her eyes were troubled.
“I—I kind of wish you hadn’t,” she said gently.
“Euralian?” The man’s eyes widened. “It not matter nothing,” he said, with a shrug. “So I get him skin an’ him ivory for white boss, Kid. I kill all thing. Yes.”
The two men were standing on a gravel foreshore. It was the foreshore of a well-nigh dried out creek which in more abundant season was wont to flow turbulently into the greater stream of the Caribou. It was an almost hidden creek, for there existed no apparent inlet to the bigger river, except at such times as the spring freshet translated it into a surge of flood water. Now, in the late fall, there was scarcely water enough in its bed to do more than moisten the soles of a man’s moccasins, and, at the junction with Caribou, there was scarcely an indentation in the latter’s banks to mark its course.
But a mile and more to the north it was quite different. Here the creek was sharply marked between high, wide, barren shoulders that gave its course a breadth of something little less than a quarter of a mile. And its whole bed was a curious, copper-hued gravel which every gold man recognises as the precious “pay-dirt,” in pursuit of which he spends his life.
Bill Wilder and Chilcoot were moving slowly over this loose gravel gazing searchingly at the higher ground which enclosed the deepening cutting. For the moment they had no concern for the stuff they were treading under foot. They were looking for signs and landmarks which they had already learned by heart from minute descriptions.
With every furlong they explored the encompassing walls rose steadily higher, and grew ever more and more rugged. Their formation was rapidly changing. The rock walls were cut with sharp facets and riven in a hundred directions. There was no foliage anywhere. The cliffs were bald and not a yard of the wide pay-dirt bottom yielded a scrag of grass, or a single Arctic flower. It looked as if Nature had refused one atom of fertility to the soil in which she had chosen to bestow her treasure.
It was nearly noon when the explorers’ investigations were first interrupted. And the interruption came at a low headland where the whole course of the ravine swung away in an easterly direction, which looked to carry it in an exact parallel with the upper waters of the Caribou.
Chilcoot was on the lead at the bend and he came to a standstill, and flung out an arm pointing.
“Get a look, Bill,” he cried, in the rough tone that for him was something indicative of the unusual. “It’s a shanty, or I’m a ‘dead-beat.’”
The ravine had narrowed abruptly, but beyond the bend it instantly widened. Chilcoot was standing gazing beyond, where the dark, rocky walls had risen to a great height and overhung, shadowing the canyon ominously. He was pointing across the almost dried out stream at a tiny human habitation crushed in against the base of the opposite wall.
Wilder instantly abandoned his pre-occupation with a curious facet of black rock that was not unlike pumice in its queer formation. He had been examining a vein of crystal quartz running through it. He hurried up to his companion and gazed at the strange vision of a log-built shack that seemed a complete anachronism in this wilderness of Nature.
Wilder gazed about him. The interior of the dilapidated hut was no less interesting than its exterior. It was old and decayed, hanging together simply by reason of the support of the cliff against which it had been built. For the moment imagination was stirred, and he saw in fancy the picture of a simple missionary carrying on, in his untutored fashion, a work that had no relation to his spiritual calling.
Chilcoot, with the practical interest which the discovery inspired in his lesser imagination, was examining the signs and indications with which the place was littered. There was a rusted, riffled pan. There were several shovels in a more or less state of decay. There was an old packing case filled with odds and ends for a camper’s needs. There were the remains of a fire set between two blackened stones, a battered camp kettle and a pannikin or two. Just within the doorway stood a bent crowbar and a haftless pick. Another pick was leaning up against the box of oddments.
It was easy enough to interpret the story of this decayed and deserted shelter. And the men who had discovered it were prompt in their reading of its story. It was a gold prospector’s shelter littered with the crudest implements of his craft. And from the decaying walls and rafters, and the rust-eaten condition of every metal utensil, they read a story of long years of disuse and the stress of the northern seasons.
Chilcoot was stooping over the box of camp rubbish. Wilder had turned to the doorway, leaning out of its original truth, and, for awhile, the scene beyond it completely preoccupied him. It was a shadowed canyon which, as the distance gained, grew more and more rugged with vastly higher surroundings. But the gravel bed remained with its tiny stream of water drifting gently down from its far-off source. Directly opposite him stood a spire of rock that rose up like a monolith far above all its surroundings, and the sight of it seemed to absorb all his interest.
A sharp exclamation from Chilcoot startled him and he turned his head.
“What you found?” he asked.
Chilcoot was standing over the box and its contents were littered about him on the ground. He was peering into a rusted tin box, stirring the contents with a knotted forefinger.
“Dust,” he replied laconically. But his tone was tense.
Bill came quickly to his side and together they gazed down at the loose yellow stuff that shone dully against the red rust with which the years had corroded the tin containing it. In spite of their years, their wealth, the sight of the precious metal held them fascinated, and stirred emotions deeply. It was a generous sample weighing several ounces, and amongst it were two or three nuggets the size of well-grown peas. Chilcoot picked out the largest and held it up for his companion’s inspection.
Wilder nodded, but his eyes were shining.
“Sure,” he said. Then he turned away. “Set it aside, old friend,” he went on, “an’ let’s get outside. We need to talk.”
The sky was drearily overcast, and the walls of the canyon further helped to overshadow the world about them. The two men were lounging on the bare gravel which formed the bed of the creek. Wilder had his back propped against the crazy shanty they had just explored.
Chilcoot folded up the paper which the other had passed him for examination. It was the plan of Marty Le Gros’ gold “strike,” and it was the first time since it had come into Wilder’s possession that other eyes than his had been permitted to gaze upon it.
The older man returned it without comment, but his deepset grey eyes were expressive. There was puzzlement in them. There was something else. They had narrowed curiously. And the hard lines of his weatherbeaten face were a shade more hardly set.
Wilder returned the map to the bosom of his buckskin parka. He flaked some tobacco from a plug with his sheath knife and lit his pipe. He ignored his companion’s mood, although perfectly aware of it.
“Ther’s a deal to do yet,” he said calmly. “A piece farther up the creek is Le Gros’ old working. The map shows that just as it hands us a picture of this shanty, and that queer spire of rock standing up right over there,” he added, nodding his head at the curious crag which rose sheer from the bed of the creek and towered above the high walls enclosing it. “Yes, we got to prospect that working, and try out the creek right along. If the ‘strike’ is right, and the old yarn proves true, the rest’s easy—or should be.”
Chilcoot lit his pipe. But he shook his head emphatically.
“Guess I can’t hand no sort of opinion,” he said coldly. “I ain’t wise to a thing.”
The tone of voice, the curtness of the thing he said, should have had their effect. But Wilder still refused to be disturbed out of his calm. His eyes smiled as he gazed out over the gravel bed where the thin stream of the creek flowed on almost without a murmur. He was smoking with that leisurely luxury suggesting a contented mind.
“Just so, old friend,” he replied. “You don’t know a thing—yet. But you’re going to know it right now. All of it.”
“I’m glad.” The asperity was still in the other’s tone and Wilder’s smile deepened.
“You see I hadn’t the nerve to insult your intelligence, boy, by handing you a fairy tale—while it was just a fairy tale,” he said. “Guess I can’t stand the laff when it’s on me, either. So I guessed I best cut the talk and stand for a grouch. Well, it’s not a fairy tale now. No. Not by a long piece. An’ the laff—well, it’s not on me anyway.”
Chilcoot had sat up. His sturdy legs were drawn up and tucked under him in the fashion supposed to belong to the tailor. He was gazing round on his friend with a look of expectancy. Somehow his whole expression had undergone a swift change. He had clearly forgotten his resentment. He was always quick to react. His nature was easy where Wilder was concerned. Now a twinge of compunction at his own hastiness set him eager to make amends.
“You don’t need to say a thing, Bill. If it suits you to keep your face shut it goes with me all the time.”
But Wilder shook his head. He grinned and raised a hand and thrust back his cap.
“I need to say a whole heap. Maybe when I’m through you’ll wish I hadn’t. Say.” He paused thoughtfully. Then his eyes lit and gazed straight into the eyes of the older man. “I best tell you the thing that lies back of everything first. You’ll feel like laffing, maybe. But I don’t care a curse. You got to know, an’ I’m crazy to tell you. You see, you’ve been pardner an’ friend to me ever since the gold bug got into my liver. I’m nigh crazy for a pair of dandy blue eyes, just as blue as—as a summer sky in California, and a golden halo of hair like—like an angel’s. Yes, an’ for a kit of buckskin, all beaded an’ fine sewn like an Indian’s. I surely am crazy for it—all.”
The man had removed his pipe, and his hands had made a gesture of emphasis that told his companion far more than his words.
Chilcoot’s eyes were grinning, but there was no derision in them. They were shining with a depth of interest that changed his whole expression.
“Snakes, man!” he cried. “You’ve fallen fer that gal? That Kid that floated us up the river goin’ north? An’ who you’ve located again right now over at that darn queer outfit of a Reindeer farm? Say!”
Wilder nodded and returned his pipe to his mouth.
“I surely have, old friend,” he said, with a restraint that the look in his eyes denied. “I’ve fallen fer that—Kid. That Kid whose name is Felice Le Gros. She’s just been a dream picture to me ever since I saw her handling that queer skin kyak of hers on the river, looking like some fairy Injun gal such as maybe you used to read about when story books were filled with wholesome fairy tales that set you crazy for the darn old wilderness. I’ve fallen for her so I don’t even want to pick myself up. I want her bad. She’s got to be my wife, or this darn life don’t mean a thing to me ever again. Life? Gee! I can’t see a day of it worth a regret on a deathbed if I can’t make that Kid feel the way I do.”
Chilcoot’s ill mood was entirely swept away. Hard old citizen as he was, saturated as he was with the iron of his early days of struggle to loot the earth, a surge of delighted interest thrilled him to the depths of his rough soul. No mother listening to the first love-story of an only daughter could have been moved more deeply. His years were nearly twice those of the other, but it made no difference, unless it were to add to the feeling of the moment.
“Does she know about it?” he demanded. “Does— Say, her name’s—she’s daughter to Marty Le Gros? She’s the ‘gal-child, white,’ Raymes told us of? Say, Bill, I’m crazy for the rest. Best get right in. I just don’t know a thing. An’ I seem to know less than ever I did before you began. But you’ve found a gal to share life with you. And I’m just so glad I can’t rightly say. Get right on with the yarn an’ I won’t butt in. I’m all out to pass you any old hand you’re needing.”
“That’s how I figgered, Chilcoot, knowing you,” Wilder said in his earnest fashion. “That’s why I told you this thing first. Now just sit around and I’ll tell you the stuff that looked like a fairy tale and kept my mouth shut.”
Wilder began his story at once and talked on without any sort of interruption from his companion. Lost in the dark heart of the ravine, overshadowed by a wintry sky and the rugged, barren, encompassing walls that rose up and shut out so much of the grey northern daylight, he told the story as he had learned it, and pieced together, of the tragedy of the apparently deserted habitation which he knew to be the home and secret hiding-place of the one-time leader of the fierce Euralian horde. He told of the events of his search and vigil in the house from the time of his discovery of the blinded Japanese, Count Hela, and his panic-stricken wife, to the final moment when the woman had pursued him with her story, and sought to bribe him with the precious map stolen from the murdered missionary. He told it all in close detail, dwelling upon the mention of the dreaded Usak’s name by the terror-stricken woman, that the other might follow out all his subsequent reasoning and re-construction of the story of Le Gros and his orphaned daughter. He told it right down to the story of his visit to the Reindeer Farm, on their arrival on the Caribou, which furnished him with the final corroboration.
“There it is, old friend,” he said in conclusion. “Usak, the husband of the murdered Pri-loo, never gave those folk the chance to use that map. He deliberately blinded the man and killed his son. And when I got wise from the map that this precious strike was on Caribou I got my big notion. I jumped for it right away and jumped right. This wonderful—Kid—with a face like— Say, I guessed right away at the start she was the ‘girl-child, white’ I was chasing up, and the rightful heir to her murdered father’s ‘strike.’ It was that closed up my mouth. I just couldn’t say a word. We—you boys—the whole outfit were on a gold trail looking to share in the stuff. And I knew that when it was located, by every sort of moral right an’ justice, it would belong to the Kid. And anyway she’d be entitled, an’ all her folks, to the first rake over of the claims. Ther’ could be nothing for you boys till her interest was safeguarded. See? She’s the daughter of Marty Le Gros, and was raised by that murdering Indian, Usak, who came right along the other night and threatened to clear us out of Caribou at the muzzle of a rifle that looked to have served an interior decoration for old Noah’s Ark. Can you beat it?”
Chilcoot shook his head helplessly. The story had lost nothing from his companion’s telling. He was well-nigh staggered at the hideous completeness of it all, and certainly amazed. His pipe had been forgotten until that moment, and he knocked the charred remains of tobacco out of it on a large flint lying nearby.
Wilder re-lit his pipe and smiled contentedly.
“Do you get what I reckon to do, Chilcoot?” he asked.
But the older man made no effort. He shrugged his broad shoulders.
“I’d say it ’ud be the sort of crazy stunt most folks wouldn’t reckon to find come out of the mighty clear head they guess stands on the shoulders of Bill Wilder.”
His words were accompanied by a deep-throated chuckle.
“Maybe that’s so, boy,” Wilder retorted without umbrage. “But anyway, it’s a stunt to suit my notion of honesty, and—yours. See? I sent Mike an’ the bunch off to get ’em right out of the way while we came along here. That’s all right. Our work’s just beginning. You an’ me we’re going to get right to it and test out this queer old canyon. We got the time before winter, if the thing’s what I guess it is. When we’ve located the stuff ther’s got to be the pick of the claims for that gal. An’ one each for Mrs. McLeod, at the farm, and her kids. Then we’ll pass right down to Placer and make the titles good with the Commissioner. After that— next Spring—we’ll turn the bunch loose on the ground, and they can grab how they please. How’s that? Does it go? Yes, sure it does. I know you. You and me, we can afford to cut right out and play the game to help these others along. That’s my crazy notion. Well?” Chilcoot rose to his feet. There was no doubt of his agreement. An almost child-like delight was stirring his rugged heart.
“Surely, Bill,” he said simply. “It’s good for me. But that murdering Indian. Does he come in?”
Wilder’s eyes suddenly sobered. He, too, scrambled to his feet. And for a moment he stood gazing thoughtfully down the shadowed ravine.
“He worries me some,” he admitted at last. “Ther’s things mighty good in him, I guess. Ther’ must be. He raised the Kid. But ther’s things mighty bad I haven’t told you about.” Then he shrugged. “It don’t matter anyway. No, he don’t stand in. Maybe things’ll happen. We’ll just have to wait. You never can tell with a darn neche.”
A vision of the terrified Japanese woman had risen up before his mind’s eye. He remembered the nightmare she was enduring at the thought of Usak’s promised return. Suddenly he flung out his hands dismissing the vision.
“It’s all queer, Chilcoot,” he cried. “But we must see it through. It’s strange. To think I’ve had to beat about this darn old North to find the thing—the only thing to make life worth while. I could laff, only I don’t feel like laffing. Say, boy, you just don’t know how I want that—that Kid.”