Part 29 (2/2)
Men and women, and even the children worked all day and took turns tending the fire at night. Trapping and hunting were forgotten in the new found craze for gold, and it became necessary for Snowdrift to tole off hunters for the day, as the supply of meat shrank to an alarming minimum.
By the end of another week interest began to flag. The particles of gold collected in the test pannings were small in size, and few in number, the work was hard and distasteful, and it became more and more difficult for the girl to explain to them that these grains were not the ultimate reward for the work, that they were only tests, and that the real reward would not be visible until spring when they would clean up the gravel dumps that were mounding up beside the shafts. The Indians wanted to know how this was to be accomplished, and Snowdrift suddenly realized that she did not know. She tried to remember what Brent had told her of the sluicing out process, and realized that he had told very little. Both had been content to let the details go until such time as the sluicing should begin. Vaguely, she told the Indians of sluice boxes and riffles, but they were quick to see that she knew not whereof she spoke. In vain, she told them that Brent would explain it all when he returned, but they had little use for this white man who had no hooch to trade. At last, in desperation, she hit upon the expedient of showing the Indians more gold. From Brent's sack she extracted quant.i.ties of dust which she displayed with pride. The plan worked at first, but soon, the Indians became dissatisfied with their own showing, and either knocked off altogether, or ceased work on the shafts and began to laboriously pan out their dumps, melting the ice for water, and carrying the gravel, a pan at a time, to their cabins.
This too, was abandoned after a few days, and the Indians returned to their traps, and to the snaring of rabbits. Only Snowdrift and old Wananebish kept up to the work of cutting and hauling the wood, tending the fires, and throwing out the gravel. Despite the grueling toil, Snowdrift found time nearly every day to slip up and visit Brent's cabin. Sometimes she would go only to the bend of the river and gaze at it from a distance. Again she would enter and sit in his chair, or moving softly about the room, handle almost reverently the things that were his, wiping them carefully and returning them to their place. She purloined a s.h.i.+rt from a nail above his bunk, and carrying it home used it as a pattern for a wonderfully wrought s.h.i.+rt of buckskin and beads.
Each evening, she worked on the s.h.i.+rt, while Wananebish sat stolidly by, and each night as she knelt beside her bunk she murmured a prayer for the well-being of the big strong man who was hers.
But whether it was at the shaft, at her needle, at her devotions, or upon her frequent trips to his cabin, her thoughts were always of Brent, and her love for him grew with the pa.s.sing of the days until her longing for his presence amounted, at times, almost to a physical pain. One by one, she counted the days of his absence, and mentally speculated upon his return. After the second week had pa.s.sed she never missed a day in visiting his cabin. Always at the last bend of the river, she quickened her steps, and always she paused, breathless, for some sign of his return.
”Surely, he will come soon,” she would mutter, when the inspection showed only the lifeless cabin, or, ”He will come tomorrow.” When the seventeenth and the eighteenth days had pa.s.sed, with no sign of him, the girl, woman like, began to conjure up all sort and manner of dire accident that could have befallen him. He might have been drowned upon a thinly crusted rapid. He might have become lost. Or frozen. Or, ventured upon a snow cornice and been dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.
Every violent death known to the North she pictured for him, and as each picture formed in her brain, she dismissed it, laughed at her fears, and immediately pictured another.
On the nineteenth day she chopped wood until the early darkness drove her from her tasks, then she returned to the cabin and, fastening on her snowshoes, struck off down the river. ”Surely, he will be here today,”
she murmured, ”If he is not here today I will know something has happened, and tomorrow I shall start out to find him. But, no--I am foolis.h.!.+ Did he not say it would be two weeks--a month--maybe longer--those were his very words. And it is only nineteen days, and that is not a month. But, he will come sooner!” She flushed deeply, ”He will come to _me_--for he does love me, even as I love him. In his eyes I have seen it--and in his voice--and in the touch of his hand.”
The last bend was almost in sight and she quickened her pace. She knew to an inch, the exact spot from which the first glimpse of the cabin was to be had. She reached the spot and stared eagerly toward the spruce thicket. The next instant a glad cry rang out upon the still Arctic air.
”Oh, he has come! He has come! The light is in his window! Oh, my darling! My own, own man!”
Half laughing, half sobbing, she ran forward, urging her tired muscles to their utmost, stumbling, recovering, hurrying on. Only a minute more now! Up the bank from the river! And, not even pausing to remove her snowshoes, she burst into the room with Brent's name upon her lips.
The next instant the blood rushed from her face leaving it deathly white. She drew herself swiftly erect, and with a wild cry of terror turned to fly from the room. But her snowshoes fouled, and she fell heavily to the floor, just as Johnnie Claw, with a triumphant leer upon his bearded face leaped to the door, banged it shut, and stood with his back against it, leering and smirking down at her, while the Captain of the _Belva Lou_ knelt over her and stared into her eyes with burning, b.e.s.t.i.a.l gaze.
CHAPTER XX
”YOU ARE WHITE!”
”So! my beauty!” grinned the Captain, ”Fer once in his life Claw didn't lie. An' ye didn't wait fer us to go an' git ye--jest come right to us nice as ye please--an' saved me a keg o' rum.” He rose with an evil leer. ”An' now git up an' make yerself to home--an' long as ye do as I say, an' don't git yer back up, you an' me'll git along fine.”
Frantic with terror the girl essayed to rise, but her snowshoes impeded her movements, so with trembling fingers she loosened the thongs and, leaping to her feet, backed into a corner, and stared in wide-eyed horror first at the Captain, then at Claw, the sight of whom caused her to shrink still further against the wall.
The man sneered: ”Know me, eh? Rec'lect the time, over to the mission I tried to persuade you to make the trip to Dawson with me do you? Well, I made up my mind I'd git you. Tried to buy you offen the squaw an' she like to tore me to pieces. I'd of kidnapped you then, if it hadn't be'n fer the Mounted. But I've got you now--got you an' sold you to him,” he grinned, pointing to the Captain. ”An' yer lucky, at that. Let me make you acquainted with Cap Jinkins. 'Tain't every breed girl gits to be mistress of a s.h.i.+p like the _Belva Lou_.”
Her eyes blazing with anger, she pointed a trembling finger at Claw: ”Stand away from that door! Let me go!”
”Oh, jest like that!” mocked the man. ”If he says let you go, it's all right with me, pervided he comes acrost with the balance of the dust.”
The Captain laughed, and turning to the Dog Rib, he ordered: ”Slip out to the sled an' git a bottle o' rum, an' we'll all have a little drink.”
For the first time Snowdrift noticed the presence of the Indian.
”Yondo!” she screamed, ”This is your work! You devil!” and beside herself with rage and terror, she s.n.a.t.c.hed a knife from the table and leaped upon him like a panther.
”Git back there!” cried Claw, leveling his revolver.
Quick as a flash, the Captain knocked up the gun, pinioned the girl's arms from behind, and stood glaring over her shoulder at Claw: ”Put up that gun, d.a.m.n ye! An' look out who yer pullin' it on!”
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