Part 4 (2/2)

”There won't be a rush, if that's what you mean. Everybody knows it's a pocket country, and the men in this town wouldn't any more get excited about the Yuga River--”

”True enough--but that Ezra Melville will be showin' up one of these days. We want to be settin' pretty when he comes.”

”You've got the idea. It ought to be the easiest job we ever did. It's my idea he had his claim all laid out, monuments up and everything, and was on his way down to Bradleyburg to record it when he died. He just went out before he could make the rest of the trip. All we'll have to do is go up there, locate in his cabin, and sit tight.”

”Wait just a second.” Ray was lost in thought. ”There's an old cabin up that way somewhere--along that still place--on the river. It was a trapping cabin belonging to old Bill Foulks.”

”That's true enough--but it likely ain't near his mine. Boys, it's a clean, open-and-shut job--with absolutely nothing to interfere. If his brother does come up, he'll find us in possession--and nothing to do but go back. So to-morrow we'll load up and pack horses and light out.”

”Up Poor Man creek, through Spruce Pa.s.s--”

”Sure. Then over to the Yuga. Old Hiram was hunting down some kind of a scent in the vicinity of that old cabin you speak of, last heard of him.

And I wouldn't be surprised, on second thought, if it wasn't his base of operations.”

”All easy enough,” Ray agreed. He paused, and a queer, speculative look came into his wild-beast's eyes. ”But what I don't see--how you can figure all this is going to help me out with Beatrice.”

Jeffery Neilson turned in his chair. ”You can't, eh? You need spectacles. Just think a minute--say you had fifty or sixty thousand all your own--to spend on a wife and buy her clothes and automobiles. Don't you think that would make you more attractive to the feminine eye?”

At first Ray made no apparent answer. He merely sat staring ahead. But plainly the words had wakened riot in his imagination. Such a sum meant _wealth_, the power his ambitious nature had always craved, idleness and the gratification of all his l.u.s.ts. He was no stranger to greed, this degenerate son of the North. ”It'd help some,” he admitted in a low voice. ”But what makes you think it would be worth that much?”

”Because old Hiram talked a little, half-delirious, before he died. 'A quarter of a million,' he kept saying. 'Right there in sight--a quarter of a million.' If he really found that much stowed away in the rocks, that's fifty or sixty apiece for you and Chan.”

Ray's mind worked swiftly. Sixty thousand apiece--and that left one hundred and thirty thousand for their leader's portion. The old rage and jealousy that had preyed upon his mind so long swept over him, more compelling than ever. ”Go on,” he urged. ”What's the rest of it?”

”The second thing is--we'll need some one to cook, and look after us, when we get up there. Who should it be but Beatrice? She wouldn't want to stay here; you know how she loves the woods. And if you know anything about girls, you know that nothing counts like having 'em alone. There wouldn't be any of the other boys up there to trouble you. You'd have a clear field.”

Ray's dark eyes shone. ”It'd help some,” he admitted. ”That means--hunt up an extra horse for her to-morrow.”

”No. I don't intend she should come up now. Not till we're settled.”

”Why not?”

”Think a minute, and you'll see why not. You know how she regards this business of jumping claims. She's dead against it if any one could be--bless her heart!”

”Don't go getting sentimental, Neilson.”

”And don't let that mouth of yours get you into trouble, either.” Once more their eyes locked: once more Ray looked away. ”I hope she'll always stay that way, too. As I say, she's dead against it, and she's been a little suspicious ever since that Jenkins deal. Besides, it wouldn't be any pleasure for her until we find a claim and get settled. When she comes up we'll be established in a couple of cabins--one for her and me and one for you two--and she won't know but that we made the original find.”

”How will she know just where to find us?”

”We're bound to be somewhere near that old cabin on the Yuga. We'll set a date for her to come, and I can meet her there.”

It was, Ray was forced to admit, a highly commendable scheme. He sat back, contemplating all its phases. ”It's slick enough,” he agreed. ”It ought to do the trick.”

But if he had known the girl's thoughts, as she sat alone in the back part of the house, he wouldn't have felt so confident. She was watching the moon over the spruce forest, and she was thinking, with repugnance in her heart, of the indignity to which she had been subjected at her father's door. Yet the kisses Ray had forced on her were no worse than his blasphemy of her dreams. The spirit of romance was abroad to-night--in the enchantment of the moon--and she was wistful and imaginative as never before. This was just the normal expression of her starved girlhood--the same childlike wistfulness with which a Cinderella might long for her prince--just as natural and as wholesome and as much a part of youth as laughter and happiness.

”I won't believe him, I won't believe him,” she told herself. Her thought turned to other channels, and her heart spoke its wish.

”Wherever he is--sometime he'll come to me.”

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