Part 17 (1/2)
The old miner went with him as a guide to the big bend. Gordon had no desire to attempt again Fifty-Mile Swamp without the help of some one who knew every foot of the trail. Holt had taken the trip a dozen times.
With him to show the way the swamp became merely a hard, grueling mush through boggy lowlands.
Weary with the trail, they reached the river at the end of a long day.
An Indian village lay sprawled along the bank, and through this the two men tramped to the roadhouse where they were to put up for the night.
Holt called to the younger man, who was at the time in the lead.
”Wait a minute, Elliot.”
Gordon turned. The old Alaskan was offering a quarter to a little half-naked Indian boy. Shyly the four-year-old came forward, a step at a time, his finger in his mouth. He held out a brown hand for the coin.
”What's your name, kid?” Holt flashed a look at Elliot that warned him to pay attention.
”Colmac,” the boy answered bashfully.
His fist closed on the quarter, he turned, and like a startled caribou he fled to a comely young Indian woman standing near the trail.
With gleaming eyes Holt turned to Elliot. ”Take a good look at the squaw,” he said in a low voice.
Elliot glanced at the woman behind whose skirts the youngster was hiding. He smiled and nodded pleasantly to her.
”She's not bad looking if that's what you mean,” he said after they had taken up the trail again.
”You ain't the only white man that has thought that,” retorted the old miner significantly.
”No?” Gordon had learned to let Holt tell things at his leisure. It usually took less time than to try to hurry him.
”Name of the kid mean anything to you?”
”Can't say it did.”
”Hm! Named for his dad. First syllable of each of his names.”
The land inspector stopped in his stride and wheeled upon Holt. His eyes asked eagerly a question. ”You don't mean Colby Macdonald?”
”Why don't I?”
”But--Good Lord, he isn't a squawman, is he?”
”Not in the usual meaning of the word. She never cooked and kept house for him. Just the same, little Colmac is his kid. Couldn't you see it sticking out all over him? He's the spit'n' image of his dad.”
”I see it now you've pointed it out. I was trying to think who he reminded me of. Of course it was Macdonald.”
”Mac met up with Met.e.e.t.se when he first scouted this country for coal five years ago. So far's I know he was square enough with the girl. She never claimed he made any promises or anything like that. He sends a check down once a quarter to the trader here for her and the kid.”
But young Elliot was not thinking about Met.e.e.t.se. His mind's eye saw another picture--the girl at Kusiak, listening spellbound to the tales of a man whose actions translated romance into life for her, a girl swept from the quiet backwaters of an Irish village to this land of the midnight sun with its amazing contrasts.
And all the way up on the boat she continued to fill his mind. The slowness of the steamer fretted him. He paced up and down the deck for hours at a time worried and anxious. Sometimes the jealousy in his heart flamed up like a prairie fire when it comes to a brush heap. The outrage of it set him blazing with indignation. Diane ought to be whipped, he told himself, for her part in the deception. It was no less than a conspiracy. What could an innocent young girl like Sheba know of such a man as Colby Macdonald? Her imagination conceived, no doubt, an idealized vision of him. But the real man was clear outside her ken.
Gordon set his jaw grimly. He would have it out with Diane. He would let her see she was not going to have it all her own way. By G.o.d, he would put a spoke in her wheel.