Part 11 (1/2)
”Sure,” answered Gale ”Poleon has been here two hours”
”That's good; I don't want nobody taggin' along”
”We cah the town boldly,” announced Stark; ”but if they had seen you two they would have suspected so except oaths at the mosquitoes and at his pack-straps, which were new and cut him already As no explanation of his presence was offered, neither the trader nor Doret made any comment then, but it cah behind the others to render conversation possible
”You decided to take in another one, eh?” Gale asked Lee
”It wasn't exactly my doin's,” replied the , bein' as he had grub-staked him, and he seemed so set on it that I ackeressed You see, it's the first chance I ever had to pay him back for a favor he done o around”
It was Lee's affair, thought the trader, and he ht tell who the back of theeverya point of listening and watching hih the afternoon the fiveone another's footsteps, e from sombre thickets of fir to flounder across wide pastures of ”nigger-heads,” that wobbled and wriggled and bowed beneath their feet, until at cost ofof the forest Occasionally they caravel bars, till a bend threw theain into the meadows andvalley to another streareat boards the Yukon, and always there were dense clouds of mosquitoes above their heads At one point Stark, hot and irritable, remarked:
”There must be a shorter cut than this, Lee?”
”I reckon there is,” the miner replied, ”but I've always had a pack to carry, so I chose the level ground ruther than climb the divides”
”S'pose dose people at caested Poleon
”It wouldn't be easy going for theot there,” Stark said, sourly ”I, for one, wouldn't stand for it”
”Nor I,” agreed Runnion
”I don't see how you'd help yourself,” the trader reuess I'd help nificantly, as did Runnion, who added:
”Lee is entitled to put in anybody he wants on his own discovery, and if anybody tries to get ahead of us there's liable to be trouble”
”I reckon if I don't know no short-cut, nobody else does,” Lee rely:
”Dere's no use gettin' scare' lak' dat, biccause nobody kno'ere Lee's creek she's locate' but John an' me, an' dere's nobody w'at knows he ht,” said Gale; ”the only other way across is by Black Bear Creek, and there ain't a half-dozen men ever been up to the head of that stream, much less over the divide, so I don't allow there's any use to fret ourselves”
They went on their way, travelling leisurely until late evening, when they camped at the mouth of the valley up which the ravel bar, that curved like a scimitar, and made down upon its outer tip where the breeze tended to thin the plague of insects They were all old-stagers in the ways of ca as to their respective duties Their preparations were sies out of wet driftwood, and inside this Lee kindled a camp-fire of dry sticks, upon which he cooked, protected by the se of the forest and felled a dozen small firs, the branches of which he clipped These Poleon and Runnion bore down to the end of the spit for bedding, while Stark chopped a pile of dry wood for the night Gale noted that the newan axe with the free dexterity of one to whom its feel was faravel of the bar, displaying an all-round cos efficiently that won reluctant approval fro dislike he had taken to him
Lee was ready for them by the time they had finished their tasks, and, fanned by the breeze that sucked up the stream and lulled by the waters, they ate their scanty supper Their one-eyed guide had lived so long a mosquitoes and had become so inoculated with their poison that he was in a athered on his wrinkled, hair-grown hide only to give up in -grounds Caestion, instead of pushi+ng on a few miles farther, as Lee had intended; and nohen the cool evening fell and the draught quickened, it becaear; so they sat about the fire, talking, s their tired feet