“But that way is longer by a thousand miles,” protested Bill.
“I know it is but if we go to Circle City and then up the Yukon River to White Horse we’ll have to cross over into Yukon Territory and the chances are we’ll have to hand over a ten per cent tax on our hard-earned winnings to the Canadian Government; besides they’ll be liable to make us do a lot of explaining as to where we got it from, and I hold it’s nobody’s business. Get me?”
Bill batted his eyes.
“Afore I’d pay a nickel tax on our dust I’d drive over to the North Pole and go around by the way of Greenland,” was his emphatic rejoinder.
Now there are a lot of terse phrases such as “nothing succeeds like success,” “a fool and his money are soon parted,” et cetera, and another might be to say that nothing makes most fellows so stingy as coming into possession of a fortune, for it was evident that these usually over-generous boys had “tightened up” since this golden manna had risen from the pit where it was cached in such a strange manner. They were, as Bill expressed it, “fools for luck.”
Eileen was not progressing as fast as they thought she would though she improved slowly and surely. Good food, the best care, cheerful companionship and strong arms to look after her every want had made a wondrous change in this frail little girl who had dropped to the floor from exhaustion only a fortnight before. One thing was sure, however miserly the boys had grown in their minds, they took a tremendous interest in this silent half-breed child whose father had been the means of making them as rich as the richest caliph and that, you will allow, is pretty rich.
Eileen in turn recognized in them messengers sent by the Great Spirit who had saved her life, and as she watched them go about their work, heard them talk of their plans, and what they would do with and for her when they got home, she knew they were, like the nuggets in the sacks, twenty-four carats fine.
At first she couldn’t quite make Bill out, especially when he smiled, for the very emotion that nature intended a smile to represent, that terrible scar across his cheek gave the opposite appearance. Sometimes Eileen would look at him so curiously that Jack thought perhaps, she might be a little afraid of him, so one day while Bill was out getting some wood Jack told her how he came by that scar and the kind of a fellow he was as a friend and a fighter.
Came that day when all agreed that Eileen could safely make the sled trip down to Fort Yukon and, indeed, it was high time, for spring was fast coming on and this meant that the snow would melt, the ice grow thin and rotten and the bottom drop out of the trail at any moment.
So again the gold and the girl were loaded on the sleds and the long awaited start back home was made—a journey of some six thousand miles. Many things can happen in making a trip of even less length, aye, and did happen as you shall presently see.