“Dick wouldn’t have given away that money nor yet spent it to save himself from starvation, I believe,” said Doss Umpey, with a chuckle. “He was a desperately superstitious fellow, and he’d got an idea that money sent to him like that by a mistake would bring him luck, so he always used to carry the case with him in a belt round his waist. His father and I used to laugh at him about it, but it didn’t make no difference. They didn’t know who had sent the money; but I did directly, only I wasn’t going to let on to them that I knew anything about it. But I’d seen you on the depot at Bratley, that day when we went through to Roseneath, so it didn’t take long to figure things out that you had sent the money, because you’d somehow got mixed up into thinking that young Dick was the party that had to be taken in and done for.”
“So they never knew who sent it?” asked Nell, drawing a long breath of relief.
“Not they! But we was dreadful hard up after that business of trying to clear out the big shed at the depot, and we had to lie low too, for between the police and the Syndicate it was rather warm for us. Then old Brunsen won a lot of money at poker, and we cleared out while we’d got the chance. We meant to go to Klondike, but we hadn’t got enough money, and it was the wrong time of the year; so we pulled up at Skeena, and looked about to see how we could make things last out until the spring. Then one day, as luck would have it, young Dick was prospecting round a bit, and he came upon a poor fellow who was dying from some wounds he’d had from getting mixed up with Indians. This chap had some nuggets in his pocket what he’d picked up in the Babine country, and he asked Dick to send them to his sweetheart in Quebec.”
“Have a little more custard, then lie quiet awhile; so much talking cannot be good for you,” said Nell, anxiously, for the old man’s appearance rather frightened her.
“Oh, I’m glad to talk, if it’s only to myself; it sort of whiles away the time,” said the old man; but he consented to swallow the custard, which was so much better than anything he had tasted through the weary months of his sickness. Then he went on with his story as if eager to get it told, “The poor chap pegged out when he had finished telling Dick about the gold in the Babine country, and Dick he came back to us in high feather, saying that our fortunes were made at last. And so for a time it seemed as if they were going to be; but there’s mostly something awkward turns up just as you think you’ve got to plain sailing, and somehow the crowd we had got to help us got hold of the wrong end of the story of the man with the nuggets. Then came trouble, for they were as ugly a lot as I had ever had to do with. They set upon us like a pack of wolves, and we should have been wiped out in about five minutes if it hadn’t been for Dick. He fought like ten men, and we might have pulled through even then, only one coward of a fellow shot him from behind, and so he died.” The old man’s voice broke in an irrepressible sob; but Nell’s face was white and stern.
She was thinking to herself that the way of transgressors is hard, for if Dick Brunsen had only told the truth about how he had come to know of the find of gold in the Babine country, his life need not have been forfeit, and so her pity for him dwindled and died, there seemed no limit to his meanness, so really he deserved the fate which had come to him.
“How did you escape?” she asked.
“The crowd made tracks in no time at all, when they saw that Dick was dead, for no one could say how near the mounted police might be, and law is law in Canada, I can tell you. Old Brunsen had got hurt in the head, sort of knocked silly, so he was no good. We couldn’t take the body back to the town, for we were three days out, and the crowd had made off with all the horses and mules that we had had loaded with provisions, tents, and diggers’ outfits. So, while old Brunsen lay on the ground moaning, I dug a grave for poor Dick; only, before I dragged him into it, I took off his belt with the thirty dollars in it that you sent, and I’ve had to make it last ever since, for I’ve sort of been too sick to earn anything.”
“What became of old Brunsen?” Nell asked.
“He was sort of struck silly, I think, with that blow on the head, for he didn’t come to his senses, and next morning, when I woke, meaning to start back for the town, he was missing. I spent all that day and part of the next looking for him, and at last I came on his trail, only to find that he must have pitched over a bluff in the dark, for he was lying stone dead at the bottom with a broken neck. I buried him where I found him, just as I had buried Dick, then I sat down and felt pretty sick.”