“Oh, yes, you would, yes, you would,” declared the Girl with feeling. A moment later she was down on her knees putting bag after bag of the precious gold-dust and coins into the keg. When they were all in she closed the lid, and putting her foot down hard to make it secure, she repeated: “Oh, yes, you would, if you seen how hard they got it. When I think of it, I nearly cry.”
Johnson had listened absorbedly, and was strangely affected by her words. In her rapidly-filling eyes, in the wave of colour that surged in her cheeks, in the voice that shook despite her efforts to control it, he read how intense was her interest in the welfare of the miners. How the men must adore her!
Unconsciously the Girl arose, and said:
“There’s somethin’ awful pretty in the way the boys hold out before they strike it, somethin’ awful pretty in the face o’ rocks, an’ clay an’ alkali. Oh, Lord, what a life it is anyway! They eat dirt, they sleep in dirt, they breathe dirt ’til their backs are bent, their hands twisted an’ warped. They’re all wind-swept an’ blear-eyed I tell you, an’ some o’ them jest lie down in their sweat beside the sluices, an’ they don’t never rise up again. I’ve seen ’em there!” She paused reminiscently; then, pointing to the keg, she went on haltingly: “I got some money there of Ol’ Brownie’s. He was lyin’ out in the sun on a pile o’ clay two weeks ago, an’ I guess the only clean thing about him was his soul, an’ he was quittin’, quittin’, quittin’, right there on the clay, an’ quittin’ hard. Oh, so hard!” Once more she stopped and covered her face with her hands as if to shut out the horror of it all. Presently she had herself under control and resumed: “Yes, he died—jest like a dog. You wanted to shoot ’im to help ’im along quicker. Before he went he sez to me: ‘Girl, give it to my ol’ woman.’ That was all he said, an’ he went. She’ll git it, all right.”
With every word that the Girl uttered, the iron had entered deeper into Johnson’s soul. Up to the present time he had tried to regard his profession, if he looked at it at all, from the point of view which he inherited from his father. It was not, in all truthfulness, what he would have chosen; it was something that, at times, he lamented; but, nevertheless, he had practised it and had despoiled the miners with but few moments of remorse. But now, he was beginning to look upon things differently. In a brief space of time a woman had impelled him to see his actions in their true light; new ambitions and desires awakened, and he looked downward as if it were impossible to meet her honest eye.
“An’ that’s what aches you,” the Girl was now saying. “There ain’t one o’ them men workin’ for themselves alone—the Lord never put it into no man’s heart to make a beast or a pack-horse o’ himself, except for some woman or some child.” She halted a moment, and throwing up her hands impulsively, she cried: “Ain’t it wonderful—ain’t it wonderful that instinct? Ain’t it wonderful what a man’ll do when it comes to a woman—ain’t it wonderful?” Once more she waited as if expecting him to corroborate her words; but he remained strangely silent. A moment later when he raised his troubled eyes, he saw that hers were dry and twinkling.
“Well, the boys use me as a—a sort of lady bank,” presently she said; and then added with another quick change of expression, and in a voice that showed great determination: “You bet I’ll drop down dead before anyone’ll get a dollar o’ theirs outer The Polka!”
Impulsively the road agent’s hand went out to her, and with it went a mental resolution that so far as he was concerned no hard-working miner of Cloudy Mountain need fear for his gold!
“That’s right,” was what he said. “I’m with you—I’d like to see anyone get that.” He dropped her hand and laid his on the keg; then with a voice charged with much feeling, he added: “Girl, I wish to Heaven I could talk more with you, but I can’t. By daybreak I must be a long ways off. I’m sorry—I should have liked to have called at your cabin.”
The Girl shot him a furtive glance.