XXIV
When the Chinook wind, moving northwest at a faster pace than the waterfowl move south, struck the home cabin, Virginia's first thought was for Bill. She heard it come, faint at first, then blustering, just as Bill had heard it; she saw it rock down a few dead trees, and she listened to its raging complaints at the window.
"I'll show you my might," it seemed to say. "You have dared my silent places, come into my fastness, but now I will have revenge. I'll pay you—in secret ways that you don't know."
It so happened that Harold's first thought was also of Bill. It was a curious fact that his heart seemed to leap as if the wind had smitten it. He knew what the Chinook could do to a snow crust. He estimated that Bill was about halfway between the two cabins, and he didn't know about the little, deserted cabin where Bill could find refuge during the night. His eyes gleamed with high anticipations.
Harold's thought was curiously intertwined with the remembrance of the dark cavern he had entered yesterday, the gravel laden with gold. If indeed all things went as it seemed likely that they would go, Bill would never carry the word of his find down to the recorder's office. It was something to think of, something to dream about. Yellow gold,—and no further trouble in seeking it. Such a development would also save the labor of further planning. It was a friend of his, this wind at the window.
"Won't this Chinook melt the snow crust?" Virginia asked him.
He started. He hadn't realized that this newfound sweetheart of his knew the ways of Chinook winds and snow crusts. "Oh, no," he responded. "Why should it? Wind makes crusts, not softens them."
Virginia was satisfied for the moment. Then her mind went back to certain things Bill had told her on one of their little expeditions. Strangely, she took Bill's word rather than Harold's.
"But this is a warm wind, Harold," she objected. "If the crust is melted Bill can't possibly get through to his Twenty-three Mile cabin to-night. What will he do?"