“He says you’ll give us the particulars.” Mrs. Mar flung the notice at Cheviot as if plainly to advertise her intention to hold him responsible if those same particulars were not reassuring.
Cheviot told briefly how he had found Mr. Mar at the mission, how an eavesdropper had overheard their private talk, and how Mr. Mar reached his journey’s end only to find that the thirty-year-old secret had been filched from him, and other men (who hadn’t known it but three days), how they had gathered in the harvest.
“Not all—surely father got something?”
“By the time he reached Anvil Creek he found it staked from end to end.”
Mrs. Mar was plying the crochet-needle with a rapidity superhuman. “Of course he’d be too late,” she said, with a deadly quietness. “Give him thirty years’ start, and he’ll be too late.”
“It was an outrage that a handful of men should have been able to gobble the entire creek,” said Cheviot hurriedly. “The laws will be changed, beyond a doubt. They’re monstrous. Every miner has been able to take out a power of attorney, and he could locate for his entire family, for all his friends—even for people who don’t exist.”
“And those missionaries took it all!”
“Not the missionaries. They were chivvied out of the game by a reindeer herder they’d let into the secret. It’s too long a story to tell you now, but the herder gave the missionaries the slip, and got word to some friends of his. The rascals formed a district and elected a recorder. By the time we got there, there wasn’t an inch left for the man who’d discovered the gold.”
In the pause Hildegarde hunted wildly in her mind for something to say—something that would prevent her mother from speaking—but the girl’s tongue could find no word, her mind refused to act.
Fortunately, the story had reduced even Mrs. Mar to silence.