But Hildegarde’s feelings were a little hurt. The normal miner, she had always understood, showed people his gold—even trusted them to handle it.
“Poor old Ky,” the sick man went on apologetically; “she has got so used to guarding this”—he was himself positively hugging the unsavory bundle—“she can’t see any other creature come near it without—”
“You’re quite as bad,” Hildegarde said to herself, but a glance at the face, with the look of doom in the eyes, made her set down his excitement, and the failure in fairly judging her, to the darkening of all things in the gathering shadow.
“I suppose you think I have something very valuable here?” he said, suspiciously.
“It wouldn’t be the first time in Alaska that something valuable has been wrapped in rags and left lying in a corner.”
“Something like what I’ve got here?” he asked, as he took tighter hold on the oilskin.
He should not think she was curious about his gold dust and his nuggets. She looked at Ky climbing with difficulty back to her place at the foot of the bed, and pointedly changed the subject. “Your dog is very lame.”
He nodded. “Got one of her paws crushed.”
To distract him from his brain-sick anxiety about the bundle, “How was that?” Hildegarde asked. No answer this time, only that same northward motion. “She must be very old,” Hildegarde pursued.
“No.”