GOLD
The one desire, obsessing Jim’s mind, was to get away from Devinne’s place. Natalie’s unblushing overtures had scared him very considerably. Women had always puzzled him—they puzzled him even more now. He certainly had no use for women who ran at one in that way. Far better for them to be like Angela, cold and unapproachable, alluring yet repellent. One knew where one was with Angela, but never with Natalie.
And Angela had heard, and perhaps seen, all that had taken place! He mopped his brow as he reflected upon her feelings in the matter. He was modest and foolish enough to think that jealousy was out of the question, but she would undoubtedly object to playing second fiddle to Natalie. So much he knew of her.
Fearful of meeting Natalie at breakfast, he rose early and made his way out, determined not 292 to return until Chips the half-breed arrived with his cargo. A little distance from the house he stopped, and returned for the shovel and pick and washing-pan, with a view to filling in his spare time and banishing from his mind the painful scene of last night.
The red sun was just mounting the horizon as he strode off, and birds were singing gayly in the woods. Half an hour’s walk brought him out of the timber into comparatively bare country. Aimlessly he wandered on, drinking in the fresh morning air and stopping to gaze at the brilliant landscape from time to time. Below him, to the west, a small creek made a junction with the Yukon, its red water foaming over broken boulders, and leaping ten perpendicular feet to join the parent stream. He sauntered down towards it, the washing-pan clanking against the shovel as he walked.
Few men would have dug for gold along that creek; the surface had all the characteristics of unadulterated muck. He stuck the pick into it for the mere fun of hitting something. Though the sun shone warmly and rich the grass grew on either bank, the eternal ice was down under the surface. 293
In one hour he managed to dig out a cubic yard of earth. Having satisfied his hunger for exercise, he flung the shovel down and began to smoke.
Looking down the creek, he saw a clumsy flat-bottomed boat, piled high with cargo, swirling down the river, with a tousled-haired man in the stern keeping her from the bank by means of a pole.
“Chips,” he murmured. “He must have started last night. So the food is here, and we can hike out to-day, thank God!”
As he looked, the punt struck a submerged sandbank and beached on it. Chips’ little body bent on the pole, but except to swivel the punt on its axis it had no other result.