“What are you waiting for, Case?” he interrupted his chant to demand.
“Just to tell you that you have got to keep quiet until tomorrow morning. Clay is going to start up the motor now. We let the Rambler drift while we were working over you and Ike. One of us will stay down in the cabin with you all the time ready to get you anything you want.”
“So I’m to be made to stay here and miss the last glimpse of Nome,” Alex growled. “Miss seeing the Rambler tearing through the water at over twenty miles an hour. Miss seeing Michael’s Island and the river steam boat, and worst of all, miss the first glimpse of Father Yukon. What are you going to do if I refuse to be in this old bunk?” he demanded.
“Then I’ll have to tie your hands and feet, lash you down to the bunk, take all your clothes away from you, lock them up in your locker, and keep the key,” Case said firmly.
Alex laid back and closed his eyes.
“Well, which shall it be?” demanded Case, as Alex still lay quiet with closed eyes. “Will you promise to lay quiet or will I have to tie you up?”
“Don’t disturb me, Case,” Alex murmured rapturously. “I’m having a vision, such a touching vision. Maybe I’m only delirious, but it’s touching, touching. Let me tell it to you, Case. It seems like it was the Sunday before we left Chicago and I am sitting on a bench looking at the couples strolling around, when I see a fellow I know walking with a red-headed, freckled-faced girl.
“Her hair isn’t red, it’s auburn, and she isn’t freckled,” Case said, indignantly.
“Keep still,” said Alex. “This is only a vision and I’ve got to tell it as I saw it. They didn’t notice me, they were so taken up with each other. Pretty soon they sit down on the bench close to me, only a clump of bushes between them and me, and the fellow talked so funny you would have laughed to have heard it, Case, honestly you would have, and then they got up to go, Case,” and Alex’s voice lowered. “He kissed her, Case, and said, ‘I’ll be back in the fall, darling.’”
Case had reddened to the roots of his hair. “I am not ashamed of what I said or did,” he said, desperately, but a great fear was in his heart as he foresaw the ridicule and banter he would have to endure if Alex told the story.