Never did narrator have more attentive listener. There was a sort of white joy in the boy’s face.
“Oh, ain’t I glad to git in dis!” he cried. “Here’s just wot I been lookin’ fur.” Suddenly he struck Jim on the shoulder with a tightly clenched fist. “I made fur youse der first t’ing—didn’t yer see me? I know me man all right. Der secont I put me peeps on yer I ses ter meself, ‘Dat feller won’t t’row yer down, Chimmy’—ain’t I right, hey? Ain’t I right, Mister?”
Jim patted him on the back. “I think you’re right, old man,” he said. “I’ll do anything I can for you.”
“Yer don’t hafter tell me dat—I know it,” replied the boy. A sudden sob gathered in his throat and choked him. “Yer don’t know wot I been t’rough, Mister—it ’ud laid out many er big stiff ten times me size. I’d—don’t youse laugh at me now, becus I’m only a kid—I’d give me heart’s blood fur youse, s’ help me, I would, now!”
“Shake hands, pardner,” said Jim, his own voice a trifle hoarse. “We’ll do fine together—I know we will.”
III
They crested the last sharp rise, and looked down upon the little cabin huddling in the spruces—an island of humanity in the beautiful sea of the wilderness.
It seemed to Jim as if the small house brightened in appearance at the return of its soul; his heart in turn rose with a home feeling; his belief in the treasure which lay where the new channel cut across the old wash—that treasure which would make the world so different—came back to him like a renewed love. His hands ached for a grip on pick and shovel. His strong muscles twitched with eagerness to be at work again.