"Sweetheart," answered Brent, "If I knew to a certainty that I should never make a strike—that I should always live in these barrens, I would marry you anyway—and call the barrens blessed. But, I will make a strike! It is for you—and I cannot fail! Oh, if I hadn't been such a fool!"
The girl smiled into his eyes: "If you hadn't been such a—a fool, you would never have come to the barrens. And I—I would always have been just an Indian—hating the white man, hating the world, living my life here and there, upon the lakes and the rivers, in cabins and tepees, with just enough education to long for the better things, and with my heart bursting with pain and bitterness in the realization that those things were not for me."
"It is strange how everything works out for the best," mused Brent, "The whys and the wherefores of life are beyond my philosophy. Sordid, and twisted, and wrong as they were, my Dawson days, and the days of the years that preceded them were all but the workings of destiny—to bring you and me together up here on the rim of the Arctic.
"It was a great scheme, little girl," he smiled,
suddenly breaking into a lighter mood, "And the beauty of it is—it worked. But what I was getting at is this: it don't seem reasonable that after going to all that trouble to bring us together, and taking such liberties with my reputation, Old Man Destiny is going to make us fill out the rest of the time punching holes in gravel, and snaring rabbits, and hunting caribou."
That evening they said good bye upon the edge of the clearing that surrounded the Indian encampment, and as Brent turned to go he drew a heavy bag from his pocket and handed it to the girl, "Keep this till I come back," he said, "It's gold."
"Oh, it is heavy!" cried the girl in surprise.
Brent smiled, "Weighs up pretty big now. But when we make our strike it won't be a shoestring. But come—one more good bye and I must be going. I've got to pack my outfit for an early start."
One day a week later Brent stood with Joe Pete on the northernmost ridge of the Copper Mountains and gazed toward the coast of the Arctic Ocean. Almost at their feet, buried beneath snow and ice were the Bloody Falls of the Coppermine and to the northward, only snow. Brent was surprised, for he knew that the ridge upon which he was standing could not be more than ten or twelve miles from the coast, but he also knew that he could see for twenty miles or more, and that the only thing that met the eye was a gently undulating plain of snow, unbroken by even so much as a twig or a bush, or a
hillock worthy the name. Never, he thought, as his glance swept the barren, treeless waste, had eyes of mortal man beheld its equal for absolute bleak desolation.