“Well, yes; the river trip has done him good, instead of the harm the Ferry folks prophesied. But you run along and show him the ’yellow,’ and don’t draw the squaw’s attention to it.”
The squaw was wrapped neck and heels in a blanket, although the day was one of the warmest of summer; and stretched asleep in the sun, she gave no heed to the quick, light step of the girl.
Neither did Harris, at whose tent door she lay. He must have thought it was the stoical, indifferent Indian, for he gave her a quick, startled glance as he heard her surprised “Oh!” at the door. Then she walked directly to him, lifted his right hand, and let go again. It fell on his knee in the old, helpless way.
“But you did raise it,” she said, accusingly. “I saw you as I came to the door. You stretched out your hand.”
He looked at her and nodded very slightly, then looked at his hand and appeared trying to lift it; but gave up, and shook his head sadly.
“You mean you moved it a little once, but can’t do it again?” she asked, and he nodded assent.
“Oh, well, that’s all right,” she continued, cheerfully. “You are sure to get along all right, now that you have commenced to manage your hands if ever so little. But just at first, when I saw you, I had a mighty queer notion come into my head. I thought you were getting over 156 that stroke faster than you let us know. But I’m too suspicious, ain’t I? Maybe it’s a bad thing for folks to trust strangers too much in this world; but it is just as bad for a girl to grow up where she can’t trust any one. Don’t you think so?”
The man nodded. They had many conversations like that, and she had grown not to notice his lack of speech nearly so much as at first. He was so good a listener, and she had become so used to his face gradually gaining again expressive power, that she divined his wishes more readily than the others.
“But trusting don’t cut any figure in what I came to speak to you about,” she continued. “No ‘trust and hope on, brethren,’ about this, I guess,” and she held the grains of yellow metal before his eyes. “There it is—the gold! Dan found it in the little hollow where the spring is. Is that where you found it?”
He shook his head, but looked pleased at the show they had found.