“N—no; not like him; and yet they will think considerable of his sort of ideas, too,” he answered, blunderingly. “One thing sure is this: When your actual work here is over, you must go at once back to Mrs. Huzzard. It was necessary for you to come, else I wouldn’t have allowed it. But, little girl, when you get among those fine friends you are going to have, I don’t want them to think you had a guardian up here who didn’t take the first bit of civilized care of you. And that’s what they would think if I let you stay here, just as though you were a boy. So you see, ’Tana, I just felt I’d have to tell you plain that you would have to try and fit yourself to city ways of living. And when you are a millionairess, as you count on being, we three partners can’t keep on living in tents in the Kootenai woods.”
She pulled handfuls of the plumy grasses beside her, and stared sulkily ahead of her. Evidently it was a great deal for her to understand at once.
“Would they blame you—you for it, if they knew?” she asked at last. 168
“Yes, they would—if they knew,” he said, savagely; and turning away, he walked across the little grassy level to where the abrupt little wall or ledge commenced—the one from under which the springs flowed.
She thought he was simply out of patience with her. He was going to the woods—anywhere to be rid of her and her stupid ideas; and swift as a bird, she slipped after him.
“Then I’ll go, Dan,” she said reassuringly, catching his arm. “So don’t be vexed at me for being stubborn. Come! let me look for the gold with you, and then—then I’ll go when you say.”
“It’s a bargain,” he said, briefly, and drew his arm away. “And if we are going to do any more prospecting this evening, we had better begin.”
He stood facing her, with his back to the bank that was the first tiny step toward the mountain that rose dark and shadowy far above. He had walked along there before, looking with a miner’s attention to the lay of the land. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation, and a light of comprehension brightened his eyes.
“I’ve got a clew to it, sure, ’Tana!” he said, eagerly. “Do you know where we are standing? Well, if I don’t make a big mistake, a good-sized river once rolled along just where we are now. The little creek is all that’s left of it. This soil is all a comparatively recent deposit, and it and the gold dust in it have been washed down from the mountain. Which means that this little valley is only a gateway, and the dust we found is only a trail we are to follow up to the mine from which it came. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I think so,” she answered, looking at the green-covered banks, and trying to realize how they looked 169 when a mountain river had cut its way through and covered all the pretty level where the spring stream slipped now. “But doesn’t that make the gold seem farther away—much farther? Will we have to move up higher in the mountains?”