It was all there in a bag—raw gold, pure gold, the food of joy. At the weight of it in his rough palm, Desmond chattered and chuckled with delight. He had sat there talking and laughing for hours, while the glow of the stove grew darker and the cold crept in. Little blots of snow from the snow-shoes, first melting, had turned again to dark ice on the floor; the red light clung to them until each little circle seemed to be one of blood. Outside the world trembled under the shafts of the bitter stars; but Desmond, with the very fuel of life in his hand, was warm.
Dreams ran in his brain like a tide and dripped off his tongue in words. They were strangely innocent dreams of innocent things; sunlight on an old wall, honey, a girl with sandy eyebrows, and yellow ducklings.
“And maybe there’ll be a garden, with fruit you can pick off the bushes. ’Twas under a thorn-bush she used to stand, with the wind snapping her print gown. Or maybe I’ll see more of the world first in an easy fashion, never a drink scarce, and no man my better at it. I know how a gentleman should behave. Are you hearing me, boys?”
Ohlsen breathed as slowly and deeply as a bull. Forbes blinked a moment over the greasy furs and said, “I’m hearing you.” Lajeune gave a sudden little call in his sleep, like a bird.
“They’re all asleep, like so many hogs,” said Desmond, with a maudlin wonder; “they don’t care. Two years we’ve struggled and starved together in this here freezing hell, and now my luck’s come, and they don’t care. Well, well.”
He stared resentfully at the bunks. He could see nothing of Ohlsen but blanket, yet Ohlsen helped him to a new outfit when he lost everything in a snow-slide. Forbes was only an unheeding head of grimy fur, yet once he had pulled Desmond out of a log-jam. And Lejeune had nursed him laughingly when he hurt his foot with a pick. Yet now Lejeune cared nothing; he was asleep, his head flung back, showing his smooth, lean throat and a scar that ran across it, white on brown. Desmond felt hurt. He took another drink, strode over to the bunk, and shook him petulantly.
“Don’t ye hear when a friend talks t’ ye?”
Lajeune did not move, yet he was instantly awake. His eyes, so black that they showed no pupil, stared suddenly into Desmond’s muddled blue ones. His right hand gripped and grew rigid.
Desmond, leaning over him, was sobered by something in the breathless strain of that stare. He laughed uneasily.
“It’s only me, Jooney. Was you asleep? I’m sorry.”