He backed off bewildered, but young Lajeune smiled and yawned, showing his red tongue curled like a wolf’s.
“Still the gold, my friend?” he asked, drowsily.
“I—I can’t seem to get used to it, like,” explained Desmond; “I have to talk of it. I know I’m a fool, but a man’s luck takes him all ways. You go to sleep, young Jooney. I won’t talk to you no more.”
“Nor before your old savage in the corner, hein?”
Desmond glanced at the heap of rags in the corner.
“Hom? What’s the matter? Think he’ll steal it? Why, there’s four of us, and even an Injun can have a corner of my shack for an hour or two to-night. I reckon,” finished Desmond, with a kind of gravity, “as my luck is making me soft. It takes a man all ways.”
Lajeune yawned, grinned, flung up his left arm, and was instantly asleep again. He looked so young in his sleep, that Desmond was suddenly moved to draw the blanket over him. In the dim light he saw Forbes worn and grizzled, the wariness gone out of him, a defeated old man with horrible eyes. Ohlsen’s hand lay over the edge of the bunk, his huge fingers curved helplessly, like a child’s. Desmond felt inarticulately tender to the three who had toiled by his side and missed their luck. He piled wood on the stove, saying, “I must do something for the boys. They’re good boys.”
At the freshened roar of the stove the old Indian in the corner stirred and lifted his head, groping like an old turtle in the sunlight. He had a curious effect of meaningless blurs and shadows. Eye and memory could hold nothing of his insignificance. Only under smoked and puckered lids the flickering glitter of his eyes pricked in a meaning unreadable. Desmond looked at him with the wide good nature born of his luck.
“I ain’t going to turn ye out, Old Bones,” he said.
The eyes steadied on him an instant, and the old shadow spoke fair English in the ghost of a voice.