“You’ll never put those two together. Nonsense! Why, the man’s a rascal. I wouldn’t let him have her. Besides, it couldn’t be. She’ll find him out. I love her so much that—oh, my feelings are too big to talk about.” He moved his hands eloquently. “You can’t understand.”
“Um-m! I s’pose not,” grunted Dextry, but his eyes were level and held the light of the past.
“He may be a rascal,” the old man continued, after a little; “I’ll put in with you on that; but he’s a handsome devil, and, as for manners, he makes you look like a logger. He’s a brave man, too. Them three qualities are trump-cards and warranted to take most any queen in the human deck—red, white, or yellow.”
“If he dares,” growled Glenister, while his thick brows came forward and ugly lines hardened in his face.
In the gray of the early morning they descended the foot-hills into the wide valley of the Nome River and filed out across the rolling country to the river bluffs where, cleverly concealed among the willows, was a rocker. This they set up, then proceeded to wash the dirt from the sacks carefully, yet with the utmost speed, for there was serious danger of discovery. It was wonderful, this treasure of the richest ground since the days of ’49, and the men worked with shining eyes and hands a-tremble. The gold was coarse, and many ragged, yellow lumps, too large to pass through the screen, rolled in the hopper, while the aprons bellied with its weight. In the pans which they had provided there grew a gleaming heap of wet, raw gold.
Shortly, by divergent routes, the partners rode unnoticed into town, and into the excitement of the hold-up news, while the tardy still lingered over their breakfasts. Far out in the roadstead lay the Roanoke, black smoke pouring from her stack. A tug was returning from its last trip to her.
Glenister forced his lathered horse down to the beach and questioned the longshoremen who hung about.
“No; it’s too late to get aboard—the last tender is on its way back,” they informed him. “If you want to go to the ‘outside’ you’ll have to wait for the fleet. That only means another week, and—there she blows now.”
A ribbon of white mingled with the velvet from the steamer’s funnel and there came a slow, throbbing, farewell blast.
Glenister’s jaw clicked and squared.