His feelings, however, reduced him to no extravagant display of sentiment towards women. On the contrary. He loved to regard them as creatures created for the beautifying of human life, companions on complete equality with man, except where the disability of sex was involved. It was in such circumstances he claimed man’s right to succour to the limit of his powers.
Something of all this had stirred him at the sight of the brown-eyed, work-worn woman with her “God’s Blessings,” as she called them, about her. But it had had nothing to do with the inspiration of his prompt visit to the homestead he had discovered ten miles up from the mouth of the Caribou River. He had contemplated this visit all the way down the long journey on the Hekor River. He had visualized the existence of some such home, and had determined to locate it. And the purpose had remained in his mind ever since that day, two summers ago, when the girl who was called “the Kid” had flung him her parting invitation. Even now, as he bulked so hugely in the one real chair the homestead afforded, and which was the rest place for Hesther when her many labours permitted, he saw again in fancy the girl’s frankly smiling blue eyes, full of delight and pride at the masterly fashion in which she had piloted the great outfit up the narrow channel of the Hekor rapids. Her pretty weather-tanned face had lived with him every day of his long sojourn in the desolate wastes farther north, and he had longed for the time when he could run her to earth in that home which she had told him lay ten miles from the mouth of the Caribou River.
At last it had come. And in how strange a fashion. It almost looked as though Fate had taken a hand in bringing about the thing he desired. It was not only his desire to look again upon the sun-browned face of the girl who had so surely leapt into his heart that had brought him to the Caribou River. It was the diagram map, so carefully drawn by the dead Marty Le Gros’ hand, which the terrified little Japanese woman had thrust upon him in the hope of saving her blinded husband. The great gold “strike” of the dead missionary was on the Caribou River, and he held the detailed key of it.
He was thinking of the Kid now as he listened to the ripple of talk which flowed so naturally from Hesther’s lips as she stood over the savoury stew on the cook-stove.
“It makes me want to laff,” she said, “you folks reckoning to try out the Caribou for gold. You’re jest like my Perse, only you don’t skid out the seat of your pants chasing the stuff. Say, that kid—he’s nigh thirteen years—has the gold bug dead right, an’ he reckons to locate it around this valley. I’d say you couldn’t beat it, only you’re reckoning that way, too. Gold? Gee! Gold on this mud an’ rock bottom? Why, you’ll need all the dynamite in the world to loosen up this territory, ’cept where it’s muskeg, an’ then you’ll need a mighty long life line to hit bottom.”
Bill nodded.
“Guess you folks should know the valley, mam,” he admitted, with a smile of amusement in his eyes.
Hesther turned about from her work.
“You aren’t thinking that?” she said quickly.
“No.”