“Just plumb to death, chief.”
The Irishman was grinning from the roots of his flaming hair to a neck that was none too clean. The last shadow of his discontent had vanished from his expressive eyes. And even Chilcoot was smiling in his slow fashion.
“That’s good,” said Wilder. “Guess we can roll into our—Hello! What the—?”
He sat peering out down the river bank with a hand shading his eyes from the firelight. Chilcoot too had turned searching into the night. The Irishman, standing, was in possession of the better view.
“It’s two fellers comin’ up from the river,” he said. “An’ they got a small kyak drawn up on the shore.”
The gathering about Wilder’s camp fire had been augmented. Five men sat about it where before there had only been three. Of the newcomers one was a white youth and the other was an Indian, who left Wilder’s stature no more than ordinary. The newcomers were squatting on the river side of the fire, slightly apart from the others. And they sat side by side, closely, as though there remained a definite barrier of antagonism between them and the strangers they had found on the river.
Usak sat with his long old rifle laid across his knees. Clarence was armed, too, but his weapon was in the nature of a more modern sporting rifle. Of the gold men one at least realised the personality of these visitors in the night.
There had been no greeting. The Indian and his companion had approached watchfully. They had reached the fire without a word. But their eyes had been busy, and their minds full of searching questions. Forthwith they had squatted. But only on their recognition that their hosts were whitemen.
It was Wilder who broke up the strained silence. The moment the flame of fire had lit up the white youth’s face recognition had been instant. The likeness in it to the faces of those brothers and sisters he had encountered that noonday left the identity of both him and his dusky companion beyond question.