“I need to say a whole heap. Maybe when I’m through you’ll wish I hadn’t. Say.” He paused thoughtfully. Then his eyes lit and gazed straight into the eyes of the older man. “I best tell you the thing that lies back of everything first. You’ll feel like laffing, maybe. But I don’t care a curse. You got to know, an’ I’m crazy to tell you. You see, you’ve been pardner an’ friend to me ever since the gold bug got into my liver. I’m nigh crazy for a pair of dandy blue eyes, just as blue as—as a summer sky in California, and a golden halo of hair like—like an angel’s. Yes, an’ for a kit of buckskin, all beaded an’ fine sewn like an Indian’s. I surely am crazy for it—all.”
The man had removed his pipe, and his hands had made a gesture of emphasis that told his companion far more than his words.
Chilcoot’s eyes were grinning, but there was no derision in them. They were shining with a depth of interest that changed his whole expression.
“Snakes, man!” he cried. “You’ve fallen fer that gal? That Kid that floated us up the river goin’ north? An’ who you’ve located again right now over at that darn queer outfit of a Reindeer farm? Say!”
Wilder nodded and returned his pipe to his mouth.
“I surely have, old friend,” he said, with a restraint that the look in his eyes denied. “I’ve fallen fer that—Kid. That Kid whose name is Felice Le Gros. She’s just been a dream picture to me ever since I saw her handling that queer skin kyak of hers on the river, looking like some fairy Injun gal such as maybe you used to read about when story books were filled with wholesome fairy tales that set you crazy for the darn old wilderness. I’ve fallen for her so I don’t even want to pick myself up. I want her bad. She’s got to be my wife, or this darn life don’t mean a thing to me ever again. Life? Gee! I can’t see a day of it worth a regret on a deathbed if I can’t make that Kid feel the way I do.”
Chilcoot’s ill mood was entirely swept away. Hard old citizen as he was, saturated as he was with the iron of his early days of struggle to loot the earth, a surge of delighted interest thrilled him to the depths of his rough soul. No mother listening to the first love-story of an only daughter could have been moved more deeply. His years were nearly twice those of the other, but it made no difference, unless it were to add to the feeling of the moment.
“Does she know about it?” he demanded. “Does— Say, her name’s—she’s daughter to Marty Le Gros? She’s the ‘gal-child, white,’ Raymes told us of? Say, Bill, I’m crazy for the rest. Best get right in. I just don’t know a thing. An’ I seem to know less than ever I did before you began. But you’ve found a gal to share life with you. And I’m just so glad I can’t rightly say. Get right on with the yarn an’ I won’t butt in. I’m all out to pass you any old hand you’re needing.”
“That’s how I figgered, Chilcoot, knowing you,” Wilder said in his earnest fashion. “That’s why I told you this thing first. Now just sit around and I’ll tell you the stuff that looked like a fairy tale and kept my mouth shut.”
Wilder began his story at once and talked on without any sort of interruption from his companion. Lost in the dark heart of the ravine, overshadowed by a wintry sky and the rugged, barren, encompassing walls that rose up and shut out so much of the grey northern daylight, he told the story as he had learned it, and pieced together, of the tragedy of the apparently deserted habitation which he knew to be the home and secret hiding-place of the one-time leader of the fierce Euralian horde. He told of the events of his search and vigil in the house from the time of his discovery of the blinded Japanese, Count Hela, and his panic-stricken wife, to the final moment when the woman had pursued him with her story, and sought to bribe him with the precious map stolen from the murdered missionary. He told it all in close detail, dwelling upon the mention of the dreaded Usak’s name by the terror-stricken woman, that the other might follow out all his subsequent reasoning and re-construction of the story of Le Gros and his orphaned daughter. He told it right down to the story of his visit to the Reindeer Farm, on their arrival on the Caribou, which furnished him with the final corroboration.