The Luck of the Kid

by Ridgwell Cullum

For Mary Justicia down to the youthful Jane Constance, with her curling brown hair and her velvet dark eyes, the coming of winter was a season of exciting interest. And this year even more so than usual. This year there was a curious hopeful change in their lives. The measure of it, perhaps, they failed to fully understand. But the effect was there, and they felt its influence. They one and all knew that Usak had returned with a really good trade. Usak was the genius of their lives, and this year he had waved his magic wand to some purpose. They had heard whispers amongst their elders of a good time coming. They had heard the Kid and their mother discussing colours and materials for suitings. They had heard talks of dollars in thousands. And visions of canned delicacies, of nice, fat, sticky syrup, and succulent preserves, had crept into their yearning minds.

But that was not all. There was a wondrous change in the hero of their youthful worship. The Kid’s smile was rarely shadowed as she ordered their lives. A soft delight looked out of her pretty eyes which shone with happy contentment whatever their childish aggravations. Then the mother of them all. Infrequent and gentle as were her scoldings generally, just now she seemed to have utterly forgotten her dispensing of them. The wash tub claimed her, her needle claimed her, her cooking claimed her, leaving her happily oblivious to their many and frequent shortcomings.

Then there were the gold seekers on the river. The laughing, red-headed Irishman, who had vanished up the river with the rivermen and those poorer whites in whom they were less interested. But the two others visited the homestead pretty regularly, and laughed, and talked, and did their best to make life one long joy for them.

Especially was this the case with the man Bill Wilder. Bill Wilder had caught the fancy of all, from their mother down to the merry Janey, whose table manners were a source of never-ending anxiety to Hesther. The children loved him as children will so often love a big man who is never reluctant to encourage their games. Perse clung to him at every opportunity. Was he not a gold man, and was not his coming to Caribou a justification of his own boyish dreams of gold? Clarence found in him a kindred spirit of the trail. And Alg sought his advice on his domestic labours on any and every excuse. But Gladys Anne and Janey were his favourites—next to the smiling Kid.

And the mother looked on, watchful and wisely alert. Her busy mind was full of speculation and contentment. She was thinking how she and her brood would fare should these men ultimately find the gold they sought. She refused to build on the notion. It was not her way. And just now, as a result of Usak’s return, she felt that ways and means were less pressing, and so, in her easy philosophy, that aspect of the position was permitted to drift into the background.

The Kid was her main thought just now. Her woman’s wisdom was sufficient for her to grasp the real meaning of Wilder’s frequent attendance at the farm. It was plainly written in his manner. It was still more plainly written in the manner of the girl in his absence. She had long since dragged the full story of their original meeting at the Hekor rapids from the diffident and almost reluctant girl. She had laughingly chidden her for her long reticence. She had even admonished her for the invitation she had flung at him, a gold man stranger.

But under it all, away back in her simple woman’s mind she nursed the romance of it all, and hoped and hoped, while yet she gravely feared for the orphan she had mothered.

The brief days flew rapidly by. Almost every night the tall figure of Wilder came up from the river bearing something for their supper, which he was scrupulously determined to share. The meal was partaken of by the yellow light of an oil lamp. Big Bill, as the children loved to call him, was for a brief while a part of the family, and sat around in the warm kitchen, smoking and laughing, and submitting to the ready banter which his search for gold on the Caribou inspired. Then later he strode off to his canoe lying drawn up on the river bank, and, not infrequently, he was accompanied by some of the elder children, and on occasions by the Kid, herself, alone.

Of all the folk at the homestead Usak took no delight in these visits. He definitely resented them. But he said no word, and simply refrained from taking any part in the welcome extended to the intruding whiteman. There was never a protest forthcoming. His protest had been made on the occasion he had stirred the Kid to wrath, and he had no desire to experience another such encounter. So he remained at his labours in his own quarters, watchful, alert, determined. And he made his preparations for the winter trail which was to yield something approaching affluence for those he served.

It was at the end of his first week on the river that Bill’s voice hailed the homestead as he came up from the landing, bearing a string of a dozen or more speckled mountain trout. The night was dark with heavy cloud, but the younger children raced out of the house to meet him at his summons.