“Cut out the nose, Chilcoot, old friend,” Wilder broke in with a laugh. “Ther’s a deal too much of my nose to this precious yarn. What you coming to?”
A merry laugh from the Kid found an echo in Perse’s noisy grin.
“It’s good listenin’ to a yarn of gold,” he said. “It don’t hurt hanging it up so we get the gold plenty at the end.”
“That’s so boy,” Chilcoot nodded approvingly. “That’s the gold man talkin’. That’s how it was on Eighty-Mile. Ther’ was just tons of gold, an’ we netted the stuff till we was plumb sick to death countin’ it. Gold? Gee! Bill’s bank roll is that stuffed with it he could buy a—territory. Yes, that was Eighty-Mile, the same as it is on—Caribou!”
“Caribou?”
Perse had leapt to his feet staring wide-eyed in his amazement. The Kid had faced round gazing incredulously into Wilder’s smiling face. Even Mary Justicia was drawing deep breaths under her habitual restraint. The one apparently unmoved member of the happy party was Clarence. But even his attitude was feigned.
“Same as it is on—Caribou?” he said, in a voice whose tone hovered between youth and manhood. “Have you struck it on—Caribou?”
His final question was tense with suppressed excitement.
Chilcoot nodded in Bill’s direction.
“Ask him,” he said, with a smile twinkling in his eyes. “It’s that he got you kids for right here this night. Jest to ask him that question. Have you made the ‘strike,’ Bill? Did your darn old nose smell out right? You best tell these folks, or you’ll hand ’em a nightmare they won’t get over in a week. You best tell ’em. Or maybe you ken show ’em. Ther’s folk in the world like to see, when gold’s bein’ talked, an’ I guess Perse here’s one of ’em. Will you?”