The Kid looked up. She had been dazzled by the splendid vision. Now again terror was gripping her.
“You’ll not say a word of this. None of you,” she said sharply. “Mum shall know. Oh, yes. But not a word to—Usak.”
Wilder raised his eyes to the girl’s troubled face.
“Don’t worry a thing,” he said gravely. “Usak’s going to know. I’m going to hand him the talk myself.” Then he laughed. And the tone of his laugh added further to the girl’s unease. It was so care-free and delighted. “Sit around, kids,” he cried. “All of you.”
He was promptly obeyed by the two boys who had remained standing. They seated themselves opposite him. Then he dipped into the pan and picked out the largest of the nuggets of pure gold and offered it to the Kid.
“That’s for your Mum,” he said quietly. “It’s pure gold, same as the woman she is. Here,” he went on, quickly selecting the next biggest. “That’s yours Kid— by right.”
Then he passed one each to the two boys and Mary Justicia, and finally shot the remainder of the precious wash-up into the bag that had covered the pan and held it out to the Kid.
“There it is,” he cried. “Take it. It’s for you, an’ all those folk belonging to you. It’s just a kind of sample of the thing that’s yours, an’ is going to be yours. Guess old Perse, here, was right. It’s the gold from Caribou, an’ right out of your dead father’s ‘strike’— which is for you, Kid. Say, you’re a rich woman, for the best claim on it is yours, an’ it’s the richest ‘strike’ I’ve ever nosed out. Richer even than Chilcoot’s Eighty-Mile.”
The party was over. The journey back to the homestead was completed. The full moon had smiled frigidly down upon a scene of such excitement as was rare enough in her northern domain. Maybe the sight of the thing she had witnessed had offended her. Perhaps, with her wealth of cold experience, she condemned the humanness of the thing she had gazed upon. For on the journey home she had refused the beneficence of her pale smile, and had hidden her face amidst those night shadows which she had forthwith summoned to her domain.