The old man shook his head.
“I jest don’t get the argument,” he said in his blunt fashion. “If I didn’t know you I’d say you’re dead crazy. But you ain’t,” he went on, with another shake of the head. “Your promise is the biggest thing in your life, bigger than that Kid’s happiness. Maybe you just can’t help it. Maybe none of us ken help the things we are. I ain’t goin’ to kick. It ain’t my way with you. I’m goin’ right on down to Placer, an’ I’m goin’ to put things through, same as if you was along. An’ I’ll wait fer you to come along till I know you can’t get. Then I’ll get back to here, an’ see the Kid, an’ her folks get the thing you fancy for them, an’ I’ll see ’em along their trail till they can handle their own play. That goes, Bill. Guess it goes all the time with me.”
“I knew.”
Wilder’s real acknowledgment was in the faint smile that shone in his eyes. There was no attempt to find words to express himself. And anyway with Chilcoot there was no need.
Chilcoot gazed down at the swaying boats.
“Will we beat it?” he said, and turned and glanced down the swift stream.
“We best.”
It was then the older man voiced something of the real feeling that so deeply stirred his rough heart.
“You know, Bill, ther’s things in life make a feller wish they weren’t. You’re bug on a promise, an’ it’s the thing that’s left you the feller you are in other folks’ minds. I’d make any old promise, so it suited me, to folks I ain’t worried about. An’ I wouldn’t lie awake o’ nights breakin’ it. But I ain’t any sort o’ high notions. Japs—Euralians?” he snorted, “Why, I’d promise ’em the earth with a dandy barbed wire fence set all round it to get the thing I wanted from ’em. I’d—”
“Not if you’d seen a queer little woman whose worst crime was giving up her life nursing a blinded devil of a murdering Euralian husband, and was nigh crazy that some feller was coming along to rob her of his life. Man, the sight made me sweat pity. If I can save that poor soul that much, why—I want to do it.”