Bill shook his head.
“No, Kid. I don’t,” he said gently. “I’m glad. Later, maybe, when we’re married, and you’ve got around, and learned about things, and seen the things you can have with gold you’ll feel different. But I’m glad it don’t get you that way now. I tell you ther’s a big heap more to life than this gold. But ther’s a heap of good things you can do with gold. You feel you want to make other folks happy and comfortable? Well, gold’ll help you that way. I bin all my life collecting a bunch of this dam old stuff, and I’d learned to hate it good. Well, it’s not that way now. Say, I just lie awake at nights thinkin’ the things I can do for you, and the folks belonging to you. And I got to like the darn stuff again. And I’m just as crazy glad as all those other poor folk I got it.” He smiled whimsically down into the girl’s eyes. “The outfit’s ready, Kid. I’ve had it ready days,” he went on. “Ther’s two big canoes, and they’ll hold your Mum, and the gals, and you and me and the half-breeds to paddle. When do you say, little girl? It’s right up to you.”
He waited anxiously for the girl’s reply. Watching her he saw the happy smile fade abruptly out of her eyes, and he knew the bad moment he had foreseen had arrived.
“Usak hasn’t got back,” she said quickly.
“No.”
Suddenly the girl withdrew her hand from the rough cloth arm of the man’s pea-jacket.
“You know I just can’t understand the thing that’s happened. He’s been gone six months. He went, as I told you, right after you, and we haven’t heard a thing. You know, Bill, it kind of seems to me he’s—dead. I sort of feel it right here,” she went on, pressing her hands to her bosom. “An’—an’ I feel—Oh, he was an Indian I know, but he was the feller who raised me like a father an’ mother. An’ I sort of loved him for it, an’—an’—I just can’t bear to quit till—till— Don’t you understand? I sort of feel I must wait for him. It would break him all up if I quit him. And I—I don’t want to quit him. Indeed I don’t.”
For some moments Bill made no attempt to reply. He remained staring out at the surging river as it roared on down under the freshet. He did not even attempt to comfort the girl in her obvious distress.
It was difficult. But Bill was steadily resolved not to tell the real truth as he knew it. It would break her heart to know Usak to be the fierce fiend he was. No. If necessary he would lie in preference.
He shook his head at last.