The missionary settled himself more comfortably in the hard chair he had turned from the supper table. He had set it in the shade of the printed cotton curtain that adorned the parlor window.
Jim McLeod was less concerned for the glaring evening sunlight. He sat facing it, bulking clumsily on a chair a size too small for him. His pale blue eyes gazed out of the window which was closely barred with mosquito-netting.
The last of the supper things had been cleared from the table, and the sounds penetrating the thin, boarded walls of the room told of the labours of the busy housewife going on in the lean-to kitchen beyond. There was no need for these added labours which Hesther inflicted upon herself. There were native women who worked about the store quite capable of relieving her. But Hesther understood that the men wanted to talk in private.
Besides, it was her happy philosophy that God made woman to care for the creature comforts of her man, and to relegate that duty, all those duties connected therewith, would be an offence which nothing could condone.
Le Gros removed his pipe from his mouth. His eyes were full of reflective unease.
“Yes,” he reiterated, “and I guess it’s trouble enough to scare more than a woman.”
He thrust a hand into a pocket of his coat. He pulled out a little canvas bag and unfastened the string about its top. He peered at the yellow fragmentary contents. It was of several ounces of gold dust, that wonderful alluvial dust ranging in size from sheer dust to nuggets the size of a schoolboy’s marbles.
He passed the bag across to the trader.
“Get a look at that,” he said. “It’s the wash-up of a single panning. Just one. I only showed you the two big nuggets before—when I—lied to you where I made the ‘strike.’”
“Lied? You didn’t get it on Loon Creek?”