“Anything for you, Marty,” Jim replied at once, and earnestly. “Anything for you,” he repeated. “And I’ll put it through with the last breath of life.”
“Good.” The missionary’s gaze came back to the trader’s face, and a smiling relief shone in his eyes. He nodded. “You see, with these wretched Euralians on the war path, and with me standing around in their path, you can never tell. Maybe I’ll live. Maybe I won’t. If I live you’ll be up to your neck in this ‘strike’ anyway. If I die you’ll work it for Felice, and hand her her ‘fifty’ of it when the time comes. Is it good?”
“It’s so good I can’t tell you.”
“Will you swear to do this, Jim? Will you swear on—on the thing you hold most sacred?”
“I’ll swear it on the little life that’s just goin’ to be born to Hesther an’ me. If a thing happens to you, Marty, so you lose the daylight, your little Felice shall be seen right, and all you can wish for her shall be done, though you never tell me a thing of this ‘strike.’”
The simple honesty looking out of Jim’s eyes eased the troubled heart of the older man. He nodded.
“I knew it would be that way. I’m glad,” he said. “I’m not passing you thanks. No thanks could tell you the thing you’ve made me feel, Jim.” He laughed shortly. “Thanks? I guess it would be an insult when a boy like you is ready to set himself to carrying the whole of another feller’s burden.”
Again he passed a hand over his hair.
“This is how I’ve planned, Jim,” he went on, after a moment. “I’m going right back home now, and I’m going to pass some hours drawing out the plan and general map of the ‘strike.’ I’ll write it out in the last detail. Then I’ll set it in a sealed packet and hand it to you. You’ll have it, and keep it, and you won’t open it while I’m alive. It’s just so the thing shan’t be lost if they kill me up. See? If I live we’ll work this thing together at ‘fifty-fifty.’ That way there won’t be need for you to open up those plans. Do you get it? The whole thing is just a precaution for you and my little Felice. You see, if I pass over I’ve nothing else to hand that poor little kiddie. It’s her bit of luck.”
Jim sat back in his chair and began to refill his pipe which had gone out. For some moments his stirring emotions prevented speech, while the smiling eyes of the missionary watched his busy, clumsy fingers. At last, however, he looked up. And as he did so he thrust the tobacco hard into the bowl of his pipe, and the force of his action was no less than the headlong rush of words that surged to his lips.