“The good boss your father, him speak much wise. Him say—”
“I know,” the Kid broke in impulsively, and with some impatience. “Guess you’ve told me before. ‘When the fox sheds his coat the winds blow warm.’ We know about that, don’t we?” She smiled for all her real distress. “But I’d say Nature’s mighty little to do with human trade. When ther’s no food in the house we’ll have to go hungry, or live on caribou meat. Say, can you see us sitting around with the wind whistling through our bones? Does the notion tell you anything? It won’t blow warmer because Mary Justicia, an’ Clarence, an’ Algernon, an’ Percy, an’ Gladys Anne, an’ Jane Constance are hungry. It won’t be so bad for mother, an’ me, an’ you. We’re grown. And it won’t be the first time we’ve been hungry. No. It’s no use. You and me, we’ll have to make Placer, where the folks drink and gamble, and dance, most all the time, and, when they get the chance, rob the folks who don’t know better. We’ll have to make the river trail once a year and buy the truck we need with the furs we can scrape together. It’s that or quit.”
For some moments the man’s resentful eyes watched the harnessing of a fresh buck. The creature bellowed and pawed the ground with slashing, wide-spreading hoofs.
“We mak ’em, yes,” he said, as the beast quietened down. Then he broke into a sudden fierce expletive. It was the savage temper of the man as he thought of the cause of all their woes. “Tcha!” he cried, and his white, strong teeth bared. “They kill your father. They kill Pri-loo. Now they kill up all trade—dead. I go all mad inside. I tak ’em in my two hand, an’—an’ I choke ’em dis life out of ’em. I know. They mak it so we all die dead. No pelts, no food, no deer. So we not wake up no more. Your father—him live—plenty much gold. Oh, big plenty. Us rich. Us not care for trade. Us buy ’em up all thing. Yes.” His dark eyes were on the movements of the men with the deer. But he saw nothing. Only the vision which his passionate heart conjured out of the back cells of memory. “Bimeby,” he went on at last, in a tone that was ominously quiet, “I mak one big trip. I go by the river so I come by the big hills. Maybe I mak big trade that place.” His eyes shone with a fierce smile. “Oh, yes, maybe. Then maybe I come back. An’ when I come back then us break big trail an’ quit. I know him dis trail. Great big plenty long trail. Us come by the big river an’ the big lak’. The good boss, your father speak plenty him name. M’Kenzie. Oh, yes. M’Kenzie River. Much heap fur. All fur. Seal, bear, beaver, silver fox. Much, oh much. Black fox, too. All him fur. Plenty Eskimo. Plenty trader mans. Us not mak him Placer. Oh, no. Plenty whiteman by Placer. Him see little Felice, white girl Kid, him steal him. Oh, yes. Usak know. Him steal up all child, too. So. Missis Hesther, too. They mak Felice to dance plenty an’ drink the fire water. Not so Hesther woman. Him mak him work. All time work. Him old. Not so as Felice. So I go by the trail. Bimeby I come back. Then us mak big trail. Yes?”
In spite of herself the Kid was interested. But her interest was for that part of the man’s planning which related to the mysterious journey which the Indian declared his intention of taking. The talk of the McKenzie was by no means new to her. She had heard it all before. It was the dream place of the Indian’s mind, which the talk of her dead father had inspired. She shook her head as her eyes followed the docile movements of the newly broken buck.
“Why must you go up the river to the big hills?” she asked seriously. “That’s new. The other isn’t.”
The man shrugged his angular shoulders.
“I just go. An’ I come back.”
“What for?”
The blue eyes were searching the dark face narrowly. But the man refused to be drawn.