“It plenty good place by the hills. Maybe I get fur. Maybe—gold. I not know. Sometime I dream dis thing. I go by the hills, an’ then I—come back. I know. Oh, yes.”
“I see.”
The girl smiled, and the Indian responded for all his mood. This girl was as the sun, moon, and stars of his life.
“Say, Usak,” she went on, with a little laugh, “maybe I guess about this. You have a friend there by the hills. A woman eh? That so?”
“Maybe.”
The man’s eyes were sparkling as they grinned back into the Kid’s face. But it was a different smile from that of the moment before.
“Then I don’t figger I better ask any more,” the girl said simply. “But we’re not going to the McKenzie. We’re not going to quit here—yet. No. We’re going to make such trade as maybe at Placer first. Later, if we figger it’s too worrying to make Placer, then we’ll think of McKenzie, an’ you I guess’ll be free to go right along an’ say good-bye to your lady friend up in the hills. Let’s get this fixed right now. You guess this farm is mine, my father started it for me. An’ you, big Indian that you are, have done all you know to make it right for me. Well, I guess it’s up to me to figger the thing I’m going to do. That’s all right. I’ve figgered. So has our little mother. We’re goin’ to give this change two summers’ trial. And after that, if things are still bad, why, we’ll think about—McKenzie.”
The Kid’s manner was decided. Usak was an Indian, a man of extraordinary capacity and wonderful devotion. But from her earliest days he had taught Felice that the farm was hers and he was her servant. And the child had grown to feel and know her authority, and the difference which colour made between them. Whatever the man proposed, hers was the final decision. And for all her real, deep regard for the man who had raised her, she understood he was still her servant.
Now her decision was taken out of something that had no relation to the welfare of those depending upon it. It had nothing to do with the prosperity of the farm. It had nothing to do with wisdom or judgment. It was inspired by one thing only. The man whom she had passed up the rapids had said he would come back. And she had told him to seek her ten miles up the Caribou River. Two summers. Yes. He must surely be back in that time. If not—well, perhaps, the McKenzie would be preferable to the Hekor if he had not returned in that time.
A shrill of childish voices broke upon the quiet of the sunlit corral, and Usak turned as a troop of children came racing across to where they were standing. Mary Justicia, by reason of her long bare legs and superior age, led the way. And she was followed in due sequence of ages by Clarence, Algernon, Percy, Gladys Anne, and the rear was brought up by Jane Constance, a brownfaced, curly-headed girl of about seven years. They were all bare-legged, and the boys were scarcely clad at all above the buckskin of their breeches. But they were full to the brim of reckless animal spirits and the perfect health provided by a life lived almost entirely in the open.