“White?” Wilder laughed. He shook his head. “Maybe though,” he said, “the thing that would best please me just now would be for that darnation Irishman to bring us in a prisoner. Say, has it hit you we’ve never got a close sight of these folks. Have you discovered that looking at results it looks like we’ve never killed one blamed rascal of ’em, and yet we reckon to carry with us some of the best artists with a rifle this darned country possesses. We’ve had hundreds of brownfaced targets for ’em, too. What does it mean? Why just this. Dead or alive these neches don’t mean us to get a close view of their men. They’re afraid for a whiteman to—recognise them. Well?” He laughed again. “Say, ther’s a big play behind this thing, and we haven’t begun to discover it. I’m not through with it. But I’m going to beat it down to the Hekor right away, and get a look into it from another angle. Raymes was right. It looks to me as if the feller who solves the riddle of these—Euralians—is doing something mighty good for a whiteman’s country. The gold’s quit worrying me a little bit. Say—”
He broke off and gazed musingly over the glittering waters of the river, which was visible for miles away to the north in the flat, barren country through which it meandered.
Chilcoot waited. His friend’s unusual burst of confidence was not a thing he desired to interrupt. Besides he had voiced much of the thing that had disturbed his less sensitive mind. So he went on chewing with his eyes glued to the opposite shore.
“You know, boy, we’d have done well to have kept touch with that dandy Kid we found at the mouth of the Caribou,” Wilder continued. “I’ve the notion that bright girl was wiser to the things up this way than that factor feller. An’ certainly wiser than George Raymes. She said she was born an’ raised on the river. I wonder. I guess I’ve been wondering ever since. You know there’s more to this play of ours than gold, an’ Euralians an’ things. There’s a ‘girl child—white.’ You remember?”
Chilcoot’s eyes were grinning into the other’s face as Wilder broke off. He nodded.
“Sure I do. She’s surely a dandy Kid,” he said.
His grin passed, and seriousness replaced it.
“But she’d got six brothers an’ sisters an’ a mother, an’ I don’t remember that Raymes said a word about them. You were feelin’ particular not to ast questions of her. Well, I guess it was a pity. Ben Needham never passed us a hint of her, either. Say, this is the queerest darn country. It hides up a whole heap of queer things. Guess it’s that gets hold of us mutts who waste precious years trying to beat it. We can locate that Kid passing down river, though. An’ maybe you’ll feel less a’mighty delicate astin’ questions.”
“Yes. I fixed to do that.”
“I guessed so. I—Say, ther’s Mike beating it for home.”