For all it was night, and rest and sleep lay ahead, the sun had only changed its position in the sky and daylight was unabated. It might have been high noon from the unshadowed brilliance of the world about them. As Red Mike had once said in his graphic complaining: “God A’mighty created the summer sun, but the Divil set it afire to burn everlastin’ north of 60 degrees.”
The three leaders were squatting on their outspread blankets in the shade cast by a small clump of storm-driven spruce. They were luxuriating in the smoke of three smudge fires set triangularly about them. Each was clad as lightly as circumstances would permit. Cotton shirts and hard moleskin trousers belted about their waists was all and more than sufficient. Their arms and chests were bare. Each man was smoking a reeking pipe, and a curiously fascinating, somnolent atmosphere prevailed over the camp. It was the quiet of physical repose after heavy labour, intensified by the Nature sounds which are never absent in the northern wilderness.
Red Mike chuckled in his irrepressible fashion, and Wilder and Chilcoot turned their reflective eyes inquiringly on his grinning countenance.
“Say, it’s a night—if you can call it night with hell’s own sun burning blisters on the water—for rejoicin’,” he said. “Is it a drop o’ the stuff you’re goin’ to open, Bill Wilder? Or has the water wagon got you still tied to its tail? Man, I could drink the worst home-brew ever came out of a prohibition State.”
Wilder hunched himself up with his hands locked about his knees, and a faint smile of derision lit his steady eyes. “Rejoicing?” he said. “I don’t get you, Mike.”
The Irishman’s blue eyes widened good-humouredly. “Ther’s folks never made to rec’nize the time for rejoicin’, ’less it’s set for ’em by politician-made law. It seems to me I remember the time when Bill Wilder didn’t need the other feller to learn him that way. Say, we come down that mud-bottomed creek nigh two-hundred an’ fifty mile without a shot fired. From the moment we broke that crazy camp we set up to hold our place on the map of this fool country them Euralians quit us cold. Guess they said, ‘The gophers are on the run, let ’em beat it. They’re quittin’, an’ we ain’t got time worritin’ with quitters.’ So they handed us an elegant sort o’ Sunday School picnic passin’ down stream, makin’ twenty-five a day without puttin’ the weight of a fly on the paddles. Well? Ain’t it time fer rejoicin’? Here we are right back in a territory that looks almost good to me after those blazin’ barrens we left behind. We’re right back with whole skins by courtesy of a bunch of dirty neches.” He laughed again. “It’s sure time to—celebrate.”
It was Chilcoot who replied to him. And his retort came in the sharp tones of a man unable to appreciate the raillery of the Irishman.
“We ain’t quittin’ them neches,” he said, his deep-set eyes snapping. “Guess our work’s only started. But you’re right. It’s time to rejoice when we quit, which won’t be this side of winter. If you’d hoss sense you’d know we’re out-fitted for—three years. Guess Bill here ain’t openin’ any old corks till we’re through.”
Mike sobered on the instant. He turned to Wilder.
“What comes next, boss?” he asked shortly.