But Elia shook his head shrewdly.
“You ain’t crazy. I’d sure know it. Same as I know when a feller’s bad––like Will Henderson. But say, Peter,” he went on persuasively, “I’d be real glad fer you to tell me ’bout that gold. What you’d do, an’ why? I’m real quick understanding things. It kind o’ seems to me you’re good. You don’t never scare me like most folks. I can’t see right why–––”
“Here, laddie”––Peter leaned his head back on his two locked hands, and propped himself against the pack saddle––“don’t you worry your head with those things. But I’ll tell you something, if you’re quick understanding. Maybe, if other folks heard it––grown folks––they’d sure say I was crazy. But you’re right, I’m not crazy, only––only maybe tired of things a bit. It’s not gold I’m looking 140 for––that is, in a way. I’m looking for something that all the gold in the world can’t buy.”
His tone became reflective. He was talking to the boy, but his thoughts seemed suddenly to have drifted miles away, lost in a contemplation of something which belonged to the soul in him alone. He was like a man who sees a picture in his mind which absorbs his whole attention, and drifts him into channels of thought which belong to his solitary moments.
“I’m looking for it day in day out, weeks and years. Sometimes I think I find it, and then it’s gone again. Sometimes I think it don’t exist; then again I’m sure it does. Yes, there’ve been moments when I know I’ve found it, but it gets out of my hand so quick I can’t rightly believe I’ve ever had it. I go on looking, on and on, and I’ll go on to my dying day, I s’pose. Other folks are doing much the same, I guess, but they don’t know they’re doing it, and they’re the luckier for it. What’s the use, anyway––and yet, I s’pose, we must all work out our little share in the scheme of things. Seems to me we’ve all got our little ‘piece’ to say, all got our little bit to do. And we’ve just got to go on doing it to the end. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s so mighty easy it sets you wondering. Ah, psha!”
Then he roused out of his mood, and addressed himself more definitely to the boy.
“You see, laddie, I don’t belong to this country. But I stay right here till I’ve searched all I know, and so done my ‘piece.’ Then I’ll up stakes and move on. You see, it’s no use going back where I belong, because what I’m looking for don’t exist there. Maybe I’ll never find what I’m looking for––that is to keep and hold it. Maybe, as 141 I say, I’ll get it in driblets, and it’ll fly away again. It don’t much matter. Meanwhile I find gold––in those places folks don’t guess it’s any use looking. Do you get my meaning?”
The quizzical smile that accompanied his final question was very gentle, and revealed something of the soul of the man.
Elia didn’t answer for some moments. He was trying to straighten out the threads of light which his twisted mind perceived. Finally he shook his head. And when he spoke his words showed only too plainly how little he was interested in the other’s meaning, and how much his cupidity was stirred.
“And that gold––in Barnriff? When you’ve found it?”