Her strong young fingers unconsciously gripped the soft flesh of her mother’s shoulders. Suddenly she dropped on her knees beside the other’s chair, while she took possession of the work-worn hands lying in the lap before her. She raised them both to her young lips and covered them with warm kisses of real devotion. Then she held them tightly.
“Mum, dear, we haven’t a thing but that eight thousand. Not a thing but that. But there’s money—money in plenty in Beacon at the Speedway. Father always reckoned so when things were bad. And he most always found it. I’m going to find it, too, all we want. You know what father used to say. He taught Jim and me the poker game he played, and he taught us good. And in the end, do you mind how I took his, and Jim’s, spare cash when they had it? Do you? I do. And do you remember the thing father always said? He said I’d the poker face, and the poker head, and the only luck in the world he was scared to buck. It’s that luck we’re going to buck, dear. We’re going right into Beacon with our dollars. And I’m going to buck the game for all that’s in me. Ther’s not a thing else for us. True, ther’ isn’t. Jim’s gone. Our Jim! You know it. And, for all I’ve said, I know it, too. We’ve no one but ourselves and my luck to save us from starving in a fierce, relentless world. Are you game, dear? I may do it? Sure I may. I can see it in your poor, sad, tired eyes. Yes. It’s that, sure, dear, and you can trust me.”
The girl reached up suddenly. It was a moment of supreme emotion. She yielded to it. She caught and held her mother’s body in her strong young arms. And then came the flood of tears for the grief that weighed so heavily on both their devoted hearts.
CHAPTER V
Eight Months Later—On the Lias River
THE dark shadows of winter had long since passed away from the Alaskan world. The almost interminable nights, the pitifully brief days of storm, of cold, the drear that literally eats into the heart and bones of man, these were left a hazy memory to be quickly forgotten, lost in the new season of hope which comes with a generous rush. It was a world released from months of cruel imprisonment.
Just inland from the mouth of the Lias River, where the broad bosom of its stream was lightly stirred by the gentlest of warming spring breezes, a man was at work stowing his stout-built canoe with its cargo of camp outfit. The vessel was moored against a shelving of granite rock. A stout rawhide held it secure to a boulder of ponderous dimensions, for it was a barren, rocky shore without vegetation of any sort.
It was a fierce coast line, harsh, unyielding and honeycombed with every trap for destruction that the wit of Nature could conceive. Shoals and sunken rocks littered every inlet, and fierce, sweeping currents and cross-currents made the smiling waters a nightmare of chaos. Then, behind everything, lay those merciless reserve forces of sudden wind squalls which howled down the mountain slopes without warning, or reason, and blasted the coast line into a churning of fierce tempest.