“It goes. Sure it does,” he said readily. “An’ I’m glad for that thought that made you have me make the first trip. It’s kind of generous, Len. But it’s like you. Gee, I’m sick of this coast! Say, can you beat it? Here we are, two fellers takin’ every chance in life to make an honest grub stake out of no-man’s land, and to do that we got to hunt our holes like gophers, lest folks get wise to us an’ snatch it from us. It sort of makes you wonder. But you know, Len, this river’s too rich. I sort of feel that. I kind of feel the thing’s not goin’ to be as easy as you make it seem. But we’re goin’ to see it through to the end. An’ God help the feller that starts in to rob us! Yes, it’s a kind thought of yours, sending me on the first trip. I got a mother an’ a dandy sister who’ll likely bless you for this. I guess they’re hard put all right, and the thought’s had me worried for months. Say——”
He turned towards the river and glanced up at the sky. Len laughed.
“That’s all right, Jim. I’m ready all the time,” he said. “It ain’t work gettin’ back on the river. It’s play. Come on. We’re going to get out half a ton of stuff,” he laughed, as he sprang to his feet. “Then I’ll make Perth, an’ buy up that tramp skipper.”
He moved off beside his partner, leaving his golden pile just where it lay. And together they passed out of the shelter of the trees.
CHAPTER II
The Headland
THE woman was standing in the doorway of her log-built home. She was gazing out over the waters of the creek below her which flowed gently on to the distant Alsek River. A mood of quiet contemplative happiness was shining in her dark eyes. It was the mother soul in her that was stirred to a deep sense of happy satisfaction.
Rebecca Carver was a smallish, sturdy, vigorous creature something past the middle of life. She had lived hardly enough in the harsh Alaskan territory that had bred her and had always remained her home. And even now, with advancing years, and a body sometimes only barely equal to the onslaught of its pitiless climate, she had not even a momentary desire to leave it.
But then she had not lived unhappily. The years of her wifehood had been passed in the exciting, many-coloured, chequered life which ever falls to the lot of those who devote themselves to the crazy uncertainties of the quest of gold. No. Her life had never been monotonous. And besides the excitement of it all she had had her son, and daughter, and her man, and these alone would have been sufficient to keep an atmosphere of smiling contentment in her woman’s heart.