Again a silence fell between them, and again it was the man who finally broke it. This time there was no impatience. His strange eyes were serious; they were as deeply earnest as the girl's. But the light in them suggested a stirring of deep emotion which had nothing of regret in it.
"His day had to come," he said reflectively. "A man can live and prosper on the northern trail, I guess, if he's built right. He can beat it right out, maybe for years. But it's there all the time waiting—waiting. And it's going to get us all—in the end. That is if we don't quit before its jaws close on our heels. He was a big man. He was a strong man. I mean big and strong in spirit. You've lost a great father, and I a—partner. It's seven months and more since—since that time." His voice had dropped to a gentle, persuasive note, his dark eyes gazing urgently at the girl's averted face. "Is it good to sit around here in the chill evening dreaming, and thinking, and tearing open afresh a wound time and youths ready to heal up good? Say, I don't just know how to hand these things right. I don't even know if they are right. But it kind of seems to me we folk have all got our work to do in a country that don't stand for even natural regrets. It seems to me we all got to shut our teeth and get right on, or we'll pay the penalty this country is only too ready to claim. Guess we need all the force in us to make good the life north of 'sixty.' Sitting around thinking back's just going to weaken us so we'll need to hand over the first time our bluff is called."
Jessie's sad eyes came back to his as he finished speaking. She nodded.
"Yes. You're surely right. It's no use. It's worse. It's playing the enemy's game. Mother needs my help. Alec. The little kiddies at the Mission. You're right, Murray." Then, in a moment of passion her eyes lit and all that was primitive in her flamed up. "Oh, I could curse them, I could crush them in these two hands," she cried, suddenly thrusting out two clenched small fists in impotent threat, "these—these devils who have killed my daddy!"
The man's regard never wavered. The girl's beauty in the passion of the moment held him. Never had her desirability appeared greater to him. It was on the tip of his tongue to pour out hot words of love. To force her, by the very strength of his passionate determination, to yield him the place in her heart he most desired. But he refrained. He remembered in time that such a course must be backed by a physical attraction which he knew he entirely lacked. That lack must be compensated for by an added caution.
He shook his head.
"Don't talk that way," he said gently. "It's all been awful. But it can't be undone now, and—— Say, Jessie, you got your mother, and a brother who needs you. Guess you're more blessed than I am. I haven't a soul in the world. I'm just a bit of flotsam drifting through life, looking for an anchorage, and never finding one. That's how it is I'm right here now. If I'd had folks I don't guess I'd be north of 'sixty' now. This place is just the nearest thing to an anchorage I've lit on yet, but even so I haven't found a right mooring."
"You've no folks—none at all?"
Jessie's moment of passion had passed. All her sympathy had been suddenly aroused by the man's effort to help her, and his unusual admission of his own loneliness.
A shadow of the man's usual smile flickered across his features.