"Can you prove that?" asked Brooke indulgently, as though he spoke to children. "If you say things like that, it's criminal libel, and you're both liable to the Skookum House. However," he shrugged his shoulders, and put the agreement away, "I don't want to be hard on you, Pete."
"Mister Mathson," mother hissed at him.
Pete, with a whispered word to mother, rose from his bench, and without appearing to see Mr. Brooke, walked past him across the sunlit yard, and on slowly up the great lifting curve of the road to Hundred Mile House.
The sun was setting behind him when Pete rested at last upon the snowclad summit, and dusk lay in lakes of shadow far below him. At the Hundred he found the lamps alight, and, as usual, Billy offered him a drink. "I ain't drinking," said Pete huskily, as he lurched past the bar into the dining-hall, and on to the little room on the right where Captain Taylor lay.
"Bolt!" he whispered.
"That you, Pete? Sit down," said the boss cheerily. "How's the claim, Pete? Getting coarse gold, eh?"
"Gold? Say, Bolt, what's the matter, old fellow?"
"Matter? Why, nothing, Pete," the blind eyes shone keenly; "of course I'm not nearly to bedrock yet, and as to what I owe you've jolly well got to wait. How's old Calamity? I got Lost Creek Jim to work at last."
Was the boss dreaming of old times on Lightning Creek?
"Watty's in with the mail," said Bolt.