“Great Scott!” he exclaimed. “Gives the Croix d’Or to you. Says he wants you to have it, because you’re the one that made good on it, and he don’t need the money! That the deeds are on the way by registered mail, and all he asks is a small bar from the first clean-up!”
He folded the letter, and held it in his hands, looking thoughtfully off into the distance for a time while he absorbed the news.
“Why, Dick,” he said, “you’re a rich man! Richer’n I ever expected you’d be; but I’m a selfish old feller, after all! It seems to me as if we ain’t never goin’ to be the same again, as we uster be when all we had was a sack of flour and a side of bacon, and the whole North-west to prospect. It seems as if somethin’ mighty dear has gone.”
Dick got up and stood before him, with his hands in his pockets, and smiling downward into his eyes.
“I’ve thought of that, too, Bill,” he said, “and I can’t afford to lose you. I’d rather lose the 307 Cross. So I’ll tell you something that I told Joan, long ago––that if ever the mine made good, and I could give you something beside a debt, you were to have half of what I made. A few days ago it would have been a quarter interest you owned. Now it is a half. We’re partners still, Bill, just as we were when there was nothing but a sack of flour and a side of bacon to divide.”
They looked at him, expecting him to show some sign of excitement, but he did not. Instead, he reached over, and painstakingly pulled a weed from the foot of the wall, and threw it away. He cleared his throat once or twice, but did not look at them, and then got to his feet and started as if to go down to the camp. Then, as if his feelings were under control again, came back, and took one of Joan’s and one of Dick’s hands into his own toil-worn palms, and said:
“Thanks, Dick! It’s more’n I deserve, this knowin’ both of you, and havin’ you give me a share in the Cross! And I accept it; but conditionally.”
He dropped their hands, and turned to look around, as if seeing a very broad world.
“What is the condition?” Joan asked, laying her hand on his arm, and looking up at him. “Can we change it?”