"It was very much better," said Hope decisively. So they parted, and Berwick felt the last word had been said about his bid for miners' justice.
CHAPTER XL
THE HAPPY ENDING
When, the next day, Alice accompanied John and George Bruce in a first visit to their claims on Chechacho Hill, they saw that the signal thrown out by the first red tints of the maples and the willows—which told of summer ending and the dreary months of winter beginning—was shown. The sun was shining brightly, but already it seemed robbed of some of its heat.
Alice had often pictured life at the diggings. She had read numbers of mining-camp stories, with scenes laid in America and Australia, yet had gained little insight to the realities. She gloried in the experience, and was eager to urge them on. "Hurry! hurry!" but John exhorted her to stay her speed, for the distance they had to go was twenty-four miles, and the trail—though many of the mud-holes had dried—was rough.
She looked at the men she met, hunting for the type of her fancy, the type engendered by novel and tale. No one seemed armed, save occasionally with a rifle or a shot-gun; but the wild man with the brace of pistols, bandolier, huge moustache and homicidal aspect did not present himself!
They crossed the Klondike by Poo-Bah's ferry. Once in Bonanza Valley Alice felt she had left the civilized world behind her, and was entering the enchanted regions of Nature. To her, in her happy illusions, it was fairy-land.
Few women had preceded her over the Bonanza trail, so that men, "mushing," who passed their fellows with lowered head, openly stared at her; and many of these lonely wayfarers would have been glad of a word from her, to hear again the sweet soft accents of the better world outside. For to the men of the frontier the idea of home is very refined and dear, and women ever virtuous and tender, so that the appearance of Alice Peel, on the Bonanza trail upon that glorious day, was to them as a beautiful picture and an uplifting influence.