The Magnetic North Part 36

"You'll see. It will out-boom the Klond.y.k.e."

"Ha! How long have you been making the trip?"

"Since August."

The wild flame of enterprise sunk in the heart of the hearer.

"Since _August_?"

"No cash for steamers; we had a canoe. She went to pieces up by--" The weak voice fell down into that deep gulf that yawns waiting for man's last word.

"But there is gold at Minook, you're sure? You've seen it?"

The Father Superior locked away the packet and stood up. But the Boy was bending down fascinated, listening at the white lips. "There is gold there?" he repeated.

Out of the gulf came faintly back like an echo:

"Plenty o' gold there--plenty o' gold."

"Jee-rusalem!" He stood up and found himself opposite the contemplative face of the priest.

"We have neglected you, my son. Come upstairs to my room."

They went out, the old head bent, and full of thought; the young head high, and full of dreams. Oh, to reach this Minook, where there was "plenty of gold, plenty of gold," before the spring floods brought thousands. What did any risk matter? Think of the Pymeuts doing their sixty miles over the ice just to apologise to Father Brachet for being Pymeuts. This other, this white man's penance might, would involve a greater mortification of the flesh. What then? The reward was proportionate--"plenty of gold." The faint whisper filled the air.

A little more hardship, and the long process of fortune-building is shortened to a few months. No more office grind. No more anxiety for those one loves.

Gold, plenty of gold, while one is young and can spend it gaily--gold to buy back the Orange Grove, to buy freedom and power, to buy wings, and to buy happiness!

On the stairs they pa.s.sed Brother Paul and the native.

"Supper in five minutes, Father."

The Superior nodded.

"There is a great deal to do," the native went on hurriedly to Paul.

"We've got to bury Catherine to-morrow--"

"And this man from Minook," agreed Paul, pausing with his hand on the door.

CHAPTER VII

KAVIAK'S CRIME

"My little son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes, And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise, Having my law the seventh time disobey'd, I struck him, and dismiss'd With hard words and unkiss'd...."

Even with the plague and Brother Paul raging at the mission--even with everyone preoccupied by the claims of dead and dying, the Boy would have been glad to prolong his stay had it not been for "nagging"

thoughts of the Colonel. As it was, with the mercury rapidly rising and the wind fallen, he got the Pymeuts on the trail next day at noon, spent what was left of the night at the Kachime, and set off for camp early the following day. He arrived something of a wreck, and with an enormous respect for the Yukon trail.

It did him good to sight the big chimney, and still more to see the big Colonel putting on his snow-shoes near the bottom of the hill, where the cabin trail met the river trail. When the Boss o' the camp looked up and saw the prodigal coming along, rather groggy on his legs, he just stood still a moment. Then he kicked off his web-feet, turned back a few paces uphill, and sat down on a spruce stump, folded his arms, and waited. Was it the knapsack on his back that bowed him so?

"h.e.l.lo, Kentucky!"

But the Colonel didn't look up till the Boy got quite near, chanting in his tuneless voice:

"'Gra.s.shoppah sett'n on a swee' p'tater vine, Swee' p'tater vine, swee' p'tater vine--'"

"What's the matter, hey, Colonel? Sorry as all that to see me back?"

"Reckon it's the kind o' sorrah I can bear," said the Colonel. "We thought you were dead."

"You ought t' known me better. Were you just sendin' out a rescue-party of one?"

The Colonel nodded. "That party would have started before, but I cut my foot with the axe the day you left. Where have you been, in the name o'

the nation?"

"Pymeut an' Holy Cross."

"Holy Cross? Holy Moses! _You?_"

"Yes; and do you know, one thing I saw there gave me a serious nervous shock."

"That don't surprise me. What was it?"

"Sheets. When I came to go to bed--a real bed, Colonel, on legs--I found I was expected to sleep between sheets, and I just about fainted."

"That the only shock you had?"

"No, I had several. I saw an angel. I tell you straight, Colonel--you can bank on what I'm sayin'--that Jesuit outfit's all right."

"Oh, you think so?" The rejoinder came a little sharply.

"Yes, sir, I just do. I think I'd be bigoted not to admit it."

"So, you'll be thick as peas in a pod with the priests now?"

"Well, I'm the one that can afford to be. They won't convert _me!_ And, from my point o' view, it don't matter what a man is s' long's he's a decent fella."

The Colonel's only answer was to plunge obliquely uphill.

"Say, Boss, wait for me."

The Colonel looked back. The Boy was holding on to a scrub willow that put up wiry twigs above the snow.

"Feel as if I'd never get up the last rungs o' this darn ice-ladder!"