CHAPTER XXII

GREAT GOOD FORTUNE

Which is most to be desired, thrilling adventure or great good fortune? Individuals will ever answer this question in their own way. The soldier of fortune, going from war to war throughout a long lifetime, seeks only adventure. Men of great wealth, shuddering at thought of anything approaching true adventure, lock themselves up in their caged offices to count their gold.

However we are to answer this question, it is necessary to state that while Johnny Thompson and Curlie Carson were passing through thrilling adventures, their good friend Joyce Mills was enjoying a taste of great good fortune.

The days following her father’s narrow escape from the rushing river were trying ones. Yet they were days of hope. Her father’s recovery, though slow, seemed sure. He was a man of splendid vitality. Overtaxing labors had partially shattered his nerves. But all his life he had fought hard battles. This was but one more battle, and he fought it nobly.

At the end of ten days he was able to be about the cabin a little and to sit for long hours dreaming by the fire. Then it was that for the first time Joyce told him the disappointing news of the test that had showed plenty of copper and nickel, but no worth-while amount of radium in his pitchblende samples.

“I am so disappointed.” Joyce’s tone was very sober. “It was my hope that we might truly do this suffering world a great service.”

“With radium?”

“Yes.”

“Never you mind.” He placed a hand gently on her arm. “We will do it yet. If we find only gold, we will use it to buy radium for some little hospital in some needy section of our great city.”

“Does the world need more gold?”

“Perhaps not. But with gold we may purchase the things we and our fellow men need. ‘Ours not to reason why,’” he repeated with a strange smile.

It was on that very evening that Lloyd Hill, the Canadian youth with the alert and restless eyes, came to the Mills’ cabin. He seemed in an uncommon state of excitement.

“Joyce,” he said, coming to the point straight off, “will you do me a favor?”

“Always. Anywhere.” She laughed a strange laugh.

“I’ve something to share; at least I hope I have. That is, I mean there is a great joy or great disappointment due. Whatever it may be, I want to share it—with you.”

“Wh—when?”

“To-morrow.”

“Oh, all right.”

“To-morrow. Will you drive out to my diggin’s? I’m going out early. Been thawing frozen ground all day. Stuff it with dry moss. Won’t freeze, not much. To-morrow—well, it’s my big moment.”

“I—I’ll come.” Her voice was hoarse with suppressed emotion. She had caught it from him.

“Be there at nine.”

“At nine,” she repeated after him. Then he was gone.

She slept badly that night. Sometimes she fancied she heard a voice saying, “You find gold? Mebby yes. Mebby no.” At other times she thought of her companions. She had not quite forgotten that all their efforts to find gold, silver, radium were guided by films that rightly belonged to another. No longer could she believe that one of these men had committed the theft. She thought of Lloyd Hill’s faultless world war record. She recalled the time Jim had saved her dogs, and that night he had talked so earnestly of religion. Most vivid of all was the memory of that hour when her father’s life had hung in the balance and Clyde Hawke had snatched him from the grave.

“They couldn’t have done it!” she told herself stoutly. “And yet—”

She woke from a period of belated slumber just in time to swallow a cup of steaming coffee, hitch her dogs and go speeding away across the snow.

When she arrived at the scene of the diggings the young prospector was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s here somewhere,” she told old Dannie, the dog leader, as she turned him about and tied him to the sled.

Having passed a mound of dark earth, she approached a crude windlass when a voice coming apparently from the very earth called:

“Is that you?”

“Where are you?” she called back.

“Where a miner should be. In the mud. Come to the windlass and look down.”

She obeyed. He was, as he explained, “drifting” along the old bed of the river, cutting a passage toward the rocks that had formed the falls.

“Give me a hand!” he exclaimed. “Twist the windlass. Now! Up she goes! Dump that anywhere, and lower the bucket.”

The excitement of the hour being still upon him, it did not occur to him that the task he had set for her was little fitted to her slight form. As for the girl, catching his enthusiasm, she toiled on for an hour without apparent effort. Again and again the bucket rose; again and again her aching muscles responded to the call.

“It’s gold,” she told herself. “It must be! This time we must win!”

“Dump this bucket to one side, and the next and the next,” he shouted up at last as, feeling her strength oozing away, she stood for a moment easing her aching back. His next words, running through her being like an electric current, gave her strength she had not known before. “These,” he explained, “may be pay-dirt. We should be nearing the pocket.”

Again the windlass creaked and groaned. Again her sore muscles responded to her iron will. One, two, three, four, five, six buckets were added to the fresh pile of earth.

Then, for a time there was silence below. The cry, “Ready! Up she goes!” was slow in coming. It failed to come at all. Instead, there was a low shout of triumph, then a call:

“Catch!”

Before her some shining object rose in air. With a deft hand she caught it. Then her turn came.

“It’s gold!” Her tone, in which were mingled hope, disbelief and unbounded joy, called forth a roar of mirth from below.

“Gold,” he agreed. “Only one sizeable nugget, but gold all the same.”

“Gold!” she cried once more.

At that moment she seemed to hear a voice say: “You find gold? Mebby yes. Mebby no.”

Did she see something stir beyond the low ridge to the right? She thought she had. Dannie appeared to agree, for suddenly he rose to his feet and growled.

“Gold!” She spoke more softly now. “How much gold?”

The young Canadian did not answer. Perhaps he had not heard. With hands that trembled he once more gripped his shovel to fill his bucket with thawed earth, that by this time ran heavy to coarse gravel. And from each shovel-full came more than a suggestion of that yellow sand that is gold.

“Gold!” the girl murmured again, this time very soberly. “Whose gold?”