CHAPTER XXV

A POCKETFUL OF GOLD

In the meantime Lloyd Hill had climbed from his hole beneath the frozen crust of earth to stare at his slender companion, Joyce Mills, in genuine dismay.

“That is no task for a girl!” he exclaimed. “I was too eager. I—I wanted to share it with you!”

Truly the girl’s appearance would never have done in a parlor setting. She had thrown off her fur parka. Her heavy wool dress was smeared from waist to hem with sandy mud. Her moccasins were a wreck. Her hands were red and blistered. She had been turning the windlass and dumping pay-dirt for three solid hours.

“No! No!” she protested gamely. “Why, it has been marvelous! I—I wouldn’t have missed it for anything. Truly I wouldn’t!”

“Well, then,” replied Lloyd, in a calmer voice, “now that the worst is over, I suggest that you put on your parka and prepare to rock this thing back and forth for an hour while we pan our pay-dirt and see how much gold we really have.”

“There is some,” she replied excitedly as her head disappeared inside her parka. “I saw it gleaming among the pebbles.”

“Oh, yes, there is some.”

* * * * * * * *

Strange as it may seem, at this moment Scott Ramsey, in that other prospector’s camp seventy miles away, was bursting through the door with a shout:

“They’ve found it! Gold!”

Sandy MacDonald, who had been stirring up a batch of sourdough flapjacks, turned about to stare. “Found gold? Where?”

“Those fellows who have been using our pictures. They’ve found gold in an old creek bed.”

“When?”

“Two, three hours ago.”

“Then the Moccasin Telegraph works?”

“Sure it works. And now—”

“Seems a shame to claim a share.”

“It does. But it’s only just. We must not let foolish sentiment stop us. We must think of our rights.”

“Scott,” said Sandy thoughtfully, “did you ever receive an answer to that letter you wrote to your friend in Winnipeg asking about those films?”

“Never did.”

“It should be here by now.”

“Yes. But it hasn’t arrived, not yet.”

* * * * * * * *

Lloyd Hill’s method of extracting gold from pay-dirt was simple, but effective. He had arranged a board trough a foot wide, six inches deep and ten feet long in such a manner that it might be shaken backward and forward. Since the trough was tilted slightly, any substance within it would move slowly toward the lower end.

At that end was a pocket half filled with quick-silver.

He shoveled pay-dirt into the trough. As the girl rocked the trough backward and forward he poured upon it warm water from his steam thawer. As the mass of soft earth moved downward, heavy particles went to the bottom, then into the mercury pocket. The mercury collected the gold to itself. The lighter rocks were crowded out and passed on.

“Won’t get it all,” Lloyd explained as he shoveled. “Not near all. But, if it’s any good we’ll thaw it out and work it over again in the spring.”

For an hour after that they worked in silence. Only once did the young man lift his face to the wind, to mutter:

“Going to storm.”

Already the wind was rising. Joyce felt bits of snow cut her cheeks.

“No matter,” she murmured. “It’s not so far back. And you couldn’t lose old Dannie. Good old Dannie! He knows the way.”

Then a thought struck her. She seemed to be hearing Johnny Thompson say: “If you make a strike, we’ll know it. Moccasin Telegraph.”

“Does he know?” she asked herself. “If he knows, will he come, he and the others?”

Once more she felt the sting of snow on her cheek, and shuddered.

But had they made a strike after all? They would soon know!

Pausing to rest his weary muscles, the young Canadian allowed the pay-dirt to drift off the rocker until nothing remained save that which was in the pocket.

“Now—” His voice was a trifle unsteady. “Now we shall see!”

Thrusting in his hand, he stirred the mass in the pocket. And as he stirred the tense muscles of his face relaxed into a smile.

“Joyce, my child!” he cried, seizing her and sending her whirling round and round. “We win! There is gold! Gold aplenty!”

“Four pounds if an ounce!” he exclaimed a little later when the work was done. “And this is only the beginning!

“Night’s coming.” He looked away toward the west. “Night and storm. No one will disturb these diggings. Hop into the sled and we will be going.”

Wearily, with every muscle in her body crying for rest, but with a heart pounding with joy, the girl dropped to her place in the toboggan sled and allowed her companion to tuck the soft caribou-skin robe about her.

“Joyce,” he murmured, “you’ve been a great pal to me this day! Settle down for an hour of rest. You shan’t set a foot on the snow until we reach your cabin door.”

“We have won!” he exclaimed, as he gripped the handle bars.

“God has helped us,” was her answer.

“Yes. We trusted God and did our best.”

What a moment for shadows! Yet shadows came unbidden. One floated at this moment before the girl’s eyes. “Those films were stolen,” she seemed to hear a voice saying.

“Oh, please!” she pleaded half aloud. “We will do what is right. All will be well in the end.”

Too weary for further thought, she closed her eyes and gave herself over to the pure joy that comes with gliding across the snow in a toboggan sled behind a swift and eager team, the Arctic’s best.

Three hours later Joyce was seated alone by the fire. The hour was late. There came a sound at the door. Having turned about, expecting her father, she was a little startled to see instead the mysterious stranger she had, under unusual circumstances, met before.

Twice this man had, she believed, saved her from the mad buffalo. Now, without a word, he closed the door to make his way to the seat before the hearth. Presently he raised a hand to point to the coffee pot.

From all this you will be led to believe that this stranger was none other than the one so well known to many of the inhabitants of the land as “The Voice.” And so he was.

Joyce Mills had been about the world a great deal. She was not easily frightened. The man did not disturb her. Understanding his gesture, she replenished the fire and in due time poured out a cup of black coffee. He drank it scalding hot. Once again he sat as in a trance. Once more he demanded coffee and got it. Then he spoke:

“You find gold.” It was not a question, but a statement. How could she deny it? And yet, how did he know? They had told no one and the discovery was only a few hours old. Without a word, she stared at him.

But more was to come.

“See. See young man, big, strong, brave. Fly red devil bird, fly, that one. See that one drop down, down, down!”

The girl closed her eyes. He was speaking, she knew all too well, of Drew Lane.

“But not dead.” The man’s voice rose to a high pitch. “Not dead, that one.”

“Yes, yes! He is dead!” came her quick reply.

“No!” The man was angry. Half rising from his chair, he fixed her with his eagle eye.

“No. He not dead!” He sank back into the chair.

Sensing somehow that whether he spoke truth or falsehood, this man’s word was not to be disputed, she held her peace.

After a time he spoke again. This time his story was long and rambling. It told of two boys made prisoner and kept in the cabin of an airplane. His description of the older of these boys fitted Johnny Thompson so well that Joyce could not mistake it.

“More romance,” she told herself, “but let him talk.”

The man rambled on. He spoke of the “Gray Streak,” of a hunchbacked Indian, of swift dog teams and of a curious cavern beneath the snow-covered earth.

She listened. But all the time she was thinking: “I wish this dreamer would go away. I wish father were here.”

In time both her wishes were granted.

With her father came the fortunate young gold hunter, Lloyd Hill.

“Do you know who that is?” Lloyd exclaimed before she had half finished telling of her visitor. “He is known as the Voice. Everyone who lives in this land believes he speaks the truth. I have never known a case in which he erred.”

“But he said Drew Lane was not dead.”

“And who will prove he has not spoken the truth?”

“He said Johnny Thompson was a prisoner in the ‘Gray Streak.’”

“And so he may be.”

Joyce lost her power of speech. If all that the Voice had said were true, this was indeed a strange world.

“Time will tell.” She settled on this conviction. “But if it is all true! If it is!

“But how could he know all this? Surely he cannot be in many places at the same time?”

“Moccasin Telegraph.”

“What _is_ Moccasin Telegraph?” Her tone was eager, commanding.

“That is a question no one can answer; at least no white man. A question no red man is willing to answer. We only know that they know. Time and again in this great white wilderness catastrophes have befallen men. A trapper has been killed by an enraged bull moose. A hunter has been shot by his own gun. A plane has crashed. Each time, within an hour or two, some Indian hundreds of miles away has described the tragedy in detail. How do we explain it? How could we? We do not try. We say Moccasin Telegraph, and leave it at that.”

“It—why, that is uncanny!”

Seeing that the whole affair was getting on her nerves, Lloyd wisely changed the subject.

Yet, two hours later, before she fell asleep, the girl found herself puzzling over these things.

“Johnny Thompson a prisoner in the cabin of the ‘Gray Streak,’” she whispered to herself. “And the ‘Gray Streak,’ where is it? The ‘Riddle of the Storm,’ Curlie Carson called it. What a riddle!

“And Drew Lane? His is a riddle of the clouds.

“What a world this is! Long ago Johnny Thompson said we could come here to find peace. Have we found it? Truly this world knows no valley of contentment.”