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.”