GORDON DUNCAN’S STORY
“It was years back, so many I have fairly lost track.” Gordon Duncan’s
tone was deep and vibrant with emotion as he began his story of a recluse
companion and the treasure of green gold. “There had been some
discoveries of gold back of the Beyond among the hills and I went. I was
younger then. Went alone. That was my way.
“I met with great misfortune. I found no gold. Food was scarce. I knew
little of the longbow in those days. In making a try for a mountain goat,
I fell over a ledge and broke a leg.
“I might have died there like some maimed wild creature, had it not been
for him.” His eyes wandered to the mountain side, to the lone cabin and
the trail that led away and away.
“He was a recluse then, but a kindly soul. He found me, carried me to his
cabin and cared for me.
“When I was well, he hunted for us both. It was he who taught me to prize
the longbow and arrow.
“In time I grew proficient in the use of these primitive weapons. Then,
like him, I wandered far in search of food.
“It was on one of these hunting trips that I came upon a strange sort of
grotto in the side of a cliff. There were ashes of a long burned out
campfire near the entrance. My curiosity was aroused by this. Making a
rude torch of dry willow twigs, I lighted my way back a hundred feet or
more.
“There on a ledge, half buried in dust, I found some curious objects.
“‘Copper,’ I said at once. ‘Not worth much. Take some back for
souvenirs.’
“I chose a crudely formed lamp for burning tallow, and a rudely fashioned
bowl.
“But how heavy they were! I had not seen such copper before.
“I carried them to our cabin and set them upon the hand-hewn table. When
Timmie returned, with half a caribou slung across his back, he looked at
my find with interest.
“Once he had lifted them he became excited. Questions came thick and
fast. Where had I found them? Was it far? Were there many such? How his
words flew!
“‘Why?’ I asked at last. ‘They are only copper. There is no want of
copper here; whole boulders of it in the beds of streams.’
“‘Copper!’ he exclaimed. ‘Copper! That’s not copper. Haven’t you lifted
them? They’re made of green gold.’
“Green gold! I thought he was mad. But he was not.” Again Gordon Duncan’s
eyes wandered to the hills. “He was sane enough. He’d had a course in
such things at some University; worked in a jeweler’s place, too. Seems
they mix some copper with gold. The result is a greenish combination
called green gold.
“And there you are.” His words became deeply reminiscent. “I had been
hunting gold for months, digging here, panning dirt there, but when I did
find gold I needed neither pick nor pan. And I didn’t know it was gold.
“The next day we made three trips to that cave. Each time we brought back
all the green gold we could carry. That cave must have been a goldsmith
shop of some ancient tribe. Every nook and cranny was crowded with green
gold.
“‘All we have to do now,’ I said, ‘is to take this out to civilization.
We are rich.’
“‘Civilization?’ Timmie said, his eyes dreamy with thoughts of wide open
spaces, ‘Who wants to go back to that?’ You see he was a born recluse.
‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘there’s the gold mine. We must find that.’
“Well, up to that time I hadn’t once thought of the mine from which this
gold had been taken. But from that moment the finding of that mine became
an obsession with both of us.
“We thought of nothing else until an unusually heavy snowfall drove all
game away and left us facing starvation.
“I wanted him to come away then.” Once more Gordon Duncan’s tone was
mellow with memories. “He wouldn’t come; but told me to go, to return
with fairer weather, and carry away my share of the treasure.
“It was a hard trek back. I was lost many times. Then I went snow blind.
Before my sight was gone I drove my knife in the tree, as you saw it back
there.
“‘I’ll find that and be able to make my way back,’ I told myself.
“But I never did, until just the other day. I reached the shelter of
civilization more dead than alive. My sight was a year coming back. Then
all memory of trails was gone.
“Not until I saw that knife in the tree did it all come back to me. And
now,” he said sadly, “he is gone!”
“We must follow,” said the girl. Her voice was husky.
“Yes, we must follow, not for the green gold, but for him,” said Gordon
Duncan.
“I have learned since,” said the old man, after a long silence, “that
those strange implements, dishes and ornaments, coming as they do from
the long lost past, are worth many times their weight in yellow gold.
“It is this that I would tell him, and that it is not good for him to
live alone; that in the end disaster must befall him here, just as it did
to the lone moose back there in our native forest.”
Faye found herself greatly impressed by her grandfather’s story. She was
as puzzled as he by the actions of the recluse, and as eager to follow
his trail. Only one thought dampened her ardor. Every mile that led away
from this mountain seemed to lessen their hopes of ever seeing Johnny
Longbow again. Yet fate is often very strange.
She slept well that night, and woke early, to find herself on tiptoe,
filled with a desire to be away. To their great joy they found their new
found Indian friends eager to join them.
“Their dogs will be of great service in following the trail,” said Gordon
Duncan as he hurried through final preparations for what, they both felt,
was to be a long and dangerous march.
Dangerous indeed it proved in the end.
Dawn found Gordon Duncan and his granddaughter with two of the Indian men
and their best dog team on the up-bound trail. The Indian women and
children remained behind. They had a supply of food. Caribou would soon
be trekking northward. The air would be full of wild fowl, geese, ducks,
swans, cranes. Spring was on the way. They would not want.
For the first hour and a half of the journey the native dog-team lagged.
They must be urged forward. But, of a sudden, as they reached a higher
level, they put their noses to the earth, sniffed two or three times,
then went straight away at a brisk trot.
“Good!” said Gordon Duncan as a satisfied smile overspread his wrinkled
face. “They have found Timmie’s trail.” He always spoke of the recluse as
Timmie, the only name he had known him by. “Now they will not pause nor
lag until they have come up with him.”
All day they followed the team. Spring surely was coming. They saw it in
little rushing streams. They smelled it in the moisture that rose from
the rocky ledges. They heard it in the honking of the first flock of wild
geese.
But the signs of spring only saddened Faye Duncan. “Spring means life,”
she thought, “renewed life. And poor Johnny Longbow who came with us so
far, who in such an unselfish way gave up his own plans to aid
Grandfather in the realization of his life’s dearest dream, lies beneath
the eternal snows.”
But did he? She could not be sure. She dared hope, for was not his arrow
found piercing the carcass of that monstrous bear? If his arrow had
escaped had not he? Who could have shot that arrow?
To this question she found no answer. Of one thing she was certain—if
Johnny Longbow were free to come to them he would be at her side. Her
heart swelled with undefinable emotion at the thought.
Still they traveled on. Over a ledge, down a ravine, across a plateau,
the trail led.
At times they caught glimpses of the river, a bright blue ribbon, far
below.
In places the river was white. This meant that ice had risen to the
surface.
“Soon go out, that one ice,” said the Indian who spoke English. “Then,
whooee! Big splash, big rush, plenty noise!”
Faye found herself hoping that they might be within sight of the river
when the breakup came. That was one of Nature’s dramas she had long
desired to see.
Just at sunset the dog team plunged down a steep embankment and piled up,
sled and all, forty feet below.
From that time until dark they went down. Down, down, down the trail ran
until, as camping time came, they were surprised to find themselves in a
narrow valley on a level with the river.
“Can he be mad enough to take to the river?” Gordon Duncan asked.
“Surely not,” Faye answered.
Gordon Duncan shook his head.
As for the Indians, they looked from Gordon Duncan to the girl, then back
to Duncan again. Whatever thoughts passed through their primitive minds
remained unexpressed.