The Barrier by Rex Beach (universal ebook reader .txt) 📗

my age," said the trader.

"This man is forty years old. It must be he," said the squaw.

Even Necia would have marvelled had she heard this revelation of her father's age, for his hair and brows were grizzled, and his face had the look of a man of sixty, while only those who knew him well, like Doret, were aware of his great strength and the endurance that belied his appearance.

"We will send Necia down to the Mission to-night, and let Father Barnum keep her there till this man goes," said the squaw, after some deliberation.

"No, she must stay here," Gale replied, with decision. "The man has come here to live, so it won't do any good to send her away, and, after all, what is to be will be. But she must never be seen in that dance-girl's dress again, at least, not till I learn more about this Stark. It makes no difference whether this one is the man or not; he will come and I shall know him. For a year I have felt that the time was growing short, and now I know it."

"No, no!" Alluna cried; "we have no strangers here. No white men except the soldiers and this one have come in a year. This is but a little trading-post."

"It was yesterday, but it isn't to-day. Lee has made a strike—like the one George Carmack made on the Klondike. He came to tell me and Poleon, and we are going back with him to-night, but you must say nothing or it will start a stampede."

"Other men will come—a great many of them?" interrogated Alluna, fearfully, ignoring utterly the momentous news.

"Yes. Flambeau will be another Dawson if this find is what Lee thinks it is. I stayed away from the Upper Country because I knew crowds of men would come from the States, and I feared that he might be among them; but it's no use hiding any longer, there's no other place for us to go. If Lee has got a mine, I'll have the one next to it, for we will be the first ones on the ground. What happens after that won't matter much, you four will be provided for. We are to leave in an hour, one at a time, to avoid comment."

"But why did this man stop here?" insisted the woman. "Why did he not stay on the steamboat and go to Dawson?"

"He's a friend of Lee's. He is going with us." Then he added, almost in a whisper, "Before we return I shall know."

Alluna seized his arm. "Promise to come back, John! Promise that you will come back even if this should be the man."

"I promise. Don't worry, little woman; I'm not ready for a reckoning yet."

He gave her certain instructions about the store, charging her in particular to observe the utmost secrecy regarding the strike, else she might precipitate a premature excitement which would go far towards ruining his and Poleon's chances. All of which she noted; then, as he turned away, she laid her hand on his arm and said:

"If you do not know him he will not know you. Is it not so?"

"Yes."

"Then the rest is easy—"

But he only shook his head doubtfully and answered, "Perhaps—I am not sure," and went inside, where he made up a light pack of bacon, flour and tea, a pail or two, a coffee-pot and a frying-pan, which he rolled inside a robe of rabbit-skin and bound about in turn with a light tarpaulin. It did not weigh thirty pounds in all. Selecting a new pair of water-boots, he stuffed dry grass inside them, oiled up his six-shooter, then slipped out the back way, and in five minutes was hidden in the thickets. Half an hour later, having completed a detour of the town, he struck the trail to the interior, where he found Poleon Doret, equipped in a similar manner, resting beside a stream, singing the songs of his people.

When Burrell returned to his quarters he tried to mitigate the feeling of lonesomeness that oppressed him by tackling his neglected correspondence. Somehow, to-day, the sense of his isolation had come over him stronger than ever. His rank forbade any intimacy with his miserable handful of men, who had already fallen into the monotony of routine, while every friendly overture he made towards the citizens of Flambeau was met with distrust and coldness, his stripes of office seeming to erect a barrier and induce an ostracism stronger and more complete than if they had been emblems of the penitentiary. He began to resent it keenly. Even Doret and the trader seemed to share the general feeling, hence the thought of the long, lonesome winter approaching reduced the Lieutenant to a state of black despondency, deepened by the knowledge that he now had an open enemy in camp in the person of Runnion. Then, too, he had taken a morbid dislike to the new man, Stark. So that, all in all, the youth felt he had good reason to be in the dumps this afternoon. There was nothing desirable in this place—everything undesirable—except Necia. Her presence in Flambeau went far towards making his humdrum existence bearable, but of late he had found himself dwelling with growing seriousness on the unhappy circumstances of her birth, and had almost made up his mind that it would be wise not to see her any more. The tempting vision of her in the ball-dress remained vividly in his imagination, causing him hours of sweet torment. There was a sparkle, a fineness, a gentleness about her that seemed to make the few women he had known well dull and commonplace, and even his sister, whom till now he had held as the perfection of all things feminine, suffered by comparison with this maiden of the frontier.

He was steeped in this sweet, grave melancholy, when a knock came at his door, and he arose to find Necia herself there, excited and radiant. She came in without sign of embarrassment or slightest consciousness of the possible impropriety of her act.

"The most wonderful thing has happened," she began at once, when she found they were alone. "You'll faint for joy."

"What is it?"

"Nobody knows except father and Poleon and the two new men—"

"What is it?"

"I teased the news out of mother, and then came right here."

He laughed. "But what—may I ask—"

"Lee has made a strike—a wonderful strike—richer than the Klondike."

"So? The old man's luck has changed. I'm right glad of that," said the soldier.

"I came as fast as I could, because to-morrow everybody will know about it, and it will be too late."

"Too late for what?"

"For us to get in on it, of course. Oh, but won't there be a stampede! Why, all the people bound for Dawson on the next boat will pile off here, then the news will go up-river and down-river, and thousands of others will come pouring in from everywhere, and this will be a city. Then we will stake our town lots and sell them for ever so much money, and go around with our noses in the air, and they will say to each other:

"'Who is that beautiful lady with the fine clothes?' and somebody will answer:

"'Why, that is Miss Necia Gale, the mine-owner.' And then you will come along, and they will say:

"'That is Lieutenant Burrell, the millionaire, and—'"

"Hold on! hold on!" said the soldier, stopping her breathless patter. "Tell me all about this."

"Well, 'No Creek' came in this morning to tell dad and Poleon. Then the boat arrived with an old friend of Lee's, a Mr. Stark, so Lee told him, too, and now they've all gone back to his creek to stake more claims. They slipped away quietly to prevent suspicion, but I knew there was something up from the way Poleon acted, so I made Alluna tell me all about it. They haven't more than two hours start of us, and we can overtake them easily."

"We! Why, we are not going?"

"Yes, we are," she insisted, impatiently—"you and I. That's why I came, so you can get a mine for yourself and be a rich man, and so you can help me get one. I know the way. Hurry up!"

"No," said he, in as firm a tone as he could command. "In the first place, these men don't like me, and they don't want me to share in this."

"What do you care?"

"In the second place, I'm not a miner. I don't know how to proceed."

"Nevermind; I do. I've heard nothing but mining all my life."

"In the third place, I don't think I have the right, for I'm a soldier. I'm working for Uncle Sam, and I don't believe I ought to take up mining claims. I'm not sure there is anything to prevent it, but neither am I sure it would be quite the square thing—are you?"

"Why, of course it's all right," said Necia, her eager face clouding with the look of a hurt child. "If you don't do it, somebody else will."

But the Lieutenant shook his head. "Maybe I'm foolish, but I can't see my way clear, much as I would like to."

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, brokenly. "I do so want to go. I want you to be rich, and I want to be rich myself. I want to be a fine lady, and go outside and live like other girls. It's—the only chance—I ever had—and I'll never have another. Oh, it means so much to me; it means life, future, everything! Why, it means heaven to a girl like me!" Her eyes were wet with the sudden dashing of her hopes, and her chin quivered in a sweet, girlish way that made the youth almost surrender on the instant. But she turned to the window and gazed out over the river, continuing, after a moment's pause: "Please don't—mind me—but you can't understand what a difference this would make to me."

"We couldn't possibly overtake them if we tried," he said, as if willing to treat with his conscience.

"No, but we could beat them in. I know where Lee is working, for I went up last winter with Constantine and his dog-team, over a short cut by way of Black Bear Creek. We took it coming back, and I could find it again, but Lee doesn't know that route, so he will follow the summer trail, which is fifteen miles farther. You see, his creek makes a great bend to the southward, and heads back towards the river, so by crossing the divide at the source of Black Bear you drop into it a few miles above his cabin."

While she made this appeal Burrell fought with himself. There were reasons why he longed to take this trip, more than he had longed for anything since boyhood. These men of Flambeau had disregarded him, and insisted on treating him with contemptuous distrust, despite his repeated friendly overtures; wherefore he was hungry to beat them at their own game, hungry to thrust himself ahead of them and compel them to reckon with him as an equal, preferring a state of open enmity, if necessary, to this condition of indifferent toleration. Moreover, he knew that Necia was coveted by half of them, and if he spent a night in the woods alone with her it would stir them up a bit, he fancied. By Heaven! That would make them sit up and notice him! But then—it might work a wrong upon her; and yet, would it? He was not so sure that it would. She had come to him; she was old enough to know her mind, and she was but a half-breed girl, after all, who doubtless was not so simple as she seemed. Other men had no such scruples in this or any other land, and yet the young man hesitated until, encouraged by his silence, the girl came forward and spoke again, impulsively:

"Don't be silly, Mr. Burrell. Come! Please come with me, won't you?"

She took him by the edges of his coat and drew him to her coaxingly. It may have been partly the spirit of revolt that had been growing in him all day, or it may have been wholly the sense of her there beside him, warm and pleading, but something caused a great wave to surge up through his veins, caused him to take her in his arms, fiercely kissing her upturned face again and again, crying softly, deep down in his throat:

"Yes! Yes! Yes! You little witch! I'll go anywhere with you! Anywhere! Anywhere!" The impulse was blind and ungovernable, and it grew as his lips met hers, while, strangely enough, she made no resistance, yielding herself quietly, till he found her arms wound softly about his neck and her face nestling close to his. Neither of them knew how long they stood thus blended together, but soon he grew