  Had one chanced to have been passing over that vast white expanse over which the three, Johnny, Faye and Gordon Duncan, traveled next day; had his eye caught sight of the dark figure that, ever pressing forward in the fog, continually dogged their footsteps, he must have paused in amazement. A stranger creature could scarcely be imagined. Stooping low, lurching forward, moving in little jerks, perhaps on four legs, perhaps on two, his form at times seemed grotesquely human. At others it seemed that the impossible had happened, that some huge gorilla from tropical wilds had found his way to this land of ice and snow. Had curiosity led one to inspect his footprints in the snow, his amazement must have grown. Measuring full twenty inches from toe to heel, they resembled nothing quite so much as the footprints of a fair sized polar bear. Yet as everyone knows, the polar bear lives upon the ice of the ocean. Seldom does he wander more than a dozen miles inland. To look for him here some hundreds of miles inland was to give credence to that which has never been. This fearsome creature it was that uttered a challenge to the wolves who were rapidly getting the upper hand in the battle with Johnny and his friends. What was it that had turned them away? Was this challenge but a call telling of the past? Did the memory of other bloody frays spur the wolves on? Or did they see in this lone figure an easy victory and a toothsome feast? Whatever their hopes, they were soon enough dashed to earth, for hardly had they arrayed themselves in a grinning circle than one after another of their number began biting, clawing, snapping and yip-yipping in mortal pain. When, in mad desperation they charged, it was no better. Two of their number, being seized by their bushy tails, had their brains speedily dashed out against a rock. A third was thrust through, and a fourth trampled into pulp. Whereupon those few who remained found safety in flight. After tramping about for some little time in what appeared to be wild fury, the strange and terrible creature had seized five dead wolves by their tails and, turning sharply to the right, climbed the hill. Before entering the dark fringe of scrub forest, he had paused to stand blinking at the campfire some distance away. Dropping the wolves, he had taken a dozen steps toward the fire. Then, appearing to take other counsel, he had returned to his dead wolves, had given them a vicious kick, had seized them again by the tails, then disappeared into the dark depth of the evergreen thicket. As for the trio by the fire, they had realized that some strange creature was afoot; but being once more in possession of strong bows and plenty of arrows, with bright flames dispelling the darkness about them, they had felt quite at ease and secure from any manner of sudden attack. How little they really knew of the ways of the wild in this strange wilderness! Next evening, as they lay before a roaring campfire, chins propped on elbows, watching, dreaming, half asleep, the two of them, the boy and girl, they heard the old man stirring in his sleep. Of a sudden he sat up. By his staring eyes they knew that he spoke as one in a dream. “I told him the things were copper.” His voice was pitched and strained. “But Timmie said ‘No, they are green gold.’ And he must have been right, for he had worked with a silversmith and had helped make alloys. “He said they were copper, gold and silver, melted together. “I said the natives had melted them together. “He said ‘No, they’re too ignorant for that. God and nature made the alloy. Somewhere in a great caldron of a volcano, long ago when the earth was new, gold, silver and copper were melted together and poured away in a stream of green gold. And somewhere in the hills there is a placer mine of green gold. We’ll find it.’ “Timmie said that, and he’s back there behind the hills waiting still, and he knows where the mine is. I’ve dreamed that many times, and it’s true.” Johnny’s lips were open for a question, but the girl held up a hand for silence. “The day has been hard,” she whispered. “He is half asleep. Don’t excite him.” A moment later the old man had dropped to his place deep among the blankets and save for the crackling of the fire silence lay upon hills and tundra. |
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