Cavanaugh had arisen to his feet, and, after a broad gesture with his hands, held them extended, as if seeing there, before him, on the rough floor of that older trading post far away, globules of gold, accursed. In the gloom of the post his eyes blazed and stared, and the muscles of his neck seemed tensed and drawn. He appeared to recover himself, gave a foolish, mirthless little laugh, and began pacing up and down the room, with slow, aimless footsteps. I shuddered a little, for the spell of his story was still on me. and thought of the wreck of a good man, Bill Wilton, whose reason had been unbalanced by privation and a succession of blows, incomprehensible and deadly.
My memory appeared to find new details in his attitude as I saw him sitting on the bank, with the pebbles falling through his maimed fingers, the fingers that had cast away all that he had found. Vivid and clear, he stood before me there in the H. B. log post, stricken to the heart and perhaps remorsefully believing that had he not made the great quest, his wife might have survived.
“So, you see, it had a foundation in truth!”
Cavanaugh had halted in front of me, and was again undisturbed.
“He had found a deposit of red gold. He had lived to bring some of it back, as tangible evidence of its existence. He had traveled over hundreds of miles, buoyed up by hope and the belief that he was to throw in his wife's lap the magnum opus of man's striving, wealth—wealth to buy ease, comfort, and travel, time to gain knowledge, means to make a home somewhere in a less inhospitable clime. And she was not there to greet him, or to forgive him the feverishness of his rude, half-mad departure.
“I left him huddled there against the foot of the wall, still moaning, and ran across to bring MacCulloch, telling him in broken, breathless sentences that Bill Wilton's reason was ebbing, that it was at stake, and that something must be done for him. Mac snatched the baby .from its rough, homemade crib, and we ran back and into the post.
“Mac shouted to Wilton, who looked up, and slowly got to his feet, where he stood, wavering, and his fingers worked, shutting and unshutting, and his lips twitched, and his eyes were blank and filmed, as if Death were invading him. Mac held the baby, Bessie, toward him; and she, recovering from the shock of her awakening from sleep, suddenly held her hands out toward her father, and smiled and gurgled with her sweet little voice.
“For an instant we thought the man was affrighted. He cowered back still farther, and then, as if we were wolves, and he feared for our hold of the baby, he seized her feverishly in his arms, and walked up and down the post. We hoped to see him break—hoped that the tears would swim in those fierce, glittering, dry eyes; but none came.
“He began to quaver in a far-away voice, as if detached from him, and bearing no relation to the big bell booms of sound that used to bubble from him in the old days, an Indian song from the Southern coast. You know it, that coarse chant of
“The song of money in plenty, ask where!”
I nodded my head, and Cavanaugh walked slowly down to the end of the room, around some of the piles of merchandise that were heaped, dim and misshapen, in the lower end, and back up behind the counter, where he leaned against a string of beads that clashed and rattled. The light above shone more fully on his face, and it seemed to me to have become more sad in its fines.
“That's about all there is to it,” he said, as if his tale were finished. “We never quite understood, for a long time, whether he realized that he was Bessie's father; but he used to growl like a beast if any one attempted to take her away from him, or to care for her. He used to sleep with her in his arms, and one night, when I had worked late on the monthly report and come into the big living cabin, and passed his door, it was open, and he was there beside her, resting on his elbows, and staring down into her face, as if trying to solve that puzzling problem of existence. In the summer he would carry her, for hours, in his arms. For two or three years he scarcely spoke to any of us, then he began to work a little, doing chores around the post.
“Only once a sign of the old feverishness came over him in full force. That was after I had left the post, and was working a patch of poor placer ground up above. But I happened to be there. He had been restless for days, and on this afternoon came out into the open, with a huge pack before him, which he laid down, as if thinking of something forgotten. I tried to find out where he thought he was going, and all he did was to mutter that incoherent gibberish about red gold—red as blood.