He paused. The color deepened a little in her face; she looked away through the west window. "I thought an awful lot of Dave," he went on. "I'd ought to. Likely you don't know it--he wasn't the kind to talk much about himself--but I owe my life to him. _It_ had commenced"--he held up the crippled hand and smiled grimly--"when Dave found me curled up under the snow, but he stayed, in the teeth of a blizzard, to see me through. And afterwards he lost time, weeks when hours counted, taking care of me,-- operated when it came to it, like a regular doctor, my, yes. And when I got to crawling around again, I found he'd made me his partner."
"He had made a discovery," she asked, "while you were ill?"
"Yes, and you could bank on Dave it was a good one. He knew the gravel every time. But we had to sell; it was the men who bought us out that struck it rich. You see, Dave had heavy bills pressing him down here in the States; he never said just what he owed, but he had to have the money. And, my, when he was doing the bulk of the work, I couldn't say much. It was so the next time and the next. We never could keep a claim long enough for the real clean-up. So, when I learned to use my hand, I cut loose to try it alone."
He halted again, but she waited in silence with her face turned to the harbor. "I drifted into the Iditarod country," he went on, "and was among the first to make a strike. It was the luckiest move I ever made, but I wish now I had stayed by Dave. I was only a few hundred miles away, but I never thought of his needing me. That was the trouble. He was always putting some other man on his feet, cheering the rest along, but not one of us ever thought of offering help to Dave Weatherbee. A fine, independent fellow like him.
"But I sure missed him," he said. "Many a time there in the Iditarod I used to get to wishing we had that voice of his to take the edge off of things. Why, back on the Tanana I've seen it keep a whole camp heartened; and after he picked me up in that blizzard, when I was most done for and couldn't sleep, it seemed like his singing about kept me alive. Sometimes still nights I can hear those tunes yet. He knew a lot of 'em, but there was _Carry Me Back to Old Virginny_, and _Heart Bowed Down_, and _You'll Remember Me_. I always thought that song reminded him of some girl down here in the States. He never told me so, always put me off if I said a word, and none of us knew he was married then; but when he got to singing that tune, somehow he seemed to forget us boys and the camp and everything, and went trailing off after his voice, looking for somebody clear out of sight. I know now, since I've seen you, I was likely right."