The Yukon Trail Part 5

"Now, will you please introduce me to Miss O'Neill formally?"

The purser went through the usual formula of presentation, adding that Elliot was a government official on his way to Kusiak. Having done his duty by the young man, the busy supercargo retired.

"I'm sure it would do you good to walk up to the waterfall with me, Miss O'Neill," urged Elliot.

She met a little dubiously the smile that would not stay quite extinguished on his good-looking, boyish face. Why shouldn't she go with him, since it was the American way for unchaperoned youth to enjoy itself naturally?

"If they'll fit," the girl answered, eyeing the rubbers.

Gordon dropped to his knee and demonstrated that they would.

As they walked along the muddy street she gave him a friendly little nod of thanks. "Good of you to take the trouble to look out for me."

He laughed. "It was myself I was looking out for. I'm a stranger in the country and was awfully lonesome."

"Is it that this is your first time in too?" she asked shyly.

"You're going to Kusiak, aren't you? Do you know anybody there?" replied Elliot.

"My cousin lives there, but I haven't seen her since I was ten. She's an American. Eleven years ago she visited us in Ireland."

"I'm glad you know some one," he said. "You'll not be so lonesome with some of your people living there. I have two friends at Kusiak--a girl I used to go to school with and her husband."

"Are you going to live at Kusiak?"

"No; but I'll be stationed in the Territory for several months. I'll be in and out of the town a good deal. I hope you'll let me see something of you."

The fine Irish coloring deepened in her cheeks. He had a way of taking in his stride the barriers between them, but it was impossible for her to feel offended at this cheery, vigorous young fellow with the winning smile and the firm-set jaw. She liked the warmth in his honest brown eyes. She liked the play of muscular grace beneath his well-fitting clothes. The sinuous ease of his lean, wide-shouldered body stirred faintly some primitive instinct in her maiden heart. Sheba did not know, as her resilient muscles carried her forward joyfully, that she was answering the call of youth to youth.

Gordon respected her shyness and moved warily to establish his contact.

He let the talk drift to impersonal topics as they picked their way out from the town along the mossy trail. The ground was spongy with water.

On either side of them ferns and brakes grew lush. Sheba took the porous path with a step elastic. To the young man following she seemed a miracle of supple lightness.

The trail tilted up from the lowlands, led across dips, and into a draw.

A little stream meandered down and gurgled over rocks worn smooth by ages of attrition. Alders brushed the stream and their foliage checkered the trail with sunlight and shadow.

They were ascending steadily now along a pathway almost too indistinct to follow. The air was aromatic with pine from a grove that came straggling down the side of a gulch to the brook.

"Do you know, I have a queer feeling that I've seen all this before,"

the Irish girl said. "Of course I haven't--unless it was in my dreams.

Naturally I've thought about Alaska a great deal because my father lived here."

"I didn't know that."

"Yes. He came in with the Klondike stampeders." She added quietly: "He died on Bonanza Creek two years later."

"Was he a miner?"

"Not until he came North. He had an interest in a claim. It later turned out worthless."

A bit of stiff climbing brought them to a boulder field back of which rose a mountain ridge.

"We've got off the trail somehow," Elliot said. "But I don't suppose it matters. If we keep going we're bound to come to the waterfall."

Beyond the boulder field the ridge rose sharply. Gordon looked a little dubiously at Sheba.

"Are you a good climber?"

As she stood in the sunpour, her cheeks flushed with exercise, he could see that her spirit courted adventure.

"I'm sure I must be," she answered with a smile adorable. "I believe I could do the Matterhorn to-day."

Well up on the shoulder of the ridge they stopped to breathe. The distant noise of falling water came faintly to them.

"We're too far to the left--must have followed the wrong spur," Elliot explained. "Probably we can cut across the face of the mountain."

Presently they came to an impa.s.se. The gulch between the two spurs terminated in a rock wall that fell almost sheer for two hundred feet.

The color in the cheeks beneath the eager eyes of the girl was warm.

"Let's try it," she begged.

The young man had noticed that she was as sure-footed as a mountain goat and that she could stand on the edge of a precipice without dizziness.

The surface of the wall was broken. What it might be beyond he could not tell, but the first fifty feet was a bit of attractive and not too difficult rock traverse.

Now and again he made a suggestion to the young woman following him, but for the most part he trusted her to choose her own foot and hand holds. Her delicacy was silken strong. If she was slender, she was yet deep-bosomed. The movements of the girl were as certain as those of an experienced mountaineer.

The way grew more difficult. They had been following a ledge that narrowed till it ran out. Jutting k.n.o.bs of feldspar and stunted shrubs growing from crevices offered toe-grips instead of the even foothold of the rock shelf. As Gordon looked down at the dizzy fall beneath them his judgment told him they had better go back. He said as much to his companion.

The smile she flashed at him was delightfully provocative. It served to point the figure she borrowed from Gwen. "So you think I'm a 'fraid-cat, Mr. Elliot?"

His inclination marched with hers. It was their first adventure together and he did not want to spoil it by undue caution. There really was not much danger yet so long as they were careful.

Gordon abandoned the traverse and followed an ascending crack in the wall. The going was hard. It called for endurance and muscle, as well as for a steady head and a sure foot. He looked down at the girl wedged between the slopes of the granite trough.

She read his thought. "The old guard never surrenders, sir," was her quick answer as she brushed in salute with the tips of her fingers a stray lock of hair.

The trough was worse than Elliot had expected. It had in it a good deal of loose rubble that started in small slides at the least pressure.

"Be very careful of your footing," he called back anxiously.

A small gra.s.sy platform lay above the upper end of the trough, but the last dozen feet of the approach was a very difficult bit. Gordon took advantage of every least projection. He fought his way up with his back against one wall and his knees pressed to the other. Three feet short of the platform the rock walls became absolutely smooth. The climber could reach within a foot of the top.

"Are you stopped?" asked Sheba.

"Looks that way."

A small pine projected from the edge of the shelf out over the precipice. It might be strong enough to bear his weight. It might not.

Gordon unbuckled his belt and threw one end over the trunk of the dwarf tree. Gingerly he tested it with his weight, then went up hand over hand and worked himself over the edge of the little plateau.