Chapter 8 WHITE FOXES

One feature of the North fascinated Joyce Mills more than any other-the dog teams. Her outfit had engaged two of these teams at Fort Resolution. Wonderful dogs they were, too. Long, rangy, muscular fellows, they stood to her waist. And how they could travel!

"All right, boys! Mush!" she would cry. And away they would fly.

On days when one of these teams was not in use, she would go for a long drive into the great unknown. It made little difference what direction she took, for all this world about her was new.

Often, because the dogs traveled best when following a scent, she allowed them to choose their own course. Invariably they took up some trail. At times it was only the tracks of a man on skis or snowshoes, at others it was the mark of some dog sled. Whatever it might be, though the trail was windblown and three days old, they followed it with unerring steps.

On the day when Curlie Carson took up the flight of the pigeon, she started on one of these dog team jaunts. Once more she allowed the team to take its course. This day the leader chose the tracks of a man on snowshoes.

"One of our men," she told herself. "Be just time to come up with him before sunset. He'll enjoy a ride home."

As we have said, Joyce was no weakling. While training her mind, she had developed her body as well. This day she rode only a part of the way.

Trotting after a dog team rouses the drowsy blood and sends it coursing through the veins. It stimulates thoughts. This girl's thoughts on that day were long, long thoughts. At times she dreamed of gold, placer gold, great moose-hide sacks bulging with nuggets. She knew that Lloyd, the young Canadian of their outfit, had studied the aerial photographs that were taken a hundred miles from the camp, and then had gone into a brown study.

"Looks like quartz, gold, up there," she had heard him murmur. "Why not placer gold in the streams farther down?" He had disappeared on a strange mission early next morning. When he returned late that evening, if he had anything to report he had made no mention of it. A strange, silent fellow, this Canadian.

"Gold," she said aloud. "Gold. What will it not buy? Comfort; ease; education; a home. Some even believe it will buy friends. But not true friends, I am sure of that."

Gold! Would they find it? And if they did, what then? A frown gathered like a storm cloud on her brow. She had thought again of Johnny's strange revelation. "One of your men is a thief," she seemed to hear him say.

"I'll find the thief!" she told herself with renewed determination.

"But if we make a rich strike before I find him?" She shuddered at thought of the terrible possibilities involved.

Then, shaking herself free from all these brooding thoughts, she shouted: "Ye! Ye! Ye!" to send her dogs spinning away at a reckless speed.

Since the land here was rocky and uneven, this resulted in a spill. Coming to the top of a ridge, the dogs rushed pell mell down the other side and landed all in a heap in a bunch of willows at the bottom.

Joyce was recovering from this spill and her dogs were sitting about her grinning when upon looking up she beheld, not ten paces away, the man she had been following.

She caught her breath in surprise. He was not Jim, nor Clyde, nor Lloyd. Nor was it her father. It was a man she had never seen before.

"Where did you come from?" she wanted to ask, but did not. It gave her a shock to know that she had taken up this man's trail not half a mile from her cabin and, having followed him for miles, was now alone with him in the great white world.

He was strange, too, and had, she thought, an evil face. "But I must not judge too soon," she told herself.

The man was short with broad shoulders. He had a dark face that might be French, Indian or half-breed.

"Hello!" he said rather gruffly. "You follow? What want?"

She looked at him, nonplussed. What indeed did she want? Nothing.

She told him so. Plainly he did not believe her.

"My name," he said stolidly, "Pierre Andres. Trapper, me." He jingled a bundle of traps hanging from his arm. "You want white fox skin? All right. I geeve heem you."

"No! No!" she persisted stoutly. "I want nothing. I am looking for some one."

"Some one look for gold." He placed a hand above his eyes. "Allee time look. No find. Eh?" He tried to smile, and his face became uglier than before. "Oh, you find. Bye and bye. Not know mine." He chuckled deep down in his throat.

"See! Look!" he exclaimed suddenly. He made a motion as if to drop on all fours. "Buffalo." He sent out a curious snort. "You!" He made a face. "'Fraid, you. Up tree. Then, boom! Buffalo gone! Is it not so?

"And now I gotta say good-bye."

"Good-good-bye." The words stuck in her throat. Speaking to her dogs, she sent them spinning back over the trail.

Her mind was in a whirl. Who was this man? What had he been doing about their camp? Had he been near when she was treed by the buffalo? Had he fired that shot?

She thought, of his traps. "Hope he hasn't set any near our cabin."

Only the night before, while out for a stroll in the moonlight, she had made a delightful discovery. Three beautiful white foxes had their home beneath the cliff back of their cabin. She had surprised them at their play. She did not want one of their skins for a decoration.

But now, while she was wondering whether this man had any connection with Johnny's half-mythical Moccasin Telegraph, her dogs suddenly took a turn to the right, speeding away on a fresh trail.

Seeing that this trail, cutting her old one at an acute angle, led toward camp and hoping once more that it might lead her to one of her party, she allowed the dogs to pick their own way.

This time she was not disappointed. They had not gone half a mile before she sighted, standing out dark against the sky, a lone figure at the crest of a ridge.

"It's Lloyd Hill," she told herself with a thrill of joy. She had recognized him on the instant. His was a military bearing not often found in the North. At this moment he stood rigidly erect, looking away toward the west as a commanding general might while surveying some vast smoking battlefield.

She was obliged to cross a narrow valley to reach him. This gave her time for reflection. Lloyd Hill was not like the other men of her camp. He was more reserved. He was, as her father expressed it, "a good listener." He talked little. When he did speak his English was perfect. Jim spoke with the mellow drawl of the southern mountains; Clyde with the breezy tongue of the west. Lloyd impressed her as coming from a fine family; yet he never spoke of his family. A silent, rather slender, dark-eyed fellow, he was ever alert, yet never in a hurry.

"Always seems to be all there," her father had said. "But how tense he is. If you fired off a gun when he wasn't looking, he'd jump three feet from the ground!" This was more true than he knew, and for good reasons.

With these thoughts passing through her mind and with one half-asked question lurking back of all, "Who stole those films for the pictures we are using?" she crossed the intervening space to climb the ridge.

All this time, though she was sure he knew she was coming, he did not so much as turn his head. Only when she had reached his side did he speak. With one arm outstretched he said:

"Do you see that?"

"See what?" She turned a puzzled face up to his. "I see the frozen bed of a stream. There are rapids and a waterfall over there, too swift to freeze. And I think I see a pelican waiting for a fish."

"But off to the right?"

"Hills, rocks, snow."

"Ah, yes. But once that stream flowed there. If you look closely you will see that the narrow banks of a rapid stream are still suggested there. Yes, that's where it ran."

"What changed its course?"

He shrugged. "Jam of logs and drifting ice in the spring, perhaps. Anyway, it happened. See this."

He dropped something in her hand. It was a fine yellow crescent.

"That," he said with a sudden intake of breath, "is gold. Free gold, they call it. Found it many miles up from here in the rocks. Gold up there. But not enough for quartz mining. Too far from everywhere.

"But that," he pointed again to the ancient bed of the stream, "looks promising. There are rapids and falls in it, just as there are in this new channel. And at the foot of the falls there may be golden sands, worn away from the rocks and carried down there."

He broke off abruptly. "Jump in! Let's get back to camp."

On the return journey she insisted upon his riding part of the way. Scarcely a word was said during all that long twilight ride. She liked him all the better for this.

"I wonder if there really could be gold?" she thought to herself. "Much gold. Anyway, the ground is frozen. How could he prospect there now?"

As if reading her thoughts, he said:

"There's a steam-thawer over at Fort Resolution. The doctor's got a tractor. We could haul it over and thaw that ground out in a hurry."

To the girl's great surprise, during the evening he said nothing to his partners about this recent discovery. "I wonder why?" she said to herself. "Well, since he does not speak of it, neither shall I."

"Punch Dickinson will be dropping down here with the plane to-morrow morning," Clyde Hawke said. "I asked him to come when I saw him last."

"That's right!" Lloyd Hill leaped from his chair. "Just in time. I'll ride over with him." All eyes were turned on him for an explanation.

"Found some encouraging dirt back in the hills," he said simply. "Need a thawer. One there. I'll bring it over."

If they expected more details they did not get them.

"Since you're going," Newton Mills said after a moment, as he dragged a bag from a corner, "you might take this along and see what you can do about getting it down to Edmonton for an analysis."

"What is it?" Jim asked.

"Pitchblende."

"Pitchblende, radio-active rock. Last price quoted on radium was a million dollars an ounce," Jim drawled. "Be great if we'd discover a pound or two laying around loose up here somewhere!"

"Wouldn't it!" laughed Clyde.

Though she understood little of this talk and was unable to tell what was said in jest and what in earnest, Joyce was thrilled by this new discovery.

"It will go to Edmonton," she told herself. "Be some time before we can get the report, know the truth. In the meantime we may dream, and half the joy of life comes from dreaming."

Before retiring she slipped on her faun-skin parka and stole out into the crisp air of night. She climbed the ridge that lay between their camp and the rocky cliff. Then she turned to look back.

She caught her breath. How wonderful it was! The moon, a ball of pale gold, hung high overhead. The whole empty white world, clean as fresh laundered linen, lay before her.

But she had not come for this. Creeping farther up the ridge where some scrub spruce trees grew, she moved stealthily forward into the shadows, at last parting the branches noiselessly and looking into the space beyond.

"Ah, yes," she breathed, "there they are."

Three white foxes, two old ones and one half-grown cub, were sporting in the moonlight. How beautiful they were! And how they did romp! "No kittens could be half as cute," she told herself.

Now they formed a circle and chased one another's tails round and round. Now they piled into a heap and rolled about like balls of snow. And now, sitting in a row like choir boys, they sang their night song.

"Yap-yap-yap!"

In the midst of this Joyce thought of the stranger she had followed that day, and shuddered, she hardly knew why.

All this was forgotten as, half an hour later, she crept beneath her downy feather robe and fell asleep, dreaming dreams in which gold and radium were sadly mixed with Indians and traps, white foxes, wild buffaloes and moonlit night.