"You couldn't be like other women," he declared, and there was more tenderness than hunger in his tone now, as she looked up at him trustingly from the shelter of his arms. "It would spoil you to grow up."

"It is so good to be alive and to love you like this!" she continued, dreamily, staring into the fire. "I seem to have come out of a gloomy house into the glory of a warm spring day, for my eyes are blinded and I can't see half the beautifuls I want to, there are so many about me."

"Those are my arms," interjected the soldier, lightly, in an effort to ward off her growing seriousness.

"I've never been afraid of anything, and yet I feel so safe inside them. Isn't it queer?"

The young man became conscious of a vague discomfort, and realized dimly that for hours now he had been smothering with words and caresses a something that had striven with him to be heard, a something that instead of dying grew stronger the more utterly this innocent maid yielded to him. It was as if he had ridden impulse with rough spurs in a fierce desire to distance certain voices, and in the first mad gallop had lost them, but now far back heard them calling again more strongly every moment. A man's honor, if old, may travel feebly, but its pursuit is persistent. It was the talk about his people that had raised this d.a.m.ned uneasiness and indecision, he thought. Why had he ever started it?

"The marvellous part of it all," continued the girl, "is that it will never end. I know I shall love you always. Do you suppose I am really different from other girls?"

"Everything is different to-night--the whole world," he declared, impatiently. "I thought I knew myself, but suddenly I seem strange in my own eyes."

"I've had a big handicap," she said, "but you must help me to overcome it. I want to be like your sister."

He rose and piled more wood upon the fire. What possessed the girl? It was as if she knew each cunning joint of his armor, as if she had realized her peril and had set about the awakening of his conscience, deliberately and with a cautious wisdom beyond her years. Well, she had done it--and he swore to himself. Then he melted at the sight of her, crouched there against the shadows, following his every movement with her soul in her eyes, the tenderest trace of a smile upon her lips. He vowed he was a reprobate to wrong her so; it was her white soul and her woman's love that spoke.

When she beheld him gazing at her, she tilted her head sidewise daintily, like a little bird.

"Oh, my! What a fierce you are all at once!"

Her smile flashed up as if illumined by the leaping blaze, and he crossed quickly, kneeling beside her.

"Dear, wonderful girl," he said, "it is going to be my heart's work to see that you never change and that you remain just what you are. You can't understand what this means to me, for I, too, was blinded, but the darkness of the night has restored my vision. Now you must go to sleep; the hours are short and we must be going early."

He piled up a great, sweet-scented couch of springy boughs, and fashioned her a pillow out of a bundle of smaller ones, around which he wrapped his khaki coat; then he removed her high-laced boots, and, taking her tiny feet, one in the palm of either hand, bowed his head over them and kissed them with a sense of her gracious purity and his own unworthiness. He spread one of the big gray blankets over her, and tucked her in, while she sighed in delightful languor, looking up at him all the time.

"I'll sit here beside you for a while," he said. "I want to smoke a bit."

She stole a slim, brown hand out from beneath the cover and snuggled it in his, and he leaned forward, closing her lids down with his lips. Her utter weariness was manifest, for she fell asleep almost instantly, her fingers twined about his in a childlike grip.

At times a great desire to feel her in his arms, to have her on his breast, surged over him, for he had lived long apart from women, and the solitude of the night seemed to mock him. He was a strong man, and in his veins ran the blood of wayward forebears ho were wont to possess that which they conquered in the lists of love, mingled with which was the blood of spirited Southern women who had on occasion loved not wisely, according to Kentucky rumor, but only too well. Nevertheless, they were honest men and women, if over-sentimental, and had transmitted to him a heritage of chivalry and a high sense of honor and courage. Strange to say, this little, simple half-breed girl had revived this honor and courage, even when he tried most stubbornly to smother it. If only her love was like her blood, he might have had no scruples; or if her blood were as pure as her love--even then it would be easier; but, as it was, he must give her up to-night, and for all time. Her love had placed a barrier between them greater and more insurmountable than her blood.

He sat for a long time with the dwindling firelight playing about him, his manhood and his desires locked in a grim struggle, wondering at the hold this forest elf had gained upon him, wondering how it was that she had stolen into his heart and head and taken such utter possession of him. It would be no easy task to shut her out of his mind and put her away from him. And she...?

He gently withdrew his fingers from her grasp, and, seeking the other side of the wickiup, covered himself over without disturbing her, and fell asleep.

It was early dawn when Necia crept to him.

"I dreamed you had gone away," she said, shivering violently and drawing close. "Oh, it was a terrible awakening--"

"I was too tired to dream," he said.

"So I had to come and see if you were really here."

He quickly rekindled the fire, and they made a hasty breakfast. Before the warmth of the rising sun had penetrated the cold air they had climbed the ridge and obtained a wondrous view of broken country, the hills alight with the morning rays, the valleys misty and mystical.

They made good progress on the summit, which was paved with barren rock and spa.r.s.ely carpeted with short moss, while there was never a hint of insects to annoy them. Merrily they swung along, buoyed up by an unnatural exaltation; yet now and then, as they drew near their destination, the young man had a chilling premonition of evil to come, and wondered if he had not been foolhardy to undertake this rash enterprise.

"I wish Stark was not one of Lee's party," he said once. "He may misunderstand our being together this way."

"But when he learns that we love each other, that will explain everything."

"I'm not so sure. He doesn't know you as Lee and Poleon and your father do. I think we had better say nothing at all about--you and me--to any one."

"But why?" questioned the girl, stopping abruptly. "They will know it, anyhow, when they see us. I can't conceal it."

"I am wiser in this than you are," the soldier insisted, "and we mustn't act like lovers; trust this to me."

"Oh, I won't play that!" cried Necia, petulantly. "If all this is going to end when we get to Lee's cabin, we'll stay right here forever."

He was not sure of all the logic he advanced in convincing her, but she yielded finally, saying:

"Well, I suppose you know best, and, anyhow, littles should always mind."

They clung to the divide for several hours, then descended into the bed of a stream, which they followed until it joined a larger one a couple of miles below, and there, sheltered in a grove of whispering firs, they found Lee's cabin nestling in a narrow, forked valley. Evidently the miner had selected a point on the main creek just below the confluence of the feeders as a place in which to prospect, and Burrell fell to wondering which one of these smaller streams supplied the run of gold.

"There's no one here," said Necia, gleefully. "We've beat them in!

We've beat them in!"

They had been walking rapidly since dawn, and, although Burrell's watch showed two o'clock, she refused to halt for lunch, declaring that the others might arrive at any moment; so down they went to the lower end of "No Creek" Lee's location, where Burrell blazed a smooth spot on the down-stream side of a tree and wrote thereon at Necia's dictation. When he had finished, she signed her name, and he witnessed it, then paced off four hundred and forty steps, where he squared a spruce-tree, which she marked: "Lower centre end stake of No. I below discovery. Necia Gale, locator." She was vastly excited and immensely elated at her good-fortune in acquiring the claim next to Lee's, and chattered like a magpie, filling the glades with resounding echoes and dancing about in the bright sunlight that filtered through the branches.

"Now you stake the one below mine," she said. "It's just as good, and maybe better--n.o.body can tell." But he shook his head.

"I'm not going to stake anything," said he.

"You must!" she cried, quickly, the sparkle dying from her eyes. "You said you would, or I never would have brought you."

"I merely said I would come with you," he corrected. "I did not promise to take up a claim, for I don't think I ought to do so. If I were a civilian, it would be different, but this is government land, and I am a part of the government, as it were. Then, too, in addition to the question of my right to do it, there would be the certainty of making enemies of your people, old "No Creek" and the rest, and I can't afford that now. With you it is different, for you are ent.i.tled to this ground. After Lee's friends have shared in his discovery I may change my mind."

All arguments and pleading were in vain; he remained obdurate and insisted on her locating two other claims for herself, one on each of the smaller creeks where they came together above the house.

"But n.o.body ever stakes more than one claim on a gulch," objected the girl. "It's a custom of the miners."

"Then we'll call each one of these branches a different and separate creek," he said. "The gold was carried down one of those smaller streams, and we won't take any chances on which one it was. When a fellow plays a big game he should play to win, and, as this means such a great deal to you, we won't overlook any bets."

Necia consented, and when her three claims had been properly located the couple returned to the cabin to get lunch and to await with some foreboding the coming of the others and what of good or ill it might bring.

CHAPTER VII

THE MAGIC OF BEN STARK

Before the party came in sight, the sound of their voices reached the cabin, and Burrell rose nervously and sauntered to the door. Uncertain how this affair might terminate, he chose to get first look at his enemies, if they should prove to be such, realizing the advantage that goes to a man who stands squarely on both feet.

The trail came through the brush at the rear, and he heard Lee say: