What kind
of neighbors have you? Or have you any?"
While she queried she watched the girl grinding coffee in the corner of a
flower sack upon the hearthstone. With a steadiness and skill which
predicated nerves as primitive as the method, she crushed the imprisoned
berries with a heavy fragment of quartz. David Payne noted his visitor's
gaze, and the shadow of a smile drifted over his lips.
"I did have some," he replied. "Missourian chaps, and a couple of
Cornishmen, but they went down to Eldorado to work at wages for a
grubstake."
Mrs. Sayther cast a look of speculative regard upon the girl. "But of
course there are plenty of Indians about?"
"Every mother's son of them down to Dawson long ago. Not a native in the
whole country, barring Winapie here, and she's a Koyokuk lass,--comes
from a thousand miles or so down the river."
Mrs. Sayther felt suddenly faint; and though the smile of interest in no
wise waned, the face of the man seemed to draw away to a telescopic
distance, and the tiered logs of the cabin to whirl drunkenly about. But
she was bidden draw up to the table, and during the meal discovered time
and space in which to find herself.
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