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Updated: June 22, 2025
If he refused to act, the gambler could break him, while every effort he made to protect Gale would but increase the other's satisfaction. There was no chance of the trader's escape. Stark held him in his hand. His followers would do his bidding. It was a desperate affair. Was it impossible, the Lieutenant wondered, to move this man from his purpose? "Have you thought of Necia? She loves Gale.
"Let me tell you what I saw with my own eyes. I knew a girl once that was just as good and pure as Necia, and just as pretty, too yes, and a thousand times prettier." "Ho, ho!" laughed Doret, sceptically. "She was an Eastern girl, and she come West where men were different to what she'd been used to.
His eyes grew brighter at sight of Necia, and he broke into a flood of patois; they fairly bombarded each other with quick questions and fragmentary answers till she remembered her companion, who had fallen back a pace and was studying the newcomer, whereupon she turned. "Oh, I forgot my manners. Lieutenant Burrell, this is Napoleon Doret our Poleon!" she added, with proud emphasis.
It must be he," said the squaw. Even Necia would have marvelled had she heard this revelation of her father's age, for his hair and brows were grizzled, and his face had the look of a man of sixty, while only those who knew him well, like Doret, were aware of his great strength and the endurance that belied his appearance.
Soon they were alongside, and a pair of Siwash deckhands lifted Necia aboard, Doret following after, the painter of the Peterborough in his teeth.
Necia had said little so far, but the look in her eyes repaid the soldier for his undertaking in her behalf, and for any mischief that might ensue from it. She came forward and laid her hands upon his. "Promise that you won't have trouble with him," she begged, anxiously, "for it's all my fault, and I'd I'd always blame myself if any hurt came to you. Promise! Won't you?"
By this time Doret had finished with their blankets, and the four set out for town, but instead of following the others they accepted Necia as guide and chose the trail to Black Bear Creek. They had not gone far before she took occasion to lag behind with the Lieutenant. "I couldn't thank you before all those people they would have read our secret but you know how I feel, don't you, Meade?" "Why!
He hurried along now without offering her a chance to speak. "Of course, that had to be caught up quick; you're too fine a girl for that." "Too fine?" Necia laughed. "I mean you're too fine and good to let him put you in wrong, just as he's too fine a fellow and got too much ahead of him to make what his people would call a messy alliance."
Then, after a moment, he added, "From the story I told you at the mine that night, I suppose?" "Oh no," she answered. "I've always had it, though they call me Necia. Merridy was my father's mother. I guess I'm like her in many ways, for I often imagine she is a part of me, that her spirit is mine. It's the only way I can account for the sights I see."
Poleon Doret sang gayly as the trader came towards him through the open grove of birch, for he was happy this afternoon, and, being much of a dreamer, this fresh enterprise awoke in him a boyish pleasure. Then Necia had teased him as he came away, and begged him, as was always her custom, to take her with him, no matter whence or whither, so long as there was adventure afoot.
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