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Updated: June 13, 2025
He had known of Bill of old; in the circle in which he moved lost utterly to the sight of the men of Bradleyburg there were stories in plenty about this stalwart woodsman. For days ever since he had come here with his Indians and laid down his trap line he had dreaded just such a visit. The real reason for Bill's coming did not even occur to him. Bill saw that the man was frightened.
Evidently the Bradleyburg citizens had no love for the mountain realms in the last days of fall. For the double wage that he promised he was only able to secure a half-rate man, Vosper by name, a shifty-eyed youth from one of the placer mines, farther down toward the settlements.
"You've got the idea. It ought to be the easiest job we ever did. It's my idea he had his claim all laid out, monuments up and everything, and was on his way down to Bradleyburg to record it when he died. He just went out before he could make the rest of the trip. All we'll have to do is go up there, locate in his cabin, and sit tight." "Wait just a second." Ray was lost in thought.
The trapper said he wouldn't and hastened off with his prisoner, delighted indeed to be the first to pass the good word of their deliverance through Bradleyburg. Bill was well known and liked through all that portion of the North, and his supposed death had been a real blow to the townspeople. Bill felt wholly able to follow the broad snowshoe track the half-mile farther into town.
At the first sight of him, riding in the rear of a long train of laden pack horses, they could hardly believe their eyes. It was not to be credited that he had made the trip to Bradleyburg and back in the few days he had been absent. Only an aeroplane could have made so fast a trip.
But they had conquered; even now they were emerging from the dark fringe of the spruce. Virginia was on the rapid road toward recovery from her wound. It had not been severe; while she was lying still on the sled it had had every chance to heal. A few stitches by the doctor in Bradleyburg, a thorough cleansing and bandaging, and a few more days in bed would avert all serious consequences.
A stranger spoke from the other side of the fire. "How's Grizzly River?" he asked. Bill turned to him with a smile. "Getting higher and higher. All the streams are up. You know that bald-faced bay of Fargo's?" Fargo was the Bradleyburg merchant, and the stranger knew the horse, one of the little band that, after the frontier custom, Fargo kept to rent. "Yes, I remember him."
Rutheford did not return to the mine at all; he was traced clear to the shipping point, three hundred miles below Bradleyburg. And he did not go empty-handed. The pack horses had not carried empty saddlebags. They had been simply laden with gold. And Bronson never returned to his family in Bradleyburg. There was only one possible explanation.
It could be brave and gay enough in the daylight, a few children could play in its streets and women could call from door to door, but the falling darkness revealed it as it was, simply a fragment that the dark forests were about to claim. The day was done in Bradleyburg; as in the case of many of the gold camps of the North the wilderness was about to take back its own.
"I realize you don't know one step of the way down to Bradleyburg, and I can't see the way; but Harold knows it perfectly. Of course if we had plenty of food the sensible thing to do would be to wait till I get back my sight. But you know we haven't scarcely any food at all. The last of the meat is gone, except one little piece of jerky. We've got a cup or two of flour and one or two cans.
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