Everywhere
light laughed and life invited. The days stretched out their balmy
length and the nights passed from blinks of darkness to no darkness
at all. The river bared its bosom, and snorting steamboats
challenged the wilderness. There were stir and bustle, new faces,
and fresh facts. An assistant arrived at Twenty Mile, and Sandy
MacPherson wandered off with a bunch of prospectors to invade the
Koyokuk country. And there were newspapers and magazines and
letters for Neil Bonner. And Jees Uck looked on in worriment, for
she knew his kindred talked with him across the world.
Without much shock, it came to him that his father was dead. There
was a sweet letter of forgiveness, dictated in his last hours.
There were official letters from the Company, graciously ordering
him to turn the post over to the assistant and permitting him to
depart at his earliest pleasure. A long, legal affair from the
lawyers informed him of interminable lists of stocks and bonds,
real estate, rents, and chattels that were his by his father's
will. And a dainty bit of stationery, sealed and monogramed,
implored dear Neil's return to his heart-broken and loving mother.
Neil Bonner did some swift thinking, and when the Yukon Belle
coughed in to the bank on her way down to Bering Sea, he departed--
departed with the ancient lie of quick return young and blithe on
his lips.
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