Vincent to his feet, Vance could have sworn he heard
the colonel giggling. And he confessed to it later, as he explained,
"It was so curious and unexpected." But he made amends by taking it
upon himself to see St. Vincent home.
"But why did you hit him?" Corliss asked, unavailingly, for the fourth
time after he had got into his cabin.
"The mean, crawlin' skunk!" the pocket-miner gritted in his blankets.
"What'd you stop me for, anyway? I wish I'd hit 'm twice as hard!"
CHAPTER XII
"Mr. Harney, pleased to meet you. Dave, I believe, Dave Harney?" Dave
Harney nodded, and Gregory St. Vincent turned to Frona. "You see, Miss
Welse, the world is none so large. Mr. Harney and I are not strangers
after all."
The Eldorado king studied the other's face until a glimmering
intelligence came to him. "Hold on!" he cried, as St. Vincent started
to speak, "I got my finger on you. You were smooth-faced then. Let's
see,--'86, fall of '87, summer of '88,--yep, that's when. Summer of
'88 I come floatin' a raft out of Stewart River, loaded down with
quarters of moose an' strainin' to make the Lower Country 'fore they
went bad. Yep, an' down the Yukon you come, in a Linderman boat. An'
I was holdin' strong, ez it was Wednesday, an' my pardner ez it was
Friday, an' you put us straight--Sunday, I b'lieve it was. Yep,
Sunday.
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