make a brave fight unaided;
even fatherless boys were not entirely cheated of their youth. Besides,
in these desolate wastes the code of life is a personal code, primitive
emotions have full sway, and men to not change their dreams from day to
day. Constancy and steadfastness are the first impulses of their lives;
neither Bill nor his mother had been able to forget or to forgive. Here
was an undying ignominy and hatred; besides--for the North is a
far-famed keeper of secrets--the mystery and the dreadful uncertainty,
haunting like a ghost. As a little boy he had tried to comfort his
mother with his high plans for revenge; and she had whispered to him,
and cried over him, and pressed him hard against her; and he had
promised, over and over again, that when manhood came to him he would
right her wrongs and his own. He remembered his pathetic efforts to
comfort her, and it had never occurred to him that he had been in need
of comforting himself. He had been a sober, wistful-eyed little boy,
bearing bravely the whole tragic weight upon his own small shoulders.

The story was very simple and short,--nothing particularly unusual in
the North. His father had come early to the gold fields of Bradleyburg,
and he had been one of few that was accompanied by his wife,--a tender
creature, scarcely molded for life in the northern gold camps. Then
there had been Rutheford, his father's partner, a man whom neither Bill
nor his mother liked or trusted, but to whom the elder Bronson gave full
trust. Somewhere beyond far Grizzly River, in the Clearwater, Bronson
had made a wonderful strike,--a fabulous mine where the gravel was
simply laden with the yellow dust; and because they had prospected
together in times past, Bronson gave his partner a share in it.

They had worked for months at their mine, in secret, and then Rutheford
had come with pack horses into Bradleyburg, ostensibly for supplies. He
had been a guest at the Bronson cabin and had reported that all was well
with his generous partner. And the next night he had disappeared.

Weeks were to pass before the truth was known. 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