Then he remembered--the stage.
How often his father had talked of the great lumps of gold the white men
were digging up, two hundred miles north, up the Frozen River--"Cariboo
gold," his father had called it, and said that it was sent down in
numberless bags to "the front," and the stage brought it. And his father
would always finish the tale with, "The white men will risk their lives
and kill each other for this gold."
Leloo could never understand it, for he would much rather have a soft
wolf skin to lie on, a string of blue Hudson's Bay beads around his dark
throat, and fine, beaded moccasins, than all the gold in the world. But
while he sat stock still, the voices continued:
"There, it's stopped. I knew it was an animal. The stage won't be along
for an hour yet."
"They are white men, but the gold does not belong to them," Leloo told
himself. "It belongs to the white men on the stage, or up in the
Barkerville gold ledges. These white men here are 'bad medicine.' They
shall not find that stage."
But even as he thought it out, the voices began afresh.
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