The Valley of the Silent Men

Her fingers gripped his thumb in their old way, and Kent waited.

"It was the Watcher that made me want to come home most of all," she went on, a bit of tremble in her voice. "Oh, I grew lonely for him, and I could see him in my dreams at night, watching, watching, watching, and sometimes even calling me. Jeems, do you see that hump on his left shoulder, like a great epaulet?"

"Yes, I see," said Kent.

"Beyond that, on a straight line from here--hundreds of miles away--are Dawson City, the Yukon, the big gold country, men, women, civilization. Father Malcolm and father Donald have never found but one trail to this side of the mountains, and I have been over it three times--to Dawson. But the Watcher's back is on those things. Sometimes I imagine it was he who built those great ramparts through which few men come. He wants this valley alone. And so do I. Alone--with you, and with my people."

Kent drew her close in his arms. "When you are stronger," he whispered, "we will go over that hidden trail together, past the Watcher, toward Dawson. For it must be that over there--we will find--a missioner--" He paused.

"Please go on, Jeems."

"And you will be--my wife."

"Yes, yes, Jeems--forever and ever. But, Jeems"--her arms crept up about his neck--"very soon it will be the first of August."

"Yes--?"

"And in that month there come through the mountains, each year, a man and a woman to visit us--mother Anne's father and mother. And mother Anne's father--"

"Yes--?"

"Is a missioner, Jeems."

And Kent, looking up in this hour of his triumph and joy, believed that in the Watcher's face he caught for an instant the passing radiance of a smile.