Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/86

68 "Hi, Dan! Just in time for supper—didn't expect you till midnight."

The Sergeant grinned: "Can't make me mad with supper—I'm hungry as a grizzly—Come clean through from Dawson without a stop." "What's your hurry? But, come on, let's eat first. You can tell me the news later."

The two ate heartily, and in silence. For, with the men of the open places, a meal is a matter of serious business, rather than a social event. Also, in silence, they washed the dishes, and sought the log that answered the double purpose of door-step and chopping-block. The scene before them was one of infinite grandeur. The long-gathering twilight of an early summer night enfolded the wide valley of the Yukon in a mantle of exquisite softness. Beyond, jumbled and blurred in the indistinct half-light, rose the dark, timbered foot-hills of the great white range to the eastward. And still beyond, rearing its naked crags and gilded pinnacles above the shadowed foreground, rose the great range itself—all bright and flashing many-coloured lights—like the turrets, and spires, and battlements of a wonderful city of gold. For the rays of the low-swung sun,