“We won’t,” said he, with conviction.  “I look on all lawyers with suspicion, even to old bald-face—­your uncle, askin’ your pardon an’ gettin’ it, bein’ as I’m a friend an’ he ain’t no real relation of yours, anyhow.  No, sir; they’re all crooked.”

Dextry held the Western distrust of the legal profession—­ comprehensive, unreasoning, deep.

“Is the old man all the kin you’ve got?” he questioned, when she refused to discuss the matter.

“He is—­in a way.  I have a brother, or I hope I have, somewhere.  He ran away when we were both little tads and I haven’t seen him since.  I heard about him, indirectly, at Skagway—­three years ago--during the big rush to the Klondike, but he has never been home.  When father died, I went to live with Uncle Arthur—­some day, perhaps, I’ll find my brother.  He’s cruel to hide from me this way, for there are only we two left and I’ve loved him always.”

She spoke sadly and her mood blended well with the gloom of her companion, so they stared silently out over the heaving green waters.

“It’s a good thing me an’ the kid had a little piece of money ahead,” Dextry resumed later, reverting to the thought that lay uppermost in his mind, “’cause we’d be up against it right if we hadn’t.  The boy couldn’t have amused himself none with these court proceedings, because they come high.  I call ’em luxuries, like brandied peaches an’ silk undershirts.

“I don’t trust these Jim Crow banks no more than I do lawyers, neither.  No, sirree!  I bought a iron safe an’ hauled it out to the mine.  She weighs eighteen hundred, and we keep our money locked up there.  We’ve got a feller named Johnson watchin’ it now.  Steal it?  Well, hardly.  They can’t bust her open without a stick of ‘giant’ which would rouse everybody in five miles, an’ they can’t lug her off bodily—­she’s too heavy.  No; it’s safer there than any place I know of.  There ain’t no abscondin’ cashiers an’ all that.  Tomorrer I’m goin’ back to live on the claim an’ watch this receiver man till the thing’s settled.”

When the girl arose to go, he accompanied her up through the deep sand of the lane-like street to the main, muddy thoroughfare of the camp.  As yet, the planked and gravelled pavements, which later threaded the town, were unknown, and the incessant traffic had worn the road into a quagmire of chocolate-colored slush, almost axle-deep, with which the store fronts, show-windows, and awnings were plentifully shot and spattered from passing teams.  Whenever a wagon approached, pedestrians fled to the shelter of neighboring doorways, watching a chance to dodge out again.  When vehicles passed from the comparative solidity of the main street out into the morasses that constituted the rest of the town, they adventured perilously, their horses plunging, snorting, terrified, amid an atmosphere of profanity.  Discouraged animals were down constantly, and no foot-passenger, even with rubber boots, ventured off the planks that led from house to house.