Julian Jones came to a full pause and over his shoulder studied the straight-before-her gaze and forbidding expression of his wife’s face.
“ I ain’t forgotten the nugget,” he assured me.
“ Nor the hussy,” the little woman snapped, apparently at the mud-hens paddling on the surface of the lagoon.
“ I’ve been travelling toward the nugget right along—”
“ There was never no reason for you to stay in that dangerous country,” his wife snapped in on him.
“ Now, Sarah,” he appealed. “I was working for you right along.” And to me he explained: “The risk was big, but so was the pay. Some months I earned as high as five hundred gold. And here was Sarah waiting for me back in Nebraska—”
“ An’ us engaged two years,” she complained to the Tower of Jewels.
“— What of the strike, and me
