Stoughton nodded sagely. "That's right, but if you liked fishing,
Birch, you wouldn't drag in shareholders in that churlish fashion.
What about blast furnaces, Riggs? We haven't heard a whisper yet.
Wonder what Clark is thinking of?"
"Oh Lord!" murmured the little man, "if we only had iron!"
Fisette, who was dipping his dishes in a pot of hot water, turned his head ever so slightly. The others had either forgotten about him or concluded that their conversation was beyond a half-breed. But not a word had escaped the sharp ears of the man who moved so silently beside the fire. 'Iron!' They had iron, but apparently did not know it. Fisette felt in his pocket for the small angular fragment he always carried, and was about to hand it to Wimperley, when again he remembered Clark's command. He was to say nothing to any one. So the half-breed, with wonder in his soul, laid more wood on the fire and, squatting in the shadow of a rock, stared at the stream now shrouded in the gloom, and waited for what might come.
"But there's none in this damned country," blurted Stoughton, "so get back to Birch's picture of the shareholders on the moss."
"Trouble is I can't get away from it." Riggs' small voice was so plaintive that the others laughed, then dropped into a reverie while there came the murmur of the hidden stream and the small unceasing voices of the dusk that blend into the note which men call silence. Very softly and out of the south drifted a melodious sound.
"Six o'clock at the works," drawled Birch, snapping his watch. "Does that suggest anything?"
An hour later two buckboards drew up in front of the hotel and the four stepped down, a little stiff, but utterly content. As Riggs took his basket from Fisette, he coughed a little awkwardly.
"Look here, you fellows, I'm going to send my fish to R.F.C. with our compliments. It's only decent."
"Well," remarked Birch reflectively, "you might as well. It's the only compliment we're paying this trip."
A profound sleep strengthened their resolution, and when next morning Clark announced that he had arranged a trip up the lake, they acceded at once. In half an hour the company's big tug steamed out into Lake Superior, and the four, wrapped in big coats, for the water was like ice and the air chill, waited for the hour when Clark should run dry.