Brunswick wrinkled his forehead in growing interest. "What sort of scribbling was it?" he asked.
"Letter that looked like a 'W,' and something else that wasn't quite legible. I estimated that the marks were at least a half century old."
"Funny!" remarked the sergeant. "It sounds as though some surveyors had traveled through here some time or other, and I always had an idea that the nest of mountains on this side of the water shed was practically unexplored country."
"Which proves that you don't know your district history," cut in Devreaux quietly. The colonel glanced across at Dexter. "You say there was a letter 'W.' Letter 'U' also, wasn't there?"
"I couldn't quite make out the rest," was the reply. "It might have been a 'U.'"
"Certainly it was! 'W.U.'—'Western Union'!"
Devreaux put down his empty coffee cup, and scanned the circle of faces about the table. "This isn't terra incognita, as some of you seem to think," he resumed. "It's a lost country now, but it was thoroughly explored at one time—about sixty years ago. The trail Dexter found was blazed by the pioneers of the old Western Union company.
"I wasn't much more than a kid at the time," the colonel resumed as the others waited, silent. "The date was somewhere around 1865. A long time ago, but I remember hearing the story—how an attempt was made to lay an all-land telegraph across America and Asia and Europe.
"The idea," continued Devreaux, "was to string a cable from the United States through the northwest wilderness, across Behring Strait to Siberia, and thence to Russia and the capitals of Europe."
"It was never accomplished," interrupted Dexter.