"Let's stir into the house, then," she suggested. "These miserable little black flies have found a tender place on me. My, but they're bloodthirsty insects."
Bill laughed, and they took refuge in the cabin, the doorways and windows of which were barricaded with cotton mosquito net against the winged swarms that buzzed hungrily without. Ensconced in the big chair by the fireplace, with Bill sprawled on the bearskin at her feet, Hazel came back to his last remark.
"Why did you say it was time for us to be stirring, Billum?"
"Because these Northern seasons are so blessed short," he answered. "We ought to try and do a little good for ourselves—make hay while the sun shines. We'll needa da mon'."
"Needa fiddlesticks," she laughed. "What do we need money for? It costs practically nothing to live up here. Why this sudden desire to pursue the dollar? Besides, how are you going to pursue it?"
"Go prospecting," he replied promptly. "Hit the trail for a place I know where there's oodles of coarse gold, if you can get to it at low water. How'd you like to go into the Upper Naas country this fall, trap all winter, work the sand bars in the spring, and come out next fall with a sack of gold it would take a horse to pack?"
Hazel clapped her hands.
"Oh, Bill, wouldn't that be fine?" she cried. Across her mind flashed a vivid picture of the journey, pregnant with adventure, across the wild hinterlands—they two together. "I'd love to."
"It won't be all smooth sailing," he warned. "It's a long trip and a hard one, and the winter will be longer and harder than the trip. We won't have the semi-luxuries we've got here in this cabin. Not by a long shot. Still, there's a chance for a good big stake, right in that one trip."
"But why the necessity for making a stake?" she inquired thoughtfully, after a lapse of five minutes. "I thought you didn't care anything about money so long as you had enough to get along on? And we surely have that. We've got over two thousand dollars in real money—and no place to spend it—so we're compelled to save."