“Thanks,” Goodrich accepted. “I feel sort of all in, all at once. Tough going.”
The other man talked a little. Goodrich learned that he was a trapper, going into a region he had trapped before. Goodrich knew that he ought to account for his own presence. No man bore so far up those lonely valleys without definite object. But he was too tired to care. And the man asked no questions, betrayed no curiosity whatever.
“I had an idea nobody trapped this far up,” Goodrich said at length, feeling that he must say something. “I figured on looking over the ground myself.”
The other grinned.
“There’s oceans of room,” he replied. “I kinda wish some good, square guy would run a line up here. It gets pretty lonesome before spring. I stick it out because it pays, not because I like the hermit life so well.”
Goodrich coughed behind his hand. He didn’t want to talk. He rose stiffly, sore in every muscle. It was pitch-dark now.
“I’m going to turn in,” he said briefly.
He gathered stuff for his bed, spread his blankets, laid the silk tent over these to fend off the dew. His eyes closed in sleep while the other man still sat humped beside the heap of glowing coals in an attitude of profound reflection. There was nothing uncommon about that. It is a woodsman’s habit.
Well toward morning Goodrich awoke, alert, refreshed, very much alive to his situation. He hadn’t reckoned on running into anybody. He had not meant to be seen by a soul in the valley of the Toba. But he had grown tired and less watchful and so blundered into this man’s camp. He lay now thinking upon his next move. The constables would come up with this man. They would learn positively that Goodrich was bearing upstream, so many hours ahead of them. They would hunt him as they would hunt any predatory animal. If there had been a doubt of his presence on Toba headwaters this hunt might soon have grown perfunctory. But coming upon this trapper they would know.
He couldn’t turn back now. He could, of course, lie up in the brush, and when the officers passed double back downstream. But he was aware of an increasing double risk in returning to the coast. He would have to dodge furtively to avoid recognition. And another sea level winter would kill him as surely as a jail. High in the hills, among dry snows, breathing dry sun-washed air, that sore spot in his lung would heal. He could win health and keep his freedom on the summit of the coast range.