The man laughed softly.
“No,” he said, “I have no idea of even trying to take you in, either dead or alive. Look here, I’ll take a sporting chance on you. Go ahead. Take any part of my outfit you need. Leave me yours. I’ll go through with the play. You’ll get a week’s start. I don’t know as it’ll do me any harm. I kinda like the notion of helping a man out of a jack pot.”
“You mean it?” Goodrich asked, dumfounded at this turn.
“Sure, I mean it!”
Goodrich could see the man grinning as if the idea tickled his fancy. He dropped the six-shooter and began to roll a cigarette. Goodrich sighed relief.
“Well, I don’t know why you should,” Bill said. “But it’s darned white of you. I guess I’ll take you at your word and drift before you change your mind.”
There wasn’t much more to do. The man flung Bill Goodrich a cartridge belt to go with his rifle. Goodrich took the other’s gray Mackinaw.
When he had finished these simple preparations the man had got on his boots. He walked down to the canoe with Bill.
“Look here,” he said. “About twenty miles above here you’ll strike the head of canoe navigation—a sixty-foot falls. Three hundred yards above that a creek makes in from the nor’west. You go up that creek a half mile and you come to a big slide. Climb the hill to the east, and in the timber on the first bench you’ll strike a blazed line. Follow that till it runs out. That’ll be a matter of fifteen miles. When you pass the last blaze you’ll come out on an open fern sidehill. On the opposite side of the creek you’ll spot another big slide. You cross the creek, go up on the north side of the slide till you strike a narrow bench about five hundred feet above the stream. When you get on the bench face north and you’ll see a big bald mountain away off. There’s two sharp knobs on this mountain and a glacier between. Head straight halfway between the two knobs and keep going along the bench. You’ll come on a cabin inside of half a mile if you hold a straight line. There’s plenty of grub there. Nobody but me knows that cabin’s there. I got another one farther up the divide. The air’s like old port wine up there of a winter morning. Be good for that bad lung of yours.”
He hesitated a moment.