For a few minutes Corbett made no answer, but sat staring fixedly out of the little window at the Frazer.
"It's infernal foolishness," he said at last—"infernal foolishness, I know, and yet I feel as you do, Jim. I shall never rest until I have tried Phon's way. I'm getting as superstitious as a Siwash."
"Superstitious is a mighty long word, but it don't amount to much. There's a heap of things happens as you cain't account for."
"Perhaps," assented Ned, and then took up once more Steve's ragged map of British Columbia, and studied for the hundredth time the course traced upon it by the dead man's nail.
"It runs south-south-east from here," he said.
"Yes, I know, and that'll be clar up that bluff and on to the divide, and then over a lot of gulches, I reckon, until we strike the Chilcotin. It'll be a pretty rough trail, you bet."
"Well, rough or smooth, Jim, if Steve doesn't mind waiting here for us, I'll come with you and start as soon as you please. What do you say, Steve?"
Now Steve Chance, as the reader knows, was by nature a decent obliging fellow, and, moreover, Steve had had all the rough travel that he cared about for years to come, so he answered readily enough.
"If you'll pass me your word that you'll be back inside of three weeks, I'll stay. But you don't expect to see Cruickshank, I hope?"
"I know as we shall see him," said Rampike quietly. "Summat tells me as his time's up."