Taking this half-caste Cree to guide him, the mining man set out in search of the long-lost Ramsey. They crossed the first range and searched the streams north of the Peace River pass, almost to the crest of the continent, but found no trace of the prospector.
When the summer died and the wilderness was darkened by the Northern night, the search was abandoned.
The years drifted into the past, and finally the Chinook Mining and Milling Company went to the wall. The English-American promoter, smarting under criticism, reimbursed each of his associates and took over the office, empty ink-stands and blotting paper, and so blotted out all records of the one business failure of his life.
But he could not blot out Jack Ramsey from his memory. There was a "reason," he would say, for Ramsey's silence.
One day, when in Edmonton, he met Mayor Ross, who had come into the country by the back door some thirty years ago. The tales coaxed from the Mayor's memory corresponded with Ramsey's report; and having nothing but time and money, the ex-President of the C.M. & M. Company determined to go in via the Peace River pass and see for himself. He made the acquaintance of Smith "The Silent," as he was called, who was at that time pathfinding for the Grand Trunk Pacific, and secured permission to go in with the engineers.
At Little Slave Lake he picked up Jim Cromwell, a free-trader, who engaged to guide the mining man into the wonderland he had described.
The story of Ramsey and his rambles appealed to Cromwell, who talked tirelessly, and to the engineer, who listened long; and in time the habitants of Cromwell's domains, which covered a country some seven hundred miles square, all knew the story and all joined in the search.
Beyond the pass of the Peace an old Cree caught up with them and made signs, for he was deaf and dumb. But strange as it may seem, somehow, somewhere, he had heard the story of the lost miner and knew that this strange white man was the miner's friend.
Long he sat by the camp fire, when the camp was asleep, trying, by counting on his fingers and with sticks, to make Cromwell understand what was on his mind.
When day dawned, he plucked Cromwells' sleeve, then walked away fifteen or twenty steps, stopped, unrolled his blankets, and lay down, closing his eyes as if asleep. Presently he got up, rubbed his eyes, lighted his pipe, smoked for awhile, then knocked the fire out on a stone. Then he got up, stamped the fire out as though it had been a camp fire, rolled up his blankets, and travelled on down the slope some twenty feet and repeated the performance. On the next march he made but ten feet. He stopped, put his pack down, seated himself on the trunk of a fallen tree and, with his back to Cromwell, began gesticulating, as if talking to some one, nodding and shaking his head. Then he got a pick and began digging.