"Not much," said old Kirkby promptly. "You ain't got the stren'th, ol' man, you don't know them mountains, nuther; you'd be helpless on a pair of snow shoes, there ain't anything you could do, you'd jest be a drag on us. Without sayin' anything about myself, w'ich I'm too modest for that, there ain't three better men in Colorado to tackle this job than Jim Armstrong an' Bob Maitland an'—well, as I said, I won't mention no other names."
"God bless you all, gentlemen," faltered Stephen Maitland. "I think perhaps I may have been wrong, a little prejudiced against the west, you are men that would do honor to any family, to any society in Philadelphia or anywhere else."
"Lord love ye," drawled Kirkby, his eyes twinkling, "there ain't no three men on the Atlantic seaboard that kin match up with two of us yere, to say nothin' of the third."
"Well," said Robert Maitland, "the thing now is to decide on what's to be done."
"My plan," said Armstrong, "is to go to the old camp."
"Yep," said Kirkby, "that's a good point of deeparture, as my seafarin' father down Cape Cod way used to say, an' wot's next."
"I am going up the cañon instead of down," said the man, with a flash of inspiration.
"That ain't no bad idea nuther," assented the old man; "we looked the ground over pretty thoroughly down the cañon, mebbe we can find something up it."
"And what do you propose to take with you?" asked Maitland.
"What we can carry on the backs of men. We will make a camp somewhere about where you did. We can get enough husky men up at Morrison who will pack in what we want and with that as a basis we will explore the upper reaches of the range."