"Seven days doesn't leave much time for creeping."
"I know." Armstrong was grim. "But the Indian should help."
"What Indian?" I exclaimed. The nightmare feeling deepened.
"I forgot, Arnold. When Chetzisky and MacRoberts disappeared into the wilds, they took two Indians along that had been with MacRoberts on previous trips. Fortunately there was a third Indian, a young boy, who went out once before with MacRoberts. We're counting on him to guide you to wherever the Doctor is."
I mulled over that while Armstrong got on the phone and booked us on the next flight to the coast.
Fifteen hours we were in Vancouver conferring with Major Burley of Canadian Military Intelligence, a precisely neat man who made me painfully self-conscious of my unshaven face. I met Johnny Eagle for the first time. He bore little resemblance to the lithe, stern-eyed Red man of the movies. A dumpy boy of fifteen, dressed in baggy pants and a pullover, he escaped the classification of nondescript only by his eyes; they shone with a quiet luminosity, like lights through a mist. They gave me a feeling of confidence in him.
According to Johnny Eagle, the place we wanted was north of Burns Lake. He didn't know the exact spot, but he remembered two things nearby: a rain-rotted cross on a mountain grave and two peaks that MacRoberts had christened the Twins because of their identical appearance.
It wasn't much to go on, but it was something to keep alive our hopes of getting Chetzisky before it was too late.
"Good luck," Major Burley said, "I hope it won't be a wild goose chase."
"It better not be," Armstrong said tersely. "You better get going, Arnold. I'll keep in touch with you by radio from Burns Lake."