"Doughty," he said, "you should realize that you could not possibly have gone up with us this year. Minutes are too precious on the northern trails to spend any of them teaching the routine of camp life or the duties of the Survey. We take absolutely no men who are not experienced. But, besides that, this year would not be the one in which you would wish to go, since the parties now up there are surveying small sections of territory to fill up gaps in the more populated areas."
"Then there is no chance for me?"
"Not this summer. But Mr. Herold did tell me that he had seen you, and perhaps there may be an opportunity later for you to get into the Alaskan work."
Roger bent forward eagerly to find out what was coming.
"If, therefore, you make good in the Survey during the coming year, I might take you with me next summer, in what is going to be one of the most interesting Alaskan trips ever undertaken, wherein I am going to make a reconnoissance of Alaska from south to north, beginning at Cook Inlet and working through to the Arctic Ocean. It will be my personal party, and because the distance is so great it will have to be a forced march every day without a break. That needs toughness, and of course I know nothing of your powers of endurance. One weak man in the party, you see, might delay us so that we would not reach the Arctic until after the freeze-up and then there would be no getting out."
"I may not be very big, Mr. Rivers," said the boy with a conscious gesture, "but I strip well."
The echo from the athletic field sounded strange in that office so full of the actualities of life, and even Roger himself laughed at the way his words sounded.
"I mean," he added, "that I was always able to do good track work and had lots of wind."
"You need more than that. You need muscle and grit. I think you'll do, Doughty," the explorer continued, "but if you want the chance of going with me next spring, you've got to make a reputation for yourself in the Survey. Learn your business as a rodman and so forth, become able to pack a vicious mule, know how to swim an ice-cold river with a six-mile current, get so that you can swing an ax and build a bridge, be an expert canoeist in a boiling rapid, sit anything with four legs that ever was foaled, accustom yourself to sixteen hours on the trail and to picking out the soft side of a rock to sleep on, grow to like mosquitoes, and by that time you'll be about ready for the Alaskan trail. But it's no job for a weakling."
"Those are just the very things I want to be able to do," answered Roger.