Gallatin got up and walked across the room to the door, where he stopped.
“I suppose I can fix matters with Mr. Loring——”
“Yes, I think so,” replied Kenyon guardedly. “But you’d better be sure of it. He’s coming here to-morrow, isn’t he?”
Gallatin nodded gravely, and then thoughtfully went out.
That night John Kenyon dutifully reported in Stuyvesant Square. Mr. Loring also dutifully reported there, and the three persons completed the details of the conspiracy.
So it happened that toward the middle of June, Phil Gallatin and John Kenyon reached the “jumping-off place” in the Canadian wilds. No two “jumping-off places” are alike, but this one consisted of three or four frame dwellings and a store, all squatted on the high bank of a small river, which came crystal-clear from the mystery of the deep woods above. John Kenyon got down from the stage that had driven them the ten miles from the nearest railroad station and stood on the plank walk in front of the store, a touch of color in his yellow cheeks, sniffing eagerly at the smell of the pine balsam. Gallatin glanced around at the familiar scene. Nothing was changed—the canoes drawn up along the bank, the black setter dog, the Indian packers lounging in the shade, the smell of their black tobacco, and the cool welcome of the trader who came out of the store to greet them.
Joe Keegón and another Indian, whose name turned out to be Charlie Knapp, got the valises out of the wagon. Gallatin offered Joe his hand, and the Indian took it with the steady-eyed taciturnity of the wilderness people. Joe was no waster of words or of emotion. He led the way into the store of the trader, and they went over the outfit together—blankets, ammunition, tea, pork, flour, tents, and all the rest of it, while John Kenyon sat on a flour barrel, swinging his legs, smoking a corncob pipe and listening.
That night, after Phil had turned in, he sent a letter and a telegram to a Canadian address and gave them to the teamster with some money. Then he, too, went to bed—dreaming of Arcadia.
They had been in the woods for three weeks now. They weren’t traveling as light as Phil had done the year before and the outfit included two canoes, well loaded. So they went slowly northward by easy stages, fishing the small streams and camping early. Gallatin had at first been in some doubt as to his partner’s physical fitness for severe work, but he soon found that he need have given himself no concern, for with every day a year seemed to be slipping away from John Kenyon, who insisted on taking his share of the burdens with a will that set Phil Gallatin’s mind at rest. And as they went farther into the wilderness, they made almost camp for camp the ones that Phil had made the year before. John Kenyon had hoped that Phil would take him into the Kawagama country. He wanted very much to see that waterfall on the south fork of the Birch River that Phil had spoken of. Kenyon had an eye for the beautiful.