“Well, I git lonesome a leetle,” said Long Jim. “I was prospectin’ around in the mountains rimmin’ the valley yestiddy, an’ I saw you across the snow. Jest leetle specks you were, but agin the snow I thought you were humans. I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes, but I come along investigatin’. An’ then when night come on, you lit your fires, an’——”
“Sure was lucky for us, Long Jim, if you ain’t a-lyin’,” said Art.
Long Jim stiffened, and for a moment was prepared to stand on his dignity but then he smiled in a jolly way that sent crinkly wrinkles all around his blue eyes.
“Don’t blame ye for that, Artie,” he said. “Sounds like I were crazy, don’t it? But jest wait till you see.”
CHAPTER XXV.—VOICES FROM THE WILDERNESS.
But Long Jim had not falsified. The valley proved, indeed, to be more even than he described, for as the world now knows important mineral deposits were discovered, including gold, silver, copper, coal, iron and oil. But of the development going on to bring not only this marvelous region but the vast oil region beyond the Coppermine into the world’s resources naught need be said now. Suffice it to say that such development is under way, for Mr. Hampton had the ear of the great financiers, and was able to bring it about; and also that Farrell and Long Jim are receiving handsome incomes from their shares in the various projects.
Here the party settled down, constructed huts, and prepared to await the coming of Spring when the snow should disappear from the vast wilderness separating them from the northern edge of the civilized lands and the ice in the rivers be unlocked.
One of the first things done by the boys was to erect their radio plant, and they succeeded without much difficulty in opening communication with the little Fort of the Northwest Mounted Police on the farthest rim of the settled country. MacDonald and Dick, with their prisoners, had arrived only a day or two before communication was opened, and the two parties exchanged the stories of their adventures by radio.
To Long Jim the radio was as great a source of wonder as Long Jim’s valley was to the boys. He could never get over marveling at it, and every time that it was brought into use, Long Jim, if he were in the vicinity, was on hand, sitting in rapt and open-mouthed astonishment while the boys operated the instruments.
Much time was spent in exploring this wonderful valley, at the resources of which Mr. Hampton could never express sufficient astonishment.