“It’s as good a surface sign as I ever saw,” Colonel Howell explained to the young men. “It’s a rock cut, but there’s enough tar floating loose to show that there’s oil mighty close. But there’s no use getting excited about it and tapping a gusher. We’d only have to cap it and wait for the tank cars. Everything around here is prospective, of course. All we can do is to cover the field and establish our claim. And I guess that’s a good winter’s job.”
“Ain’t you goin’ to work this derrick?” asked Paul, indicating the one erected near the camp.
“Looks like there might be gas around here,” was the colonel’s laughing response. “We’ll sink a shaft here an’ maybe we can find a flow of natural gas. That’d help some when she gets down to forty below.”
It was surprising how all these preparations consumed time. It was nearly the end of August when these plans had been worked out and with the setting up of the Gitchie Manitou in its novel aerodrome and the storing away of its oil and gasoline in a little bark lean-to, the camp appeared to be ready for serious work.
For a week Ewen and Miller had been setting up the wood boiler and engine for operating the derrick. From the night he unceremoniously left camp, Chandler, the Englishman, had not been heard from.
Each Sunday all labor ceased in camp and Ewen and Miller invariably spent the day, long into the night, in Fort McMurray. The boys also visited this settlement, which had in it little of interest. There was no store and nothing to excite their cupidity in the way of purchases. They heard that Chandler had gone down the river, but the information was not definite and, although Colonel Howell left messages for his discharged employee, the man did not reappear and sent no word.
Colonel Howell’s other workmen, Ewen and Miller, were not companionable and did not become comrades of the boys. Now and then, in the month’s work, Norman and Roy had heard Colonel Howell freely criticize them for the method of their work or for some newly omitted thing they had failed to do during the winter.
When the stores and supplies had been compactly arranged in the rear of the living room and the new storehouse, the cabin and its surroundings seemed prepared for comfortable occupancy in the coldest weather.
The only man retained out of the river outfit was a Lac la Biche half-breed, a relative of Moosetooth, who was to serve both as a cook and a hunter. At least once a week, the entire party of young men went with Philip Tremble, the half-breed hunter, for deer or moose. This usually meant an early day’s start, if they were looking for moose, and a long hike over the wooded hills to the upland.
One moose they secured on the second hunt and to the great joy of the boys Philip brought the skin of the animal back to camp. The antlers, being soft, were useless. This episode not only afforded a welcome change in meat which, as Colonel Howell had predicted, could not be told from tender beef, but it sadly interfered with the work on the aerodrome.