"We found indications of gold, copper, and one or two other metals, besides petroleum, but didn't see anything that looked worth taking up. Considering the cost of transport, you want to strike it pretty rich before what you find will pay as a business proposition."
"So I should imagine. Petroleum's a cheap product to handle when you're a long way from a market, isn't it?"
"Give us plenty of it and we'll make a market. It's an idea of mine that there's no part of this country that hasn't something worth working in it if you can get cheap fuel. Where the land's too poor for farming you often find minerals, and ore that won't pay for transport can be reduced on the spot, so long as you have natural resources that can be turned into power. With an oil well in good flow we'd soon start some profitable industry and put up a city that would bring a railroad in. Show our business men a good opening and you'll get the dollars, while there are folks across the frontier who have a mighty keen scent for oil."
"Have you done much prospecting?" Harding asked.
The other smiled. "Whenever I can get dollars enough for an outfit I go off on the trail. There's a fascination in the thing that gets hold of you—you can't tell what you may strike and the prizes are big. However, I allow that after seven or eight years of it I'm poorer than when I started at the game."
Blake made a sign of comprehension. He knew the sanguine nature of the Westerner and his belief in the richness of his country, and he had felt the call of the wilderness. There was, in truth, a fascination in the silent waste that drew the adventurous into its rugged fastnesses, and that a number of them did not come back seldom deterred the others.
"We want to get as far north as the timber limit, if we can," he said. "I understand there are no Hudson's Bay factories near our line, but we were told we might find some Stony Indians."
"There's one bunch of them," the prospector replied. "They ramble about after fish and furs, but they've a kind of base-camp where a few generally stop. They're a mean crowd and often short of food, but if they've been lucky you might get supplies. Now and then they put up a lot of dried fish and kill some caribou."
He told Blake roughly where the Indian encampment lay, and after talking for a while they went to sleep. Next morning the prospectors, who took the horses, started for the south, while Blake's party pushed on north with loads that severely tried their strength. After a few days' laborious march they reached a stream and found a few Indians who were willing to take them some distance down it. It was a relief to get rid of the heavy packs and rest while the canoe glided smoothly through the straggling forest, and the labour of hauling her across the numerous portages was light compared with the toil of the march. Blake, however, had misgivings; they were making swift progress northwards, but it would be different when they came back. Rivers and lakes would be frozen then, which might make travelling easier, if they could pick up the hand sledges they had cached, but there was a limit to the provisions they could transport, and unless fresh supplies could be obtained they would have a long distance to traverse on scanty rations in the rigours of the Arctic winter.
After a day or two the Indians, who were going no farther, landed them and they entered a belt of very broken country across which they must push to reach a larger stream. The ground was rocky, pierced by ravines, and covered with clumps of small trees. There were stony tracts they painfully picked their way across, steep ridges to be clambered over, and belts of quaggy muskeg they must skirt, and the day's march grew rapidly shorter. Benson, however, gave them no trouble; the man was getting hard and was generally cheerful, while when he had an occasional fit of moroseness as he fought with the longing that tormented him they left him alone. Still at times they were daunted by the rugged sternness of the region they were steadily pushing through, and the thought of the long return journey troubled them.