CHAPTER

  1. [Bottomless Swamp]
  2. [The Packer]
  3. [The Model]
  4. [Ida’s First Ascent]
  5. [Ida’s Confidence]
  6. [Kinnaird Strikes Camp]
  7. [Grenfell’s Mine]
  8. [In the Ranges]
  9. [A Fruitless Search]
  10. [The Hotel-keeper]
  11. [In the Moonlight]
  12. [The Copper-mine]
  13. [Stirling Lets Things Slide]
  14. [Ida Asserts Her Authority]
  15. [The Rock Pool]
  16. [On the Lake]
  17. [Scarthwaite-in-the-Forest]
  18. [Weston’s Advocate]
  19. [Illumination]
  20. [Ida Claims an Acquaintance]
  21. [The Brûlée]
  22. [Grenfell Goes on]
  23. [The Lode]
  24. [A Qualified Success]
  25. [Stirling Gives Advice]
  26. [The Jumpers]
  27. [Saunders Takes Precautions]
  28. [Weston Stands Fast]
  29. [The Fire]
  30. [Defeat]
  31. [High-grade Ore]
  32. [Grenfell’s Gift]

THE GOLD TRAIL

CHAPTER I

BOTTOMLESS SWAMP

It was Construction Foreman Cassidy who gave the place its name when he answered his employer’s laconic telegram. Stirling, the great contractor, frequently expressed himself with forcible terseness; but when he flung the message across to his secretary as he sat one morning in his private room in an Ottawa hotel, the latter raised his eyebrows questioningly. He knew his employer in all his moods; and he was not in the least afraid of him. There was, though most of those who did business with him failed to perceive it, a vein of almost extravagant generosity in Stirling’s character.

“Well,” said the latter, “isn’t the thing plain enough?”

The secretary smiled.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Still, I’m not sure they’ll send it over the wires in quite that form.”

His employer agreed to the modification he suggested, and the message as despatched to Cassidy read simply, “Why are you stopping?”