“I was Professor—but guess I’ve told you that already.”
“The lead?” inquired the other man.
“Outcrop, a few yards of it. Then it dips on a slight inclination, and evidently runs back toward the range. An easy drive for an adit. Stayed there two days, Verneille and I. Quite sure about that gold.”
Weston’s face grew intent.
“You recorded it?”
“We staked a claim, and started back; but Verneille couldn’t find a deer, and when we first hit the valley provisions were running out. There was a mist in the ranges, and whichever way we headed we brought up on crags and precipices. Then we went up to look for another way across and got into the snow. I never knew how I got out—or where Verneille went, but when I struck a prospector’s camp—he wasn’t with me.”
The track-grader nodded. He had been born among the ranges, and knew that the prospectors who went out on the gold trail did not invariably come back. He had heard of famishing men staggering along astonishing distances half-asleep or too dazed to notice where they were going. He and Weston had done so themselves, for that matter.
“You told the prospector about the lead?” Weston inquired.
“If I did he never found the mine. I was scarcely sensible when I reached his camp, and I lay there very ill until he went on and left me with half a deer he’d shot. After that I nearly gave out again making the settlements.”
“Well,” said the track-grader, “where’s the lake?”