The man smiled.
"Whenever I can get money 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'll admit 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 himself 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; 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," Harding said. "I understand that there are no Hudson 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. The next morning the prospectors took the horses and 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 labor 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 northward; but it would be different when they came back. Rivers and lakes would be frozen then. That might make traveling easier, if they could pick up the hand sleds 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 rigors 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 across which they painfully picked their way, steep ridges to be clambered over, and belts of quaggy muskeg they must skirt. Benson, however, gave them no trouble; the man was getting hard and was generally cheerful; and 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.
One night, when it was raining, they sat beside their fire in a desolate gorge. A cold wind swept between the thin spruce trunks that loomed vaguely out of the surrounding gloom as the red glare leaped up, and wisps of acrid smoke drifted about the camp. There was a lake up the hollow, and now and then the wild and mournful cry of a loon rang out. The men were tired and somewhat dejected as they sat about the blaze with their damp blankets round them. A silence had fallen upon them; but suddenly Blake looked up, startled.
"What was that?" he exclaimed.