Stormont filled his glass and he resumed in an unsteady voice: "Cliff rises from the creek in a little round hollow. There's a big rock near the top of the divide opposite—"
"Go on. How does the creek run?"
"You're hustling me," Drummond grumbled. "I wanter think. It's important. Knowing how the creek runs fixes where she is." He paused, and a vague distrust of Stormont entered his bemused brain. He had got the fifty dollars and saw, with drunken cunning, that it might be prudent to keep something back. "She runs south."
"South?" exclaimed Stormont, who knew that the natural drainage of the region is north-east to James Bay.
"Sure," said Drummond, with a sullen look. "Strange told the old man, and the old man told me."
Stormont pondered. If the creek flowed south, it drained a subsidiary basin and probably filled a lake from which a river ran north or east. The clue was worth fifty dollars because it would simplify the search for the lode.
"How does the creek lie from the factory?"
"'Bout south-west," said Drummond in a thick, drowsy voice. "There isn't a factory at Longue Sault now. Company moved the post after the old man left."
"How far is the creek from where the post was?"
"Lemme think," Drummond muttered, and his eyes half closed. "Old man reckoned Strange made it in a fortnight's march."