“Does anything in connection with this bush strike you?” he asked.
“Its stiffness, if that’s what you mean,” Carroll suggested, smiling. “These big conifers look as if they’d been carved. They’re impressive, in a way, but they’re too artificial.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Vane informed him impatiently.
“To tell the truth,” said Carroll, “I didn’t suppose it was. Anyway, these trees aren’t spruce. They’re red cedar, the stuff they make the roofing shingles of.”
“Precisely. Just now, shingles are in good demand in the Province, and with the wooden towns springing up on the prairie, Western millers can hardly send roofing material across the Rockies fast enough. Besides this, I haven’t struck a creek more adapted for running logs down, and the last sharp drop to tidewater would give power for a mill. I’m only puzzled that none of the timber-lease prospectors has recorded the place.”
“That’s easy to understand,” said Carroll. “Like you, they’d no doubt first search the most difficult spots to get at.”
They went on in another minute, and pitched their light tent beside the creek when darkness fell.
“By the by, I thought you were disappointed when you got no mail at Comox,” Carroll remarked at length, feeling that he was making something of a venture.
“I was,” said Vane.
This was not encouraging, but Carroll persisted. “That’s strange, because your hearing nothing from Nairn left you free to go ahead, which, one would suppose, was what you wanted.”