“I think I’ll have a smoke,” he said. “I’m afraid any remarks I could make wouldn’t do justice to the occasion. Language has its limits.”
He sat down on the charred log and took out his pipe before he proceeded: “A brûlée’s not a nice place to wander about in when there’s any wind, and I’ve an idea there’s some coming, though it’s quiet now.”
Shut in, as they were, in the deep hollow with the towering snows above them, it was impressively still; and in conjunction with the sight of the black desolation the deep silence reacted upon Carroll’s nerves. He longed to escape from it, to make a noise, though this, if done unguardedly, might bring more of the rampikes thundering down. He could hear tiny flakes of charcoal falling from them, and though the fire had long gone out, a faint and curious crackling, as if the dead embers were stirring. He wondered if this were some effect of the frost; it struck him as disturbing and weird.
“We’ll work right round the brûlée,” said Vane. “Then I suppose we had better head back for Vancouver, though we’ll look at that cedar as we go down. Something might be made of it; I’m not sure we’ve thrown our time away.”
“You wouldn’t be sure of such a thing,” said Carroll. “It isn’t in you.”
Vane disregarded this. A new constructive policy was already springing up out of the wreck of his previous plans. “There’s a good mill site on the inlet, but as it’s a long way from the railroad we’ll have to determine whether it would be cheaper to tow the logs down or split them up on the spot,” he went on. “I’ll talk it over with Drayton; he’ll no doubt be useful, and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t earn his share.”
“Do you believe the arrangement you made with Hartley applies to the cedar?”
“Of course,” said Vane. “I don’t know that the other parties could insist upon the original terms—we can discuss that later; but, though it may be modified, the arrangement stands.”
His companion considered the matter dispassionately, as an abstract proposition. Here was a man, who, in return for certain information respecting the whereabouts of a marketable commodity, had undertaken to find and share it with his informant. The commodity had proved to be valueless, but during the search for it he had incidentally discovered something else. Was he under any obligation to share the latter with his informant’s heirs?
Carroll decided that the question could only be answered in the negative; but he had no intention of disputing his comrade’s point of view. In the first place, this would probably only make Vane more determined or ruffle his temper; and in the second Carroll, who felt very dubious about the prospect of working the cedar profitably, was neither a covetous nor an ambitious person, which was, perhaps, on the whole, fortunate for him.