“I’d sooner take less dollars and a small share in the concern; and Drayton must stand in.”
“It’s a question of terms,” Vane replied. “I’ll consider your views.”
They discussed it for a while, and when they had at length arrived at a provisional understanding, the prospector made a sign of acquiescence. “We’ll let it go at that; but the thing will take time, and I’ll never get the money. If you exercise your option, you’ll sure pay it down to Seely?”
“Celia’s his daughter,” Drayton explained. “He has no one else. She’s a waitress at the —- House in the city.” He named an hotel of no great standing. “Comes home at nights and looks after him.”
Vane glanced round the room. It was evident that Celia’s earnings were small; but he noticed several things which suggested that she had lavished loving care upon the sick man, probably at the cost of severe self-denial.
“Yes,” he answered; “I’ll promise that. But, as I pointed out, while we have agreed upon the two payments, I reserve the right of deciding what share your daughter and Drayton are to take afterwards within the limits sketched out. I can’t fix it definitely until I’ve seen the timber—you’ll have to trust me.”
The prospector once more looked at him steadily, and then implied by a gesture that he was satisfied.
The man fumbled under his pillow, and produced a piece cut out from a map of the province, with rough pencil notes on the back of it.
“It was on my last prospecting trip I found the spruce,” he said. “I’d been looking round for the Company I was with, and I figured I’d strike the coast over the range. The creeks were full of snow-water, and as I was held up here and there before I could get across, provisions began to run short. By and by I fell sick; but I had to get out of the mountains, and I was pushing on for the Strait when I struck the place where the spruce is. After that, I got kind of muddled in the head, but I went down a long valley on an easy grade and struck some Siwash curing the last of the salmon. The trouble is, I was too sick to figure exactly where the small inlet they were camped by lies. They took me back with them to their rancherie—you could find that—and sailed me across to Comox by and by. I came down on a steamboat, and the doctor told me I’d made my last journey.”
Vane expressed his sympathy. The narrative has been crudely matter-of-fact, but he had been out on the prospecting trail often enough to fill in the details the sick man omitted.