"Will you be here any time?" he said.
"I don't quite know. There's no reason I shouldn't tell you what I can, and I feel like talking now. I'm quite pleased to run that mill up the Inlet for our people, that is, while they leave me to fix things as I like them; but as I told you, Merril has been getting his grip on the stock lately, and his views about the royalties on my patents don't quite coincide with mine. I've a couple of other notions that will save labor which our company has not bought up, and it's quite likely I'll turn them over to the Hastings people. In the meanwhile I'm not going to rush things, and it's probable I'll hang on until we've had the stockholders' meeting."
"Then it's Merril who is standing in your way?"
Jordan smiled dryly. "Now you understand the thing. Seems to me neither of us has any great reason to like that man."
Nothing more was said on that point, and by and by they left the scented shadow of the pines, and clattered across a wooden bridge which spanned the turbid, green Fraser, into a stretch of sunlit meadows and oatfields formed by the silt the great river had brought down. In due time they reached a wooden ranch flanked by shadowy bush, and Jordan, pulling the team up before it, glanced down the long white road that leads to New Westminster, a few miles away.
"I guess I'll go on to town, and come back for you," he said. "Still, you had better make sure you're at the right place first."
Jimmy got down, and a man who had apparently heard the beat of hoofs, commenced to throw down the split slip-rails which in Western Canada usually serve as gates.
"Yes," he said, when Jimmy spoke to him, "this is Forster's ranch. In fact, that is my name."
He was dressed in the bush-rancher's jean, but he had a pleasant face with a certain hint of refinement in it, and smiled when Jimmy told him who he was.
"Miss Wheelock's brother? Come right in and put your team up," he said. "It's not more than an hour or so until supper. Your friend will come with you?"