"You don't want a guide," said Cranston, with grim good nature. "You want a nurse. Take my advice: as soon as you get to town buy a geography primer!"
Ralph, in his relief upon obtaining a bit of definite information, could afford to take Cranston's jibes in good part.
"From Prince George you take the branch railway down to Blackfoot," Cranston continued, "then by the main line westward over the mountains to Yewcroft, and north up the Campbell Valley to Fort Edward. From Fort Edward——"
"I'm at home there," Ralph interrupted.
"I'm glad of that," said Cranston ironically. "Else I might think you were a visitor from the skies!"
Cranston sent the little boys back to the house with the dishes. It was growing dark, and he built a fire on the edge of the bank "for sociability," he said.
"Sorry I cannot ask you into my house," Cranston said, with a kind of honest diffidence. "There are nine of us, and we are overcrowded."
Ralph suspected from his manner that he had other reasons. He hastened to reassure him.
The two men sat until late smoking and talking by the fire. The progress of intimacy beside a campfire cannot be gauged by civilized usages. Cranston was a lonely man, and for his part, Ralph, after the overwhelming emotional experiences of the past few days, needed a sane friend to lean upon. Ralph could not talk of his affairs, but it was good to him to have Cranston beside him.
The trader's talk was all of the country. "There's only one thing bad about it," he said. "That's the mixed marriages."