"I have a copy," Ralph said.
"I was looking at it last night," Stack went on. "I found Gisborne portage and Hat Lake. That little lake seems to be one of the sources of the great Spirit River. I wonder if it's possible to follow all those little lakes and rivers down to the main stream?"
"You'll have to ask somebody more experienced than I," said Ralph.
He was an indifferent dissembler. The note of evasion was not lost on the little man. He passed to something else.
Later they were talking about rapids. "A fellow in town told me that the worst rapids in the North were in the Rice River," said Stack. "He said it was white water all the way from the mouth of the Pony to the forks of the Spirit."
Ralph was caught off his guard. "A lot he knew about it!" he said. "It's smooth going all the way."
He had no sooner said it than he regretted the slip. Looking sideways at the little man he was reassured by the innocence of his expression. Stack started to talk about other things.
Thus during the four days of the stage trip, and the day and a half on the steamboat, Stack collected his tiny scraps of information and stored them away without arousing Ralph's suspicions. Thrown upon each other as they were during the whole time, Stack managed to create and to maintain a certain fiction of intimacy between them. But as they drew close to Fort Edward he was disappointed with the net results. Of real intimacy there was none.
It was clear to any one who watched him that Ralph had a secret. When he was off his guard he could not keep his eyes from turning north, nor keep the shine of his hidden fire from showing in them. Stack naturally thought it was gold that induced the shine. In his own way the little man was clever, but hardly clever enough to distinguish between the dazzle of gold and the dazzle of love in a young man's eyes. He laid himself out to win Ralph's confidence, seeking to tempt him with more or less apocryphal confidences of his own. Ralph was never moved to open his heart in return. A resentful look began to show in the mouse-coloured eyes, when Ralph's head was turned away.
Ralph was a little surprised to find Fort Edward unchanged. The raw packing-case still rose from among the little soap-boxes; the mud was still undried; the stumps undrawn; and the little Tewksbury lay with her nose tucked in the bank. True, he had been gone only a month, but such changes had taken place in him that it seemed unreasonable to find everything going on as before.