The "boys" were all waiting on the bank of course. Ralph a little dreaded the ordeal that awaited him. It is difficult to guard a secret in the wide and empty North, where men have little to talk about. When he was seen from the shore shouts of surprise and welcome were raised. The mere fact that he was returning from the south when he had gone north betrayed the length of the journey he had taken. Stack, hearing the welcome, brightened somewhat. It would not be difficult to learn something about one who was so well known, he thought.
Ralph was carried off to Maroney's, little Stack clinging to him like a burr. There, all lined up before the pine shelf, the questions began.
"Well, Doc, give an account of yourself!"
"Gentlemen!" began Ralph with an air of portentous gravity. "An astonishing adventure happened to me! I woke up in Joe Mixer's shack that morning with a dark brown taste in my mouth along of Maroney's whiskey, and I went for a walk up the river to cool my head. As I was standing there admiring the view, I heard a buzzing like a sixty-horse-power bumblebee over my head, and I'm damned if one of those aeroplanes that you've all heard about didn't come down and light in the grass beside me like a crane. Surprised! You could have laid me out with a rabbit's foot! The fellow aboard it, he was nervous, too. Seems he had only a quart of gasoline left, and him far from home. He asked me where he could get some more. I told him there wasn't a drop in the country. Maroney buys it all up, said I, to put in his whiskey."
Ralph paused to let the laughter spend itself. "The fellow was in a great taking then," he went on. "Didn't know what to do. Suddenly I remembered about Tar Island up the river. I said: 'There's a place ten miles from here where they say that petroleum oozes right out on the ground. Couldn't we gather it up and refine some gasoline?' 'You're on, fellow,' said he; 'climb aboard!' Say, we made Tar Island in five minutes, but I was deaf the rest of the day with the wind in my ears. It was a slow job, you understand, because we hadn't anything but a tin pail and a whiskey bottle and a strip of birch bark to make a still out of. We were there three weeks, and then we had him tanked up, and he flew south and dropped me off at Kimowin. That's all."
This tale, which was in the style of humour most admired at Maroney's, made a decided hit. Maroney himself conceded that the next round was on him. In every gathering of men it is tacitly understood that a man has a right to keep his affairs to himself—provided he can also keep his temper. When they saw that Ralph did not mean to tell where he had been they let him alone. Little Stack bit his lip in his disappointment. Stack had not been in the bar five minutes before the batteries of wit were turned on him. The wiry tangle of his mouse-coloured hair procured him the names of "Haystack" and "Jackstraw."
Later Dan Keach carried Ralph away to his office. This was more difficult for Ralph, because Dan as his friend had a claim on his confidence. Ralph had a story ready to tell him, but first he had to find out how far it would coincide with the Fort gossip. Joe Mixer knew where he had gone; Joe had probably told the steamboat men, and they would bring the news back with them. Still, to his surprise and relief, no one in the bar had offered to chaff him about any half-breed girl.
"What do they say about me?" he asked Dan.
"Nothing," said Dan. "You simply disappeared from Gisborne portage. They say Joe Mixer knows where you went, but he won't tell."
Ralph's conscience reproached him for the story he was about to tell, but there was no help for it. "There's no secret about it," he said carelessly. "I met some Indians going up the Campbell, and they took me along with them. I staked out a point on the river, a beautiful place, and just off the proposed line of the railway. I went on up the river to Cheval Noir Pass, and out over the new line. While I was outside I filed my claim, and now I have to go back and clear a part of the land and build a shack to fulfil the conditions."