"How do you mean—lucky?"
"You wait an' see," grinned McNabb. "D'ye know, Orcutt offered me ten thousand dollars for my tote-road? An' it cost me a hundred thousand!"
A long silence followed McNabb's words, during which Hedin cleared his throat several times. The older man smoked his pipe, and cast covert glances out of the tail of his eye. Finally he spoke. "What's on ye're mind, lad? Speak out."
Hedin hesitated a moment and plunged into the thing he had dreaded to say. "Mr. McNabb, I've been up here several months now—" he hesitated, and as the other made no comment, proceeded. "I have come to like the country. It—I don't think—that is, I don't want to go back to Terrace City. You can understand, can't you? You have lived in the North. I wasn't born to be a clerk. I hate it! My father was a real man. He lived, and he died like a man. This is a man's country. I am going to stay." Hedin had expected an outburst of temper, and had steeled himself to withstand it. Instead, Old John McNabb nodded slowly as he continued to puff at his pipe.
"So ye're tired of workin' for me. Ye want to quit——"
"It isn't that. I would rather work for you than any man I ever knew. You have been like a father to me. You will never know how I have appreciated that. I know it seems ungrateful. But the North has got me. I never again could do your work justice. My heart wouldn't be in my work. It would be here."
"An' will ye keep on workin' for Murchison? What will he pay ye?"
"It isn't the pay. I don't care about that. I have no one but myself to think of. And Murchison said that with my knowledge of fur the Company would soon give me a post of my own."
"But—what of the future, lad?"
Hedin shrugged. "All I ask of the future," he answered, and McNabb noted just a touch of bitterness in the tone, "is that I may live it in the North."