McNabb's eyes were twinkling. "I knew it, too, lass," he answered. "That's why I bailed him out an' sent him up here with two hundred an' fifty thousand dollars in negotiable paper in his pocket to close this deal for me."
"And you knew all the time," cried the girl, staring at her father in amazement, "when Orcutt was gloating over you back there, that you, and not he, owned the timber? And you let him go on and humiliate you to your face!"
"Sure I did," grinned McNabb. "He was havin' the time of his life, an' I hated to spoil it. An' besides, while he was talkin', truck after truck was rollin' off down the tote-road haulin' material to my mill site that I'll buy in at ten cents on the dollar. Orcutt'll pay for his fun!"
"But—your face—when he told you that you had lost the timber! It positively went gray!"
"Poker face," laughed McNabb. "But run along now—the two of ye. It's many a long day since Dugald an' I have had a powwow with our feet cocked up on bales of Injun goods." As the two walked arm in arm toward the door, McNabb called to the girl, "Here, lass, take your coat!" He tossed the Russian sable which the girl caught with a glad cry. "Ye'll be needin' it up here agin winter comes."
"Winter! Up here! What do you mean?"
"Oskar says he isn't goin' back to Terrace City," he explained. "Except maybe for the weddin'. The North has got into his blood, an' the McNabb Paper Company needs a competent manager."
XXV
When Wentworth left the trading room he went straight to his cabin, and disregarding his open trunk, he lifted a pack-sack from the floor and swung it to his shoulders. It was the pack he had deposited there scarcely an hour before when he had trailed in from the mill site, and he knew that it contained three or four days' supply of rations.
On the Shamattawa he had heard from a truck driver that an old man and a girl had started for Gods Lake post, and he instantly recognized McNabb and Jean from the man's description. Thereupon he made up a pack and headed for the post for the sole purpose of baiting the two, and of flaunting his prowess as a financier in their faces.