"He must be a bad egg for a fact. He's certainly not popular."
They camped the next night at the beginning of the pass which led between the two mountains which reared their snowy summits far up toward the sky.
"Cabin not more'n 'bout two mebby three mile from here," Lucky told them as he halted the team. It was only two o'clock, the place not being so far from the town as they had thought from what the little Frenchman had told them. Lucky had told them when starting out that morning that he thought the man was mistaken as to the distance but, as he had not been there for a number of years, he was not sure.
They had found a splendid place for a camp. Beneath an overhanging rock, the ground was almost free from snow as a circle of thick spruce trees in front and about twenty feet away had protected it on the open side. Here they made beds of thick spruce boughs and a roaring fire soon warmed the face of the rock by its reflection so that it seemed impossible that the temperature outside was nearly forty below. Before leaving the river early the preceding day, they had stopped long enough to cut a hole in the ice and allow Jack to catch a dozen large trout and five or six salmon, enough, as Bob said, to last them a couple of weeks.
After supper was over they sat for some time in front of the fire and discussed plans for the morrow.
"We got be ver' careful," Lucky told them. "Dat man, Long, heem bad man an' heem get mad he shoot, oui."
"But we'll be three against one, not counting Uncle Silas," Jack reminded him.
"But heem got gun an' bullet go ver' fast."
"Lucky's right, Jack," Bob declared. "We must play it safe. Of course there may not be any trouble and everything may be all right and I sure hope it is but if he's keeping Uncle up here against his will, the way it looks, he's probably playing for big stakes."
"But why should he want to keep him up here?"