Trapper Jim stopped short in the middle of a sentence. He was staring hard at something he had seen all of a sudden.
"Where'd you get this, Ed Whitcomb?" he demanded, in a thick voice.
As he spoke he caught hold of a locket which hung about the neck of the other by a little gold chain. It had been burst open possibly by the fall, and as Trapper Jim started to draw the shirt of the wounded man together again he had disturbed this keepsake, which, turning about, disclosed the face of a pretty young woman.
"Why, she gave it to me," replied the other, weakly; "I've worn it that way ever since she died; and you're the first, right now, that's ever looked on it, Jim."
The trapper's eyes filled up.
"What was she to you, Ed Whitcomb?" he asked, gulping hard.
"My mother, of course," came the answer.
Trapper Jim simply turned the face on the locket so that Max could see it, and then he said in almost a whisper:
"Susie Benedict!"
Max understood. This, then, was the girl for love of whom Jim Ruggles had partly given up his ambition of ever being anything worth while when he fled to the wilderness.