“Our dogs were delighted at being able to join some of their breed again, and, upon the whole, we were all treated as well as could be expected.
“We stayed there for two nights, then made an early start on the third morning for Forty-Mile.
“The faithful squaw and her two boys accompanied us a short distance, until Hal had gotten his bearings and said he would be all right.
“We started on the trail at a goodly speed, and reached a small settlement by night-fall. The next day we arrived at the first real colony of white people we had encountered since we left the camp, and a week after we had left the squaw we came to the town of Forty-Mile, where we filed the papers for the claim Herrick and Dwight had staked out.
“Hal knew this was an important matter, and wondered if the rascal who stranded us had found his way to the land-office first.
“I was sitting in the little smoking-room in the place they called ‘Hotel’ one morning, while Hal was in our room sewing his gold-dust belt a bit safer inside of his shirt.
“I had changed so much in appearance—with a boyish growth of beard over my chin, and my hair as long as a poet’s—that a villainous-looking man who came in and asked for whiskey failed to recognize me; but I knew him at once as being the man who had escaped from our canoe.
“I managed to get out of the room without being seen, and ran to Hal.
“‘What do you think! The murderer is downstairs!’
“‘Who?—Sit down and talk sensible,’ said Hal.