"Look at 'em!" the fisherman broke out, admiringly. "They're as clean as a hound's tooth. They shine so I dassent take hold of anything."
"I have made my deal with the bank," Boyd exulted. "All I need to raise now is one hundred thousand dollars. The bank will advance the rest."
"That's great," said Balt, without interrupting the contemplation of his digits. "That's certainly immense. Say! Don't they glisten?"
"They look very nice—"
"Stylish! I think."
"That one hundred thousand dollars makes all the difference in the world. The task is easy, now. We will make it go, sure. These bankers know what that salmon business is. Why, I had no trouble at all. They say we can't lose if we have a good site on the Kalvik River."
"They're wise, all right. I guess that girl took me for a Klondiker," George observed. "She charged me double. But she was a nice girl, though. I was kind of rattled when I walked in and sat down, and I couldn't think of nothing to talk about. I never opened my head all the time, but she didn't notice it. When I left she asked me to come back again and have another nice long visit. She's an awful fine girl."
"Look out!" laughed his companion. "Every Alaskan falls in love with a manicurist at some time or other. It seems to be in the blood. We are going to have no matrimony, mind you."
"Lord! She wouldn't look at me," said the fisherman, suddenly, assuming a lobster pink.
That evening they dined as befits men just out from a long incarceration in the North, first having tried unsuccessfully to locate Fraser; for the rogue was bound to them by the intangible ties of hardship and trail life, and they could not bear to part from him without some expression of gratitude for the sacrifices he had made. But he was nowhere to be found, not even at train time.