“I forgot. This day week, eh?” he went on urgently. “The river’ll slacken then. That do?”
The Kid laughed happily as he squeezed the soft hand lying so contentedly in his.
Superintendent Raymes laid aside the folded sheets of the closely written report which he had read several times over. For a moment he sat gazing at it thoughtfully. Then he reached across his desk and selected a long cigar, and passed the box to his visitor and temporary subordinate.
“Best take one, Bill,” he said. Then he laughed quietly. “You can only die once.”
“But I don’t want to die—now.”
Bill shook his head and pulled a pipe from the pocket of his pea-jacket.
In a moment both men were smoking. Bill gazed about him while he waited for the other to speak. It was the same office he had always known. Simple, plain, typical of the lives of these Mounted Policemen. Somehow it appealed to him just now infinitely more than it had ever done before. He remembered his mood that time when he had sat in the same chair two years before. And somehow he wanted to laugh.
“It’s an amazing story, Bill,” Raymes said after awhile. “I guessed when I got you interested two years back there was a deal to it. But I never reckoned it was going to be the thing it is. Say—” His eyes lit and he swung his chair about and faced the other while he held his cigar poised streaming its smoke upon the somewhat dense atmosphere of the room. “By all accounts the folk hereabouts owe you a deal for the nosing of Le Gros’ ‘strike.’ It’s the biggest since ‘Eighty-Mile’?”
Bill shook his head.