“As for Jerry James, I think it’s only fair for you to tell him what I’ve told you and let him decide whether he wants to continue on with us.”
“I’ll ask him,” Sandy agreed. “But I know what he’s going to say right now.”
They were almost at the front door of the barracks now. “One more thing, Dad,” Sandy said. “Tagish Charley. I like him an awful lot. You don’t think that he—”
“That he’s the one who ransacked our cabin last night?” the doctor finished for him. “The same thought flashed through my mind, too. I just can’t believe it, though. Charley’s been with the professor for years; he’s like one of the family. Still—” his face went grim—“we don’t really know—and we can’t afford to take chances.”
Superintendent MacKensie greeted them as they entered the building. “Your wagons are all set to roll,” he announced.
Sandy took his friend aside just before they left the station and repeated what his father had said, offering Jerry the choice of going back to Valley View.
“I ought to slug you,” the husky, dark-haired boy roared, his black eyes flashing, his square jaw jutting out defiantly, “for even thinking I’d back out on you when you were in trouble! What kind of a guy do you think I am?”
“Take it easy, Buster.” Sandy threw his arm around his friend’s shoulders. “I told Dad that’s exactly what you would say.”
They made good time all that morning, and a little after one o’clock they reached Fort Nelson. Here they ate lunch with the Game Commissioner, an old friend of Professor Crowell’s. Later, while the station wagon and truck were being refueled, the boys accompanied Tagish Charley down to the Indian village on the banks of the frozen Nelson River. Charley went straight to the house of the headman in the village, and they talked earnestly and excitedly in an Indian dialect for some time.
On the way back to the truck, he told the boys: “That man know everything go on in province. He say many strangers pass this way. They say they French trappers, but they speak strange tongue and never sell any furs.”