“Rest!” said Gordon Duncan, a great weariness overtaking him. “Rest. That’s what we need. And then,” with a fresh eagerness, “then the long, long trail. Green gold it was, green like the copper in the bed of the stream, but gold, real gold.”
Johnny assisted in arranging a comfortable resting place for him, then he nursed his small fire along until it was a laughing, roaring young conflagration.
“The trail leads downstream and across the river,” he thought to himself. “Fine chance!” He could catch the rush of waters a hundred yards away. That was the river. He had tried crossing that rushing torrent once, and had come near losing his life.
“Never again!” he told himself. “Unless in a boat. And where in all this wild land does one get so much as a birchbark canoe?”
As if reading his thoughts the old man sat up quite suddenly.
“Somewhere down the river,” he said, “the land slopes away into low hills. Here the river is less rapid. It freezes over. If we get there before the breakup, we may cross on the ice. But that,” he added, “is a long, long trail.”
CHAPTER IV
GREEN GOLD
“A long, long trail.” The old man’s words echoed in Johnny’s ears as half an hour later, he sat before the fire of great glowing logs. Chilled by the cold and the dark, warmed by the golden glow of human companionship, he sat there half asleep, when the girl spoke.
Strangely enough, her words echoed his thoughts.
“A long, long trail,” she was saying in a tone that was resonant with mystery and longing.