CHAPTER VI
A STRANGE MEETING
“That moose was very far north,” said Gordon Duncan, as they sat dreaming by the fire after their first meal of moose steak. “One seldom finds them here. He was alone. Moose and men are like that sometimes. They prefer to live alone. Timmie was that way. He longed for solitude.”
The old man’s eyes were half closed. He appeared to be living in the past. “Yes,” he mused, “Timmie liked me. He promised to wait for me back there behind the mountains. But he liked to be alone. He’s waiting there still, behind the mountains.”
Johnny’s lips were parted for a question regarding this long lost partner and the green gold, but feeling the pressure of the girl’s hand on his arm, he left the question unasked.
“She’s afraid of getting him excited and bringing on another attack,” he thought to himself.
That night as he lay rolled in his blankets and the others slept farther back in the cave-like shelter, he fell to wondering about the strange pair. Why had they gone so far into the wilderness? Why had they appeared to be afraid of other human beings? Why, in the end, had they lost all their fear of him and accepted him as a traveling companion? How much was to be expected from the future? Was the old man’s partly told tale of a lost partner and the finding of green gold purely a work of the imagination, a fairy story, or was it all true? Would they find Timmie? Was he waiting still? Would the green gold be there? Was there much green gold? Was it valuable? Was—
So, wondering on and on, he fell asleep.
Next day, as they entered a narrow valley, after toiling down a treacherous slope, they came quite suddenly upon a well marked trail. Trees had been blazed here and there, and brush cleared away. True, there were no marks of recent travel. Only here and there were signs that told of someone passing weeks, perhaps months before. This trail came from the left, down a narrow ravine, then paralleled the river on its way northward.
For a long time after discovering this trail, Gordon Duncan stood quite motionless, apparently buried in deep thought.
When at last he led the way onward, it was to take up this trail. This he did in silence. Not a word was uttered by any member of the party.