Twice had Owen risen, and the other imagined he was about to come around to his side of the fire to glance over his shoulder at the charts; but both times young Dugdale had simply stepped to the pile of wood and, taking up an armful, tossed it upon the dying blaze.
Cuthbert was beginning to fancy he would have to make a move himself to draw the other's attention to what he was doing, so wrapped up did Owen seem in his own personal affairs; when suddenly he discovered that those wonderfully keen gray eyes of the rover were glued upon the papers he held upon his lap.
Then it was that Owen did come around to his side of the fire, and the disturbed look upon his face gave way to a bright smile as he remarked:
"I didn't notice what you had there, before. I was so bound up in my own affairs. I suppose those are maps of this country you have; perhaps I could be useful in telling you whether they are accurate or not, for I rather guess I've picked up considerable information during these years of wandering in the woods here. If you don't mind me looking at them—"
"Why, to tell the truth that's just what I was wishing you would do, old chap, but I hated to break in on your brown study. Here's a supposed-to-be reliable chart of this region, which I paid a man a good sum to get up for me; but already I've found it more or less crooked, and have begun to lose confidence in its accuracy. Perhaps you could show up the faults, and set me right, so that if the time ever comes when I have to depend on the thing I won't get astray; for truth to tell it would be no fun to find oneself lost on these upper reaches of the great Saskatchewan. Sit right down here, and squint your optic over this set of hen-tracks, made by the halfbreed, Dubois."
"Dubois, you say—why, I know the fellow well. He ought to be able to make a decent map of this country, for he's spent many years roaming over it, though I think he was more concerned about stealing some honest trapper's pelts than anything else. Why, see here, he's made an awful botch of this thing right around this quarter, where he certainly knows every foot of ground. I suspect that the greasy old rascal had some object in misleading you—I wouldn't put it past him to plan so that you might be lost up here, when he and some companions just as unscrupulous as himself, would come on the scene and demand a big sum to get you out of the scrape. I know of several things he has done as bad as that," remarked Owen, with indignation in his voice.
So he began to point out the false lines in the map, and at Cuthbert's suggestion he erased the pencil lines and made new ones as he went along, so that at the end of an hour that particular chart was entirely changed, presenting so new an aspect that the explorer was aroused to declare that the miserable deceiver, Dubois, would hear something not to his liking in case they ever met again.
"This Hudson Bay post which you have marked on the river above us—what is the name it is known by—he did not identify it except as a station?" asked Cuthbert, putting a finger on the cross.
"Fort Harmony," replied Owen, with a twitch about the corners of his mouth that seemed to be along the sarcastic order, as if deep down in his heart the lad thought the name might be a misnomer, according to his own experience.
"I suppose it is something of a store, being so far up in the wilderness; and is in charge of—a factor, I believe they call the boss?" pursued Cuthbert.