"I thought I had put everybody off my trail," Lucky Jim was saying to himself, "who might happen to be interested in my movements. I got away clean enough, but the same snow storm that protected that, also gave me away—the untracked snow about my cabin. Of course, one of them must have followed Dad and me to his cabin the night he made me the proposition. Well, there they are, and here I am. I guess Dad's trip to Sitka is all off."
Thoughts of this riled him.
"They're robbin' an old pioneer, that's what they're doin'! And I had it figured out that he'd spend the rest of his days in comfort. And, by gum, he will, too!"
When about two miles below the bar Lucky Jim steered the raft into a slough and went ashore. He kindled a fire and made himself a small pail full of coffee. Hour after hour he sat there drinking the warm liquid, and now and again throwing a couple of small sticks on the fire.
Around seven in the morning he cooked and ate his breakfast, then went to sleep.
He woke about five in the afternoon; cooked himself another meal, chained up the dogs, then climbed the hill. An hour later, from a point of vantage on the mountain spur that rose just back of his cabin, he looked down upon Easy Money bar. Not without a thrill he noticed that his bedrock drain was no longer that, but a real cut.
"I'll bet there's some real money in those boxes at this minute!" he cried.
Critically he inspected the several channels of the river beyond Easy Money and other bars, then the flat beyond these. Evidently satisfied with the results of his reconnoitre, he returned to his camp. His first act thereafter was to make a measuring stick and drive it into the river bottom a few yards from the shore.
Next day Lucky Jim took the dogs, crossed the divide and spent the day fishing on a stream on the other side. On his return with a mess of trout the first thing he did was to look at his measuring stick. The river, it told him, had gone down three inches during the past twenty-four hours.