“In June, dear. I’ll be back. I promise. Don’t worry,” I said again, as I swung upon the step of the Pullman.
She was smiling—that brave, April smile—and I watched her until the train carried me beyond sight of her.
Northward we went, Dan Murdock and I. Somewhere in those barren mountains in the untrammeled Northwest of Canada, a grizzled old prospector had unearthed a store of that precious stuff, tungsten. Murdock and I had been sent by our government to investigate it, determine its value, its quantity, and report.
It was a long task that awaited us. August was already upon us. The road inland was long and hard. It would be winter when we reached the prospect, spring before we could hope to complete our data and return.
Four days took us to the end of the railroad—a station tumbled in the midst of scarce-broken prairie and timberland. There we met the prospector, a shriveled, wiry, hairy old man, marked indelibly with the brand that men bear who have lived much in solitude.
From there our trail led northwest. Up waterways we pressed, across silent, silver lakes, hemmed in to the very brim with an untouched growth of pine and spruce; across portages, where streams thundered down precipitous canyons while we laboriously transported canoe and duffel through the timber, following faint paths that told plainly how rarely they had known human foot prints.
August passed—a series of long days filled only with the toil of paddle and portage. September was on us, and the days grew shorter, and sharp at either end. We were in a veritable untrodden land now. The mountains were close upon us. The portages grew more frequent, the way more rough and toilsome. Norton, the leathery-skinned old prospector, informed us curtly one morning, “Four more days, and we’re there.”
That day we abandoned the canoe, cacheing it safely in shrubbery and underbush. For two days we pressed upward, packing across a ridge that tested our strength to the utmost.
The morning of the third day found us once more on water. We had reached a deep, swift river, a stream that flowed to the north. We had crossed the divide and were on a tributary of the Mackenzie. From a cunning cache Norton drew forth another canoe, and we sped at ease down the stream.