“Wait—­wait.”  Ben sprang to his feet, and caught by his earnestness, Ezram got up too.  “I sure—­I sure appreciate the trust you put in me,” Ben went on slowly.  “For my own part I’d give everything I’ve got and all I’d hope to ever get to go with you.  It’s a chance such as I never dared believe would come to me again—­a chance for big success—­a chance to go away and get a new start in a country where I feel, instinctively, that I’d make good.  But that’s only the beginning of it.”

The dark vivid eyes seemed to glow in the soft light.  “Forgive me if I talk frank; and if it sounds silly I can’t help it,” Ben continued.  “You’ve never been in prison—­with a five-year sentence hanging over you—­and nobody giving a damn.  For some reason I can’t guess you’ve already done more for me than I can ever hope to repay.  You got me out of prison, you wakened hope and self-respect in me when I thought they were dead, and you’ve proved a friend when I’d given up any thought of ever knowing human friendship again.  I was down and out, Ezram.  Anything you want me to do I’ll do to the last ditch.  You know I can fight—­you know how a man can fight if it’s his last chance.  I’ve got some bonus money coming to me from the Canadian Government—­and I’ll put that in too, because we’ll be needing horses and supplies and things that cost money.  But I can’t take all that from a stranger.  You must know how it is.  A man can’t, while he’s young and strong, accept charity—­”

“Good Lord, it ain’t charity!” the old man shouted, drowning him out.  “I’m gettin’ as much pleasure out of it as you.”  His voice sank again; and there was no line of mirth in his face.

“It was long ago, in Montreal,” Ezram went on, after a pause.  “I knew your mother, as a girl.  She married a better man, but I told her that every wish of hers was law to me.  You’re her son.”

IV

Night is always a time of mystery in Snowy Gulch—­that little cluster of frame shacks lost and far in the northern reaches of the Caribou Range.  Shadows lie deep, pale lights spring up here and there in windows, with gaping, cavernous darkness between; a wet mist is clammy on the face.  At such times one forgets that here is a town, an enduring outpost of civilization, and can remember only the forests that stretch so heavy and dark on every side.  Indeed the town seems simply swallowed up in these forests, immersed in their silence, overspread by their gloom, and the red gods themselves walk like sentries in the main street.

The breath that is so fragrant and strange between the fronting rows of shacks is simply that of the forest:  inept the woodsman who would not recognize it at once.  The silence is a forest silence, and if the air is tense and electric, it is because certain wilderness forces that no white man can name but which surely dwell in the darker thickets have risen and are in possession.