“The Indian shook his head, but knowin’ that I wanted to see an’ count everybody in the district, he turned off the trail—­he said it was a trail but I couldn’t see it—­an’ led the way to the hut.  I went in an’ found a man lying on a couple of planks, just about dead.  He was one of the survivors of the wrecked steamer Filarleon, and had frozen all the fingers of both hands.  Two or three were turnin’ gangrenous; an’ one of these had got so bad that with his other crippled hand, he had sawed off the decomposin’ member with his pocket-knife.  One foot also was frozen an’ had turned black, but that afterwards recovered.”

“What did you do for him?” asked the boy.

“Put him on the sled, of course,” the Alaskan answered, “an’ took him to the nearest settlement.  I afterwards heard that a doctor happened in to camp soon after I left, an’ got at his hurts right away, an’ that he was put back into fair condition all but the one finger.—­That’s no tenderfoot’s country up there.”

“I wonder you stuck it out,” said Hamilton.  “But then,” he added a moment later, “I can see how a fellow would hate to quit.”

“It was tough,” reluctantly admitted the narrator, “an’ I’ll tell you what I did.  I’m not much of a hand with the pen, but right in the middle of the work I found a man who was goin’ down the river, an’ I sat down and wrote a long letter to the supervisor.  It was about as plaintive a thing as I ever read.  I had no reason to expect an answer, but by chance another party was comin’ up that way, an’ some weeks later I received a reply.  What do you suppose he said!”

“I haven’t the least idea,” answered the boy.

“His answer read just this way: 

“’I chose you because you were experienced in the treeless coast.  Go to it.  We are expecting you to make good.’”

“And,” Hamilton said, his eyes shining, “I’ll bet you did!”

CHAPTER IX

CONFRONTED WITH THE BLACK HAND

The sidelights that Hamilton had received on the Alaskan enumeration had given him a greater zest for census work than ever, and he devoted not a little of his spare time to the study of conditions in the far North.  Indeed, the lad became so enthusiastic about it that every evening, when he reached home, he worked out the route of the enumerator whose schedules he had edited during that day’s work.  He had secured the big geological reconnaissance map of Alaska for the purpose.  Consequently, it was with a sense of regret that he faced the day when the last of the Alaskan schedules had been edited.

“What next, I wonder, Mr. Barnes?” said Hamilton, laying down his pen and glancing round to his companion.  “How about Porto Rico?  They had a census this spring, too, didn’t they?”

“I imagine the Porto Rico work is about done,” his friend replied, “at least I know that most of it came in some weeks ago.  How are you on Spanish?”