Bull had no alternative.  The man was there to talk, and his desire to do so was frankly displayed.

“I won’t smoke, thanks,” Bull replied without offense.  “It’s too near dinner.”

“Dinner?  There’s a ha’f hour to the dressing bugle.”  The stranger returned the elaborate case stuffed full of large, expensive cigars to his pocket, and drew out a gold cigarette case instead.  “Still I don’t blame you a thing.  Cigars?  Me for a cigarette all the time.  I don’t guess any feller ever heard tell of tobacco, till he’d inhaled a good, plain Virginia Cigarette.”

Bull looked on while the man wasted half-a-dozen matches lighting his beloved cigarette.  He was not without interest.  There was a slightly Jewish caste about his face which was frankly smiling, and lit with shrewd, twinkling dark eyes.  He conveyed, too, somewhat blatantly, an atmosphere of abounding prosperity.

Bull laughed as the cigarette was finally lighted.

“That’s better,” he said.  “Now—­you can inhale.”

“Sure I can.”  The man’s smile was full of amiability.  “Inhale anything.  Say, up in the camps I’ve inhaled tea-leaves rolled in cracker paper before now.  Ever hit a lumber camp?”

“Yes.”

“But not out West?  British Columbia?”

“No.  Only Quebec.”

The stranger shook his head disparagingly.

“Quebec!  Psha!  Quebec ain’t a thing.  It ain’t a circumstance,” he said complacently.  “No, sir.  The West.  That’s the place for lumbering.  B.C.  West of the Rockies.  Man, it’s the world’s greatest proposition.  The place you can spend a lifetime cutting ninety foot baulks, and lose track of where you cut.  Quebec’s mostly small stuff,” he went on contemptuously, “pulp-wood an’ that.”  He shook his head.  “It’s no place for capital.  And, anyway, the Frenchies have got the whole darn place taped out.  Oh, they’re wise—­the Frenchies.  If a feller’s lookin’ to get ahead of ’em he needs to stake out the Arctic, where you’d freeze the ears of a brass image.  The Frenchies got it all.  The only big stuff lies on Labrador, anyway.  I know.  I prospected.  No, it’s me for the big hills, West.  The big hills and the big waterways that ’ud leave Quebec rivers looking like a leak in a bone dry bar’l.  My name’s Aylin P. Cantor, Vancouver, B.C.  Maybe you know the name?”

Bull shook his head.

“I’m not—­”

“Oh, it don’t matter,” interjected Mr. Cantor.  “You see, the West’s one hell of a long way—­west.  I just didn’t get your—­”

“Oh, my name’s Sternford.”

Mr. Cantor’s face beamed.

“Why I’m glad to know you, Mr. Sternford,” he exclaimed.  Then a quick, enquiring upward glance of his shrewd eyes suggested recollection.  “But say—­you ain’t Sternford of Labrador?  The groundwood outfit up at—­up at—­”

“Sachigo?”

“That’s it, sure.  Guess I’d lost the name a moment.”

Bull nodded amusedly.