So that, as they worked westward and gave over their toboggan on the waters of a stream far beyond the Rockies, when Spring began to touch the North with her magic wand they grew merry, galvanized by the spirit of adventure.  They could laugh, and sometimes they could sing.  And they planned largely, with the sanguine air of youth.  On the edges—­not in the depths—­of that wild and rugged land where manifold natural resources lay untouched, it seemed as if a man had but to try hard enough in order to succeed.  They had conquered an ominous stretch of wilderness.  They would conquer with equal facility whatever barriers they found between them and fortune.

The sweep of Spring’s progress across the land found them west of the Coast Range by May, in a wild and forbidding region where three major streams—­the Skeena, the Stikine, and the Naas—­take their rise.  For many days their advance was through grim canyons, over precipitous slopes, across glaciers, bearing always westward, until the maps with which Tommy Ashe was equipped showed them they were descending the Stikine.  Here they rested in a country full of game animals and birds and fish, until the height of the spring torrents had passed.  During this time they fashioned a canoe out of a cedar tree, big enough to carry them and the dogs which had served so faithfully as pack animals over that last mountainous stretch.  The Stikine was swift and forbidding, but navigable.  Thus at last, in the first days of the salmon run, they came out upon tidewater, down to Wrangel by the sea.

There was in Thompson’s mind no more thought of burned bridges, no heartache and empty longing, only an eagerness of anticipation.  He had come a long way, in a double sense.  He had learned something of the essential satisfaction of striving.  A tough trail had served to toughen the mental and moral as well as the physical fiber of him.  He did not know what lay ahead, but whatever did so lie would never dismay him again as things had done in the past, in that too-recent vivid past.

He was quite sure of this.  His mood was tinctured with recklessness when he summed it up in words.  A man must stand on his own feet!

He would never forget that sentence.  It was burned into his memory.  He was beginning to understand what Sophie Carr meant by it.  Looking backward he could see that he never had stood on his own feet like a man.  Always he had required props.  And they had been forthcoming from the time the prim spinster aunts took his training in hand until he came to Lone Moose self-consciously, rather flauntingly, waving the banner of righteousness.  Thompson could smile wryly at himself now.  He could see the unreckonable element of chance functioning largely in a man’s life.

And in the meantime he went about Wrangel looking for a job!

CHAPTER XIV

THE RESTLESS FOOT