“Sure, I’ll buy it.  I’ll buy it for just what I figure it is worth to me.  It cost you a thousand dollars a mile.  It’s worth a hundred to me.  Ten thousand dollars is my limit.  Take it or leave it.  Ten cents on the dollar, John; you may as well save what you can out of the wreck.”

“Is that the best you can do by me?  Man, it’s robbery!  I can’t afford to lose ninety thousand.  It’ll cripple me.  An’ I stood to make a million!”

“Cripple you, eh?  Well, it won’t hurt my feelings to see you limping.  That’s the very best we can do.  You better take it, and go back to selling your thread.  You’re getting too old for real business, John—­you’re done!”

McNabb nodded slowly.  “Aye, maybe ye’re right, maybe ye’re right.”  The voice sounded old, tired.  “I’ll let ye know in a few days, Orcutt.  Now that I’m up here I think I’ll slip down for a visit with my old friend Murchison.  He’s the factor at Gods Lake.  We were boys together, an’ together we worked for the Company.  He’s a friend a man can trust.  An’ I feel the need of a friend.  Ye’ll not begrudge us a ride down on one of ye’re trucks, will ye, Orcutt?”

Before Orcutt could reply Jean, who had been a silent listener to all that had passed, leaped forward and faced Orcutt with blazing eyes.  “You sneak!” she cried.  “And all the time I thought you and Mrs. Orcutt were my friends!  And all the time you were lying in wait to ruin an old man!  You couldn’t fight him in the open!  You were afraid!  But my father is used to fighting men—­not cowardly thieves!  And as for riding in one of your trucks, I would die first!” She turned to McNabb.  “Come on, Dad, we’ll walk!”

“But, daughter, it’s a hundred miles!”

“I don’t care if it is five hundred miles!  I’ll walk, or crawl if I have to, rather than accept anything from that—­that rattlesnake!  See, there is a little store.  We can lay in some provisions for the trip and it will be loads of fun.  It will remind you of your old days in the North.”

The girl took his arm, and the two turned abruptly away, leaving Orcutt standing in his tracks watching their departure with somewhat of a grin.

As they came out of the store with bulging pack sacks, they saw him step into the stuffy coach, and a moment later they watched the wheezy little engine puff importantly down the track.  Then, side by side they stepped onto the tote-road and were swallowed up between the two walls of towering balsams and spruces.

A mile farther on, a Eureka truck passed them, and the girl, scorning the driver’s offer of a lift, brushed its dust from her clothing as though it were the touch of some loathsome thing.

That night they camped on a little hardwood knoll beside a stream, well back from the road.  Old John seemed to have regained his usual spirits, and to her utter astonishment the girl surprised a grin upon his face as he put up the shelter.  He built a fire, and producing hook and line from his pocket, jerked half a dozen trout from the water, which were soon sizzling in the pan from which rose the odor of frying bacon.