y--sure."

Bill was thoroughly enjoying himself. Nor did Kars resent his smiles.
He, too, laughed in spite of the Indian's growing concern.

"We make Bell River to-morrow," he said finally. "See the boys get
busy with food. We mush in half an hour."

The Indian had made his protest. There was nothing further to add. So
he went off and the white man watched him go.

"Guess there'll be something doing around the camp when he gets amongst
the boys," Kars observed. Then he added, after a smiling pause, "That
feller thinks me crazy. Guess Murray McTavish would think that way,
too. Maybe that's how you're thinking. Maybe you're all right, and
I'm all wrong. I can't say. And I can't worry it out. Y'see, Bill,
my instinct needs to serve me, like your argument serves you. Only you
can't argue with instinct. The logic of things don't come handy to me,
and Euclid's a sort of fool puzzle anyway to a feller raised chasing
gold. There's just about three things worrying the back of my head
now. They've been worrying it all summer, worse than the skitters.
Maybe Bell River can answer them all. I don't know. Why are these
Bell River neches always shooting up their neighbors, and any one else?
How comes it Allan Mowbray died worth half a million dollars on a fur
trade? What was he doing on Bell River when he got killed?"

It was a wide flat stretch of grass, a miniature table-land, set high
up overlooking the broken territory of the Bell River forge. It was
bleak. A sharp breeze played across it with a chill bitterness which
suggested little enough mercy when winter reigned. It was an outlook
upon a world quite new to Bill. To John Kars the scene was by no means
familiar.

These men gazed out with a profound interest not untouched by awe.
Their eyes sought in every direction, and no detail in the rugged
splendor was lost. For long minutes they stood silently reading the
pages of the new book opened to them.

It was, in Kars' own words, a "fierce" country. It suggested something
like desperation in the Creator of it all. It seemed as though
imagination must have deserted Him, and He was left only with the
foundations, and the skeleton walls of a vast structure upon His hands.

The horizon was approached by tier on tier of alternating glacier and
barren hill. What lay hidden in the hollows could only be conjectured.
In every direction, except the southeast, whence they had come, the
outlook was the sam