back to the room above the store. He liked the way Jake waited on
Carrie, although Jake owned he had not been a success when he made a
trip in the Mount Stephen dining-car.

"We're going to talk business," Jake remarked presently. "I've been
getting after the telegraph department since we came home and one of
the construction bosses was in town to-day. He allowed you made good
the night they sent the Government messages through, and if we wanted
the contract for the new line they're going to run across the ranges,
he'd back our tender."

"Jim isn't well enough to go back yet. You mustn't bother him," Carrie
said firmly.

"We can't do much until the thaw comes," Jake rejoined. "It's a
fighting chance and I don't see many chances for us in this old town."

Carrie looked thoughtful. She knew the wilds would draw Jake back and
Jim must soon go, but the North was a stern country and she wanted to
keep them for a time. She was honest and owned that she wanted to keep
both.

"Can you finance the job?" she asked.

"It's going to come hard, but we might put it over. Our pay was pretty
good and the construction boss could get us a check as we go on if the
work was approved. Of course, if we were pushed, we could sell out the
Bluebird. The assay's all right and one or two of the big syndicates
are looking up copper. Still I don't want to sell."

"You mustn't sell."

"Very well," Jake agreed. "What you say about it goes."

Jim looked up with some surprise. Jake and he had done enough work on
the copper vein to get their patent, but could develop the mine no
further without capital. Jim did not understand what Carrie had to do
with this.

"He doesn't know," Jake remarked, and turned to Jim with a smile. "We
put in the stakes and filed the record, but Carrie's a partner. She
helped us out."

"Ah," said Jim, "I begin to see!"

He felt disturbed. The placer gold they had found was all spent before
they proved the copper vein. Food cost much and nobody would let them
have supplies. Copper mines were hardly thought worth exploiting then,
since transport was expensive. When it looked as if they must give up
the claim, Jake got some money from home, and now Jim knew who had sent
the sum. He did not know how Carrie had saved it, but she must have
used stern economy.

"You don't like my sending the money?" she remarked, with a quick
glance at Jim.

"I don't like to think of your going without things y