now. Well, I'm not going to give you the details which would prove
it--I'm not asking for gratitude from such a cur as you've turned out.
All I'm going to say is this: from the first of your coming up here
I've tried to play fair by you; I've done more than that, I've come
near giving you my life--giving, mind you, not letting you take it as
you've been inclined to do many times. And I'm willing to play fair
until the end--until we get outside and are safe; then we can each go
on our separate ways, if we so decide. I know where I'm going--to El
Dorado. I daresay you're going to try to get there too, but that is
none of my concern. I'm concerned with the present. That canoe is
mine, and what's left of the grub is mine. The gold we share between
us. If you don't want to come with me I'll take the canoe and other
things which belong to me, and my share of the dust and nuggets, and
you can stay here. But if you come with me, you've got to be
honourable and behave like a man--not a husky. I give you two minutes
to make your choice."

"There isn't any choice to be made," growled Spurling; "you offer me
your company or starvation. I choose your company, much as I detest
it. And I'd like to know who you are to speak to me like this? And
what there is to lose your temper about? If you'd explained what you'd
wanted, I'd have come quietly; but I'd rather cut my throat at once
and be done with it than be ordered about by a man like you--a fellow
married to a squaw-wife."

Granger's face went white and his lips trembled; his finger closed
upon the trigger, then with an effort he controlled himself. "I think
I've heard enough from you on that point," he said; "suppose we drop
this discussion and get the canoe ready?"

He turned upon his heel and walked into the hut, followed more slowly
by Spurling.

This was by no means their first falling out in the past four months;
from the night that they left Murder Point things had been going from
bad to worse. Given two men who set out into the forest together,
bound by the strongest ties of friendship, who travel in one another's
footsteps and sleep side by side for days and nights at a stretch,
without seeing any other face but one another's and their own
reflected visage, with nothing to break the silence but their own
voices, and the cries of the wilderness, which have become
irritatingly monotonous because of their sameness and frequent
reiteration, and it is a thing to be marvelled