lly.

"It's a wild and woolly yarn, all right," he said, "and it sounds like
a story from a book, with the hold-up, and the girl and the idea of
restitution, and the treasure-map and all the rest of it. You haven't
any proof?"

"Nothin' but what I've told you--an' the map. My pardner's got to take
my say-so."

"You say you wrote frequently to Bull Evans' daughter?"

"Once a season--sometimes twice. Whenever I could get some money
through."

"She will have kept those letters, certainly," the mine-owner mused,
"and the payments through the Express Company will be easy to trace.
Where does the girl live?"

"In Pittsburgh, now, with her aunt."

"If I guarantee to advance two hundred thousand, when satisfied that
your story is straight, will you produce the map and come along,
yourself?"

Jim looked him over.

"I'll trust you more'n you're willin' to trust me," he said, and took
a thin slip of paper from the buckskin tube out of which he had shaken
the gold dust the day before. "Here's the map. It's an island due
north o' the Diomede Islands in the Behring Sea. The Eskimos call it
Chuklook. There's quartz gold on Ingalook, too. But mind, one-third o'
what you pay for the claim belongs to Bull's little gal."

"Agreed!" declared Owens. "You trust me an' I'll trust you. The
letters an' the express records, being as you say, I'll go in."

"Clem bein' a pardner!" Jim insisted.

"Clem being a partner, sure!"

CHAPTER XI

THE LONELY ISLAND

The little _Bunting_, brigantine-rigged, and, yacht-fashion,
possessing an auxiliary screw, plowed the waters of Behring Sea.

Jim, with Clem and Anton beside him, stood on the foc's'le head,
gazing into the foggy distance. Owens was on the poop, with the owner
of the tiny yacht, who was a personal friend, and moodily scanned the
horizon. Otto, utterly disregarding the universal sea injunction:
"Don't Talk to the Man at the Wheel!" stayed at the stern and
exchanged occasional sentences with the helmsman.

There were, also, two other passengers on board, both down in the
cabin. One was a grizzled giant, the other was a young woman, some 25
years of age. The first was a half-brother of Joe Juneau, and was
known throughout the Far North as "The Arctic Wizard" from his uncanny
knowledge of Alaskan mining deposits, and his ability as a mining
engineer in overcoming the peculiar difficulties of frozen ground and
of maintaining machinery in working order under the most r