“Why look!” he replied, leading her to the table. “See, here are three maps, the one done on white leather by your grandfather so many years ago, the roughly drawn one by the Corporal to guide us on this trip, and an old general map of the country which I found here in the cabin.
“It’s strange,” he said, straightening up, “but when you trace the two routes out, the one your grandfather proposed to follow in his search for that more or less mythical partner of his—”
“Don’t say that!” Her finger touched his lips. “It’s all very real to him.”
“Well, anyway, we are now across the river, and if we follow the route the Corporal has marked out for us we will be going almost directly toward the spot your grandfather has marked for Timmie’s cabin.
“So,” he said, reading the surprise and joy in her eye, “the longest way round is the shortest way home, after all! See!” He pointed to a spot on the map. “See. There is the camp of the Eskimo. And here, just a short way across the tundra, then over these low mountains, is Timmie’s cabin and the—the green gold.”
“So in choosing to be of service to the natives, Grandfather was really serving himself,” the girl said as they returned to their places before the fire. “How often life is like that.”
“Green gold.” She repeated the words thoughtfully after a time. “Do you suppose there is any such thing?”
“Yes, of course there is,” said Johnny. “They use it for making jewelry, rings, watch-cases and the like. But where it comes from I haven’t the least notion.”
“And if there was a lot of it, a mine or something, and Grandfather has a share, we would be—might be—”
“You know,” she said after some time, “we are quite poor and we—Grandfather might need money badly to—to defend—”
Johnny waited long for the rest of that sentence. It never came.
“Well,” he said at last, “to-morrow it’s the long, long trail once more.”
Johnny Thompson thought he heard the beating of Faye Duncan’s heart as she whispered these words in his ears.
They lay close together on the snow against a little rise of land. From this place they could see nothing before them. A faint crackling sound was all that told them that a moving island of brown, a great herd of caribou, was moving up the narrow valley and would, within the space of a quarter of an hour, be abreast of them and within easy bow shot.