He looked up and for the first time became conscious of Faye and Johnny.
“We’ve found the tree,” he said simply, as if they should know all about it. “The trail leads downstream a little way, then across the river.”
By the haunted look in her eyes, Johnny read that Faye Duncan knew little regarding the strange turn affairs had taken.
“It’s his heart,” she whispered. “We must keep him quiet.”
“Yes,” she said to Gordon Duncan, “the trail leads downstream. We will take it to-morrow. For the night we will camp beneath this friendly old giant of a tree and rest.”
“Rest!” said Gordon Duncan, a great weariness overtaking him. “Rest. That’s what we need. And then,” with a fresh eagerness, “then the long, long trail. Green gold it was, green like the copper in the bed of the stream, but gold, real gold.”
Johnny assisted in arranging a comfortable resting place for him, then he nursed his small fire along until it was a laughing, roaring young conflagration.
“The trail leads downstream and across the river,” he thought to himself. “Fine chance!” He could catch the rush of waters a hundred yards away. That was the river. He had tried crossing that rushing torrent once, and had come near losing his life.
“Never again!” he told himself. “Unless in a boat. And where in all this wild land does one get so much as a birchbark canoe?”
As if reading his thoughts the old man sat up quite suddenly.
“Somewhere down the river,” he said, “the land slopes away into low hills. Here the river is less rapid. It freezes over. If we get there before the breakup, we may cross on the ice. But that,” he added, “is a long, long trail.”
“A long, long trail.” The old man’s words echoed in Johnny’s ears as half an hour later, he sat before the fire of great glowing logs. Chilled by the cold and the dark, warmed by the golden glow of human companionship, he sat there half asleep, when the girl spoke.
Strangely enough, her words echoed his thoughts.
“A long, long trail,” she was saying in a tone that was resonant with mystery and longing.
“He has come upon something,” she said after a moment of silence, “from out his past.” She turned to nod at the rude brush shelter beneath which, deep in his sleeping bag, the old man slumbered. Worn out by excitement and his sudden heart attack, he had yielded to his granddaughter’s entreaties, and retired early.