"That's it, exactly!" cried the boy his eyes shining, "and believe me, Dan--that's going to be some big adventure--there at the end of the last trail! It'll be worth all the others--just to _be there_!"
"Down in the cities, they don't think like we do. They'd ruther plug along--every day jest like the days that's past, an' jest like all the days that's comin'."
Connie interrupted him: "Down in the cities I don't care what they think! I've been in cities, and I _hate_ 'em. I'm glad they don't think like we do, or they'd be up here plastering their houses, and factories, and stores all over our hills and valleys."
"Wonder who stuck this shack up here," smiled McKeever, glancing inquisitively around the room. "Looks like it had been here quite a while. You can see where Black Moran an' Squigg rammed in fresh chinkin'."
Connie nodded. "Some prospector or trapper, I guess. I wonder what became of him?"
McKeever shook his head. "Maybe McTavish would know. There's nothin' here that would tell. If he pulled out he took everything along but the stove, an' if he didn't the Injuns an' the Eskimos have carried off all the light truck. There was a fellow name of Dean--James Dean, got lost in this country along about six or seven years back. I was lookin' over the records the other day, an' run across the inquiry about him. That was long before my time in N Division. There was a note or two in the records where he'd come into the country a couple of years before he'd disappeared, an' had traded at Fort Norman an' at Wrigley. The last seen of him he left Fort Norman with some supplies--grub an' powder. He was prospectin' an' trappin'--an' no one ever seen him since. He was a good man, too--accordin' to reports. He wasn't no _chechako_."
"There you are!" exclaimed Connie, "just what we were talking about. I'd give a lot to know what happened at the end of his trail. I've seen the end of a lot of those trails--and always the signs told the story of the last big adventure. And always it was worth while. And, good or bad, it was always a man's game they played--and they came to a man's end."
"Gee, Dan, in cities men die in their beds!"
Upon the evening before the departure of the Indians who were to accompany McTavish and McKeever back to Fort Norman for the mid-winter trading, Connie Morgan, the factor, and the big officer sat in the cabin of Pierre Bonnet Rouge and talked of many things. The owner of the cabin stoked the fire and listened in silence to the talk, proud that the white men had honoured his house with their presence.