"Are you really going to take me out?"
Bill paused with a match blazing in his fingers.
"I'm not in the habit of saying things I don't mean,"' he answered
dryly. "We'll start in the morning."
The dark closed in on them, and they cooked and ate supper in silence.
Bill remained thoughtful and abstracted. He slouched for a time in his
chair by the fire. Then from some place among his books he unearthed a
map, and, spreading it on the table, studied it a while. After that he
dragged in his kyaks from outside, and busied himself packing them with
supplies for a journey--tea and coffee and flour and such things done
up in small canvas sacks.
And when these preparations were complete he got a sheet of paper and a
pencil, and fell to copying something from the map. He was still at
that, sketching and marking, when Hazel went to bed.
By all the signs and tokens, Roaring Bill Wagstaff slept none that
night. Hazel herself tossed wakefully, and during her wakeful moments
she could hear him stir in the outer room. And a full hour before
daylight he called her to breakfast.
CHAPTER XIII
THE OUT TRAIL
"This time last spring," Bill said to her, "I was piking away north of
those mountains, bound for the head of the Naas to prospect for gold.
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