Then I'd beat it for the
woods--and they always looked good to me. The trouble was that I had
too much time to think, and nothing to do when I hit a live town. It
would be different now. We can do things together that I couldn't do
alone, and you couldn't do alone. Remains only to get the wherewithal.
And since I know how to manage that with a minimum amount of effort,
I'd like to be about it before somebody else gets ahead of me. Though
there's small chance of that."
"We'll be partners," said she. "How will we divide the profits,
Billum?"
"We'll split even," he declared. "That is, I'll make the money, and
you'll spend it."
They chuckled over this conceit, and as the dusk closed in slowly they
fell to planning the details. Hazel lit the lamp, and in its yellow
glow pored over maps while Bill idly sketched their route on a sheet of
paper. His objective lay east of the head of the Naas proper, where
amid a wild tangle of mountains and mountain torrents three turbulent
rivers, the Stikine, the Skeena, and the Naas, took their rise. A
God-forsaken region, he told her, where few white men had penetrated.
The peaks flirted with the clouds, and their sides were scarred with
glaciers.
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