Free The Gold Trail by Harold Bindloss Page B

was, like a good many others of his kind, in some respects a simple and frugal man. Still, when Ida and Miss Farquhar left them, he laid a cigar-box on the table and filled Weston's glass with wine.
    "Now," he said, "if you have no objections, you can tell me what you're doing in Montreal."
    Weston supplied him with a brief account of his business, and Stirling, who asked one or two very shrewd questions, sat apparently reflecting for a minute or two.
    "You struck nobody in Vancouver who seemed inclined to take a hand in it?"
    "Only one concern, and they seemed very doubtful. Anyway, their terms were practically prohibitive."
    "Grafton?"
    "No. Norris &Lander."
    "Well," said Stirling, "before you could expect to do anything here, you'd want to locate the reef and get some big mining man to visit it and give you a certificate that it was a promising property. If you had that, and a bag of specimens of high-grade milling ore, people would listen to you."
    "The trouble is that I can't get them."
    "Then," observed Stirling, "I guess you'll have to fall back on your friends."
    "I'm afraid that none of my friends have any money to invest; and, in any case, I'd rather deal with strangers," said Weston.
    His host glanced at him very keenly.
    "Seems to me you have got to let the thing go," he said.
    "No," declared Weston. "In some respects, it's a crazy project; but I'm going on."
    Stirling quietly turned the conversation into another channel, but when Western took his departure he called up his secretary on the telephone.
    "I want you to write Norris &Lander, Vancouver, the first thing in the morning, and get it off by the Pacific express," he said. "Tell them they can let a young man named Weston, with whom they've been in communication, have the money he asks for, to count as stock when he starts his company, at the biggest discount they can get. They can charge me usual brokerage, but they're to keep my name out of it."
    The secretary said it should be done, and Stirling sat down to his cigar with a smile. He was inclined to fancy that Weston would find Norris &Lander much more amenable after that. It was an hour later when Ida came into the room, and he looked at her thoughtfully.
    "There's some grit in that young man, and I guess it's just as well," he observed. "He's up against quite a big proposition."
    He saw the faint gleam in Ida's eyes.
    "If he has taken hold, I think he will put it through," she said.
    She turned away the next moment, and moved a glass on the table; but, when she looked around again, she saw Stirling's smile.
    "Well," he said, "considering everything, it's quite likely."
    After this, he carefully picked out another cigar, and Ida left him, wondering what he could have meant.
    * * *
    Weston, sitting down on the pile of gravel, took the hat from his comrade, and the trickle from the brim of it splashed refreshingly upon his hot and grimy face when he tilted it to drink. It was shapeless, greasy, and thick with dust, and few men who fare daintily in the cities would have considered it a tempting cup. That, however, did not occur to Weston, but another thought flashed into his mind as he glanced toward the undergrowth behind which the man who had led them there lay. He lowered the hat a moment and rose wearily.
    "A few drops of this might have saved our partner," he said. "Now he has gone on; may the trail he has taken be a smooth and easy one."
    Then he drank, standing, a deep, invigorating draught, which seemed to cool his fevered blood and put new life in him. He gasped for a moment or so, and drank again, and then, flinging wide the splashes upon hot earth and leaves, sat down heavily. As he fumbled for his pipe, Devine, who had drunk in the meanwhile, turned to him.
    "No," he said reflectively, "I don't quite think you're right. It wasn't thirst that brought Grenfell to his end. He had more water than either of us-you saw to that-and, though it wouldn't have been pleasant, you and I could have held out