"
"And you mean to say he's started the work? Laid out good money on top
of what his options cost him--and forgot to take up the options?"
"That's just what he's done, according to Cameron."
Orcutt burst out laughing. "We'll let him go ahead and build the
road," he cried. "Every dollar he puts in will be ninety cents saved
for us. It may be two or three weeks before he finds out that he has
lost the timber, and possibly the road will be completed by that time.
Then I'll buy it in for almost nothing. McNabb has certainly gone
fluie! And in the meantime we will use his road to haul in our own
material. I'll wire Strang to begin hustling the stuff through."
XX
After watching Orcutt depart, Cameron folded his maps and his papers
and walked around to the trading room where Murchison and his clerk
were comparing the skins of a silver gray and a black cross fox.
The clerk greeted him with a smile. "Just the man I wanted to see, Mr.
Cameron. In fact I was about to go in search of you."
Cameron stared at him in surprise. During the day or two he had spent
at the post, he had come to regard the clerk as a stupid, morose
individual, whose only excuse for existence, as Murchison had said, was
his knowledge of fur. But here was this unkempt clerk actually
smiling, and addressing him as a man of affairs. He glanced
inquiringly at Murchison before replying.
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