The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.1955, Side 39

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
37
merits for economical exploitation. He
was certain Sam Greenback would not
give it a thought.
In bitter disappointment Bill made
a few hasty calculations on the envel-
ope.
“Less than a hundred bucks, when
Tom Brady is paid off, and Matt Kern
for his plane service,” Bill lamented.
“I have shot my chances with Lila. I
haven’t half enough for next winter’s
grubstake on the trapline.”
Bill returned to Prospector Lake
without seeing Lila or Sam Greenback
again. Over their fried trout at noon,
he broke the news to Tom.
“Tom, you’ve spoilt my mine. You,
and your drilling outfit,” he said at-
tempting to hide his disappointment
under a crust of light banter.
“The assay is pretty grim,” he con-
tinued, handing it across to Tom.
“There is mineral,” Tom consoled.
“Somewhere the vein must continue.
With this, even a small area of high
grade would do it. Perhaps if we go
deeper, or farther along the ridge on
your old claims.”
But Bill was beyond consolation. In
his despair he craved solitude and
time to think. Without another word
lie strode to his canoe.
Out on the Lake, he sought out all
those fond, familiar things that should
soothe a man’s troubled soul: the vast
expanse of lake; the rugged shoreline;
the lobstick, forever guarding Rocky
Island; and the island itself. It rose
massively, a green-black rock, exposed
to sun and weather, to fall precipi-
tately, and heap up in ridges of jointed
and brecciated chaos, running the full
length of it. Weathered and eroded,
every fissure and fault was filled with
leafmould of a thousand autumns.
I here the green of trees, and shrubs,
and saxifrage had taken root, and pro-
claimed the will to live.
Bill’s disheartened spirit did not
respond to their courageous struggle
for existence. He was too entirely en-
slaved by the gloom of bad luck to
find solace in anything.
He had staked all his money on the
rocks. He was almost penniless. His
dream of a mine was dispelled by the
hard facts of reality, and with it his
hopes of asking Lila to be his wife.
Nothing remained for him, except his
wretched little cabin, two days’ jour-
ney down the Turbulent.
Now no sweet vision beckoned to
him. He thought of Lila tapping the
keys of the typewriter in Sam Green-
back’s office. A vicious green monster
took possession of him. His flaming
jealousy conjured up weddings and
honeymoons in which Lila was the
bride, and he himself had no part. No
one could expect a beautiful girl like
Lila to accept the privations and isola-
tion of a trapper’s wife when Sam
Greenback was on hand with his riches.
Morosely Bill pulled up to the is-
land, and went ashore. He stretched
himself in hopeless abandon on the
bleak rock-ledge, and puffed a
melancholy smoke-screen from his cig-
arette. It was a bitter blow to have
been betrayed by his beloved rocks.
But even then his hand stole caress-
ingly over their surface. His eyes found
the top of the lobstick, and wandered
down to the rock-wall of the height on
which it stood, till they dilated in
sharp focus on a weather-eroded cleft
just above him.
He sat bolt upright. The fresh rock-
cut exposed a vein that electrified Bill
Hilton, and sent him racing to his
canoe for his tools, with all the despair
gone from him. Once again the fever
possessed him.
Hammer in hand, he climbed the
cleft, knocked off a piece of rock, and