human
It's something big! Maurice repeated.
gpt
I wish Horace were here, but--could you get a holiday from your office for a week or ten days?
human
I've got it already, said Fred.
gpt
I reserved my holidays last summer, and things aren't busy in a real estate office at this time of year. I guess I could get two weeks if I wanted it. I'm spending most of my time now training for the five and ten miles.
human
Could you skate a hundred and fifty miles in two days?
gpt
I might if I had to--if it was a case of life and death.
human
That's just what it is--a case of life and death, and possibly a fortune into the bargain! cried Maurice.
gpt
You see--but Mac has the whole story.
human
No sign of snow yet,
gpt
What's that got to do with it? demanded Fred, who was burning with curiosity by this time.
human
What's going on, anyway? Hurry up.
gpt
I live away up north of North Bay, you know, at a little place called Muirhead. I went home for a little visit last week, and the second day I was there they brought in a sick Indian from Hickson, a little farther north--sick with smallpox. The Hickson authorities wouldn't have him at any price, and they had just passed him on to us. The people at Muirhead didn't want him either. It wasn't such a very bad case of smallpox, but the poor wretch had suffered a good deal of exposure, and he was pretty shaky. Everybody was in a panic about him; they wanted to ship him straight down to North Bay; but finally I got him fixed up in a sort of isolation camp and looked after him myself.
human
Good for you, Mac!
gpt
Oh, it was good hospital training, and I'd been recently vaccinated, so I didn't run any danger. It paid me, though, for when I'd pulled him around a bit he told me the story, and a queer tale it was.
human
It seems that last September this Indian, along with a couple of half-breeds, went up into the woods for the winter trapping, and built a cabin on one of the branches of the Abitibi River, away up northeast of Lake Timagami. I know about where it was. I suppose you've never been up in that country, Osborne?
gpt
Never quite as far as that. Last summer I was nearly up to Timagami with Horace.
human
University Science Quarterly,