human
Those marks show the marches you have made?
gpt
Yes. I don't need a diary; I can see it all again. We started here one winter and made three hundred miles on half rations, with wind and snow ahead all the way. There we camped three days in a blizzard among a clump of willows, while the snow piled up six feet deep to lee of us. I made this line through a country new to me; two hundred miles over soft snow, with the dogs playing out and the timber wolves on my trail for the last few days. This lake ends in a big muskeg, and we snagged our canoe there one fall. As she'd ripped her bilge open, we left her and spent a day and a half floundering through two or three feet of water and tall reeds, and carrying loads of sixty pounds. He paused and indicated a line that broke off abruptly in a wide bare space.
human
The lode lies south of here, and I believe I'm the only survivor of the few who knew of it. One half-breed was drowned in a rapid, another lost in a blizzard; the agent, so I heard afterward, left the factory to visit some Indians three or four miles off and they found him next day in a snowdrift, frozen to death.
gpt
A grim country, Andrew said thoughtfully,
human
One to make a man afraid, and yet----
gpt
Yes; I think you know! Well, I'm glad that for twenty years I've mastered the longing and kept my head. Now, however, my children have made a fair start, with prospects of going farther than I have done, and my responsibility is lightening. A winter up there would satisfy me--I'm afraid it would be all I could stand now--and though it's still out of the question, I've a feeling that a way may be found before I grow too old.
human
Bring Mr. Allinson in. It's getting chilly.