Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/198

180 gold teeth," described the boy, glibly remembering one of the photographs taken five years before. A description that Connie knew could by no stretch of the imagination be said to fit the man before him. "Why, do you think you saw him?" he asked eagerly.

The man appeared to consider: "Well, let's see. There was a couple of free-traders, but them wasn't him 'cause one wore a black beard and one was about six foot. Then they was a prospector on a creek called Willow Bunch he was light-haired all right, but he didn't weigh no more'n a hundred an' twenty or thirty, he couldn't of be'n him, neither. That's all I seen except Injuns. If you fellows got all the passes watched 'taint likely he could of got acrost to this side, nohow."

"You bet he won't!" assented Connie. "He'll never get by. Why, all the good men of B Division are strung up there among the mountains!"

"An' what you doin' way down in here?" asked the man. Connie grinned: "Who me? Oh, I don't count, I'm just hiking back to Dawson to report. You don't happen to be going down Dawson way, do you?" he added.