He had heard of famishing men staggering along astonishing distances half-asleep or too dazed to notice where they were going.

He and Weston had done so themselves, for that matter.
"You told the prospector about the lead ?" Weston inquired.
"If I did he never found the mine.

I was scarcely sensible when I reached his camp, and I lay there very ill until he went on and left me with half a deer he'd shot.

After that I nearly gave out again making the settlements." "Well," said the track-grader, "where's the lake ?" Grenfell spread out his hands.
"I don't know.

I went up to look for it three or four times several years ago." He broke off abruptly, and there was silence for a minute or two.
Strange as the thing appeared, it was not altogether an unusual story.
All the way from California to the frozen north one now and then may hear of men who struck a rich quartz or silver lead in the wilderness, and, coming down to record it, signally failed to find it again.