"It's your call." Weston sat silent for a full minute, but his heart was beating faster than usual, and he glanced up from the piles of gravel and blackened fir stumps by the track to the gleaming snow.

A sudden distaste for the monotonous toil with the shovel came upon him, and he felt the call of the wilderness.

Besides, he was young enough to be sanguine, although, for that matter, older men, worn by disappointments and toilsome journeys among the hills, have set out once more on the gold trail with an optimistic faith that has led them to their death.
Ambition awoke in him, and he recognized now that the week or two spent in Kinnaird's camp had rendered it impossible for him to remain a track-grader.

At length he turned to Grenfell.
"Well," he said, "if you're still in the same mind to-morrow I'll come.

Still, if you think better of it, you can cry off then." His sense of fairness demanded that; for he would not bind a man whose senses were, it seemed reasonable to suppose, not particularly clear.
Grenfell evidently understood him, and drew himself up with an attempt at dignity.
"My head's quite right when I'm sitting down; it's my knees," he said.
"Want to put the thing through now--half-share each.