d
Colonel Snow. "That's what I'm here for, and if you have time I've a
proposition to make ... rather a cold one, however."

"I-i-ce c-c-cream soda?" inquired Pepper, flippantly, amid reproving
frowns from the other Scouts.

"Why, you can't even think of that without shivering in your speech," said
Jack, with scorn.

"Don't mind him, Colonel Snow, his appetite is like the poor, it's always
with us," apologized Rand.

The army officer smiled indulgently upon the somewhat abashed Pepper.

"Don't lose it, Pepper," said he. "That appetite may prove one of the best
of assets in this proposition of mine. How would you all like a trip to
Alaska?"

The patrol came to "attention," every member on his feet and for the
moment speechless.

"What! the North Pole?" gasped Rand, whose former residence in the Sunny
South inclined him to look upon all high latitudes with suspicion.

"Not exactly," replied Colonel Snow, with a laugh, in which all joined as
a kind of relief to their feelings. "We shall need neither sleeping bags
nor furs nor pemmican. Let me explain the situation. Like all retired army
officers, I am subject to call, at times by the government, for services
of various kinds, and I am now intrusted with a mission in the Controller
Bay region of Alaska, in connection with certain coal deposits and
reservations. In our trip to the Canadian Rockies, I secured personally,
as an investment, certain timber lands in British Columbia at the
headwaters of the Yukon watershed, and my purpose is to cut the timber on
these lands, to be eventually floated down the rivers and used in the
various mines and mining camps, now being developed in both the Yukon and
Alaska territories.

"On my way to my mission, this Spring, I intend to take in my sawmill
plant and set it up and get ready for next winter's cutting. I shall be
obliged to employ about a dozen men to establish the plant, and my
experience with you Scouts in the field, in the Northwest, indicates to me
that you can be as useful to me as anyone I could pick up. It will also
give you a chance to see for the first time a new and growing country, by
which you are bound by all the ties of government and flag. I will say at
once that I have talked with your parents and your experience with me in
Canada has given them sufficient confidence to furnish their consent. The
decision rests with you."

The magnitude of the suggestion stunned the boys for the time, but they
soon re