Over the ice-scoured rocks, and above the timber-line, the trail ran
around Crater Lake and gained the rocky defile that led toward Happy
Camp and the first scrub pines. To pack his heavy outfit around would
take days of heart-breaking toil. On the lake was a canvas boat
employed in freighting. Two trips with it, in two hours, would see him
and his ton across. But he was broke, and the ferryman charged forty
dollars a ton.
"You've got a gold-mine, my friend, in that dinky boat," Kit said to
the ferryman. "Do you want another gold-mine?"
"Show me," was the answer.
"I'll sell it to you for the price of ferrying my outfit. It's an
idea, not patented, and you can jump the deal as soon as I tell you it.
Are you game?"
The ferryman said he was, and Kit liked his looks.
"Very well. You see that glacier. Take a pick-axe and wade into it.
In a day you can have a decent groove from top to bottom. See the
point? The Chilcoot and Crater Lake Consolidated Chute Corporation,
Limited. You can charge fifty cents a hundred, get a hundred tons a
day, and have no work to do but collect the coin."
Two hours later, Kit's ton was across the lake, and he had gained three
days on himself. And when John Bellew overtook him, he was well along
toward Deep Lake, another volcanic pit filled with glacial water.