O'Neil smiled. "You may talk all you please in my employ, so long as you do your work. Now get some sleep, for we have a hard trip. And by the way"--the youth paused with a hand on the doorknob--"don't go looking for Denny." Appleton's face hardened stubbornly. "I can't promise that, sir." "Oh yes you can! You must! Remember, you're working for me, and you're under orders. I can't have the expedition held up on your account." The engineer's voice was heavy with disappointment, but a vague admiration was growing in his eyes as he agreed: "Very well, sir. I suppose my time is yours. Good night." When he had gone "Happy Tom" inquired: "Now, why in blazes did you hire him? We don't need a high-priced surveyor on this job." "Of course not, but don't you see? He'd have been arrested, sure. Besides--he's Irish, and I like him." "Humph! Then I s'pose he's got a job for life," said Tom, morosely. "You make friends and enemies quicker than anybody I ever saw. You've got Curtis Gordon on your neck now." "On account of this boy? Nonsense!" "Not altogether. Denny is Gordon's right bower. I think he calls him his secretary; anyhow, he does Gordon's dirty work and they're thicker than fleas. First you come along and steal me, underhanded, then you grab his pet engineer before he has a chance to hire him back again. Just to top off the evening you publicly brand his confidential understrapper as a card cheat and thump him on the medulla oblongata--" "Are you sure it wasn't the duodenum?" "Well, you hit him in a vital spot, and Gordon won't forget it." Late on the following morning O'Neil's expedition was landed at the deserted fishing-station of Omar, thirty miles down the sound from Cortez. From this point its route lay down the bay to open water and thence eastward along the coast in front of the Salmon River delta some forty miles to Kyak. This latter stretch would have been well-nigh impossible for open boats but for the fact that the numerous mud bars and islands thrown out by the river afforded a sheltered course. These inside channels, though shallow, were of sufficient depth to allow small craft to navigate and had long been used as a route to the coal-fields. Appleton, smiling and cheerful, was the first member of the party to appear at the dock that morning, and when the landing had been effected at Omar he showed his knowledge of the country by suggesting a short cut which would save the long row down to the mouth of the sound and around into the delta. Immediately back of the old cannery, which occupied a gap in the mountain rim, lay a narrow lake, and this, he declared, held an outlet which led into the Salmon River flats. By hauling the boats over into this body of water--a task made easy by the presence of a tiny tramway with one dilapidated push-car which had been a part of the cannery equipment--it would be possible to save much time and labor.