And Mother Bear came out of her winter den, accompanied by her little ones born two months before, and taught them how to pull down the slender saplings for these same buds; and the moose came down from the blizzardy tops of the great ridges, which are called mountains in the North, and where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed by the wolves, who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere there were the rushing torrents of melting snows, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree, and each night the cold, pale glow of the Aurora Borealis crept farther and farther toward the Pole in fading glory.

It was spring, and at Wabinosh House it brought more joy than elsewhere, for there Roderick Drew joined his mother. We have not time here to dwell on the things that happened at the old Hudson Bay Post during the ten days after their first happy reunion—of the love that sprang up between Rod's mother and Minnetaki, and the princess wife of George Newsome, the factor; of the departure of the soldiers whose task of running down Woonga ended with Rod's desperate fight in the cabin, or of the preparations of the gold hunters themselves.

On a certain evening in April, Wabi, Mukoki and Rod had assembled in the latter's room. The next morning they were to start on their long and thrilling adventure into the far North, and on this last night they went carefully over their equipment and plans to see that nothing had been forgotten. That night Rod slept little. For the second time in his life the fever of adventure was running wild in his blood. After the others had gone he studied the precious old map until his eyes grew dim; in the half slumber that came to him afterward his brain worked ceaselessly, and he saw visions of the romantic old cabin again, and the rotting buckskin bag filled with nuggets of gold on the table.

He was up before the stars began fading in the dawn, and in the big dining-room of the Post, in which had gathered the factors and their families for two hundred years, the boys ate their last breakfast with those whom they were about to leave for many weeks, perhaps months. The factor himself was boisterously cheerful in his efforts to keep up the good cheer of Mrs. Drew and the princess mother, and even Minnetaki forced herself to smile, and laugh, though her eyes were red, and all knew that she had been crying. Rod was glad when the meal was over and they went out into the chill air of the morning, and down to the edge of the lake, where their big birch-bark canoe was loaded and waiting for their departure, and he was still more relieved when they had bade a last good-by to the two mothers. But Minnetaki came down to the canoe with them, and when Wabi kissed her she burst into tears, and Rod felt a queer thickening in his throat as he took her firm little hand and held it for a moment between both his own.

"Good-by, Minnetaki," he whispered.

He turned and took his position in the middle of the canoe, and with a last shout Wabi shoved off and the canoe sped out into the gloom.

For a long time there was silence, except for the rhythmic dip of the three paddles. Once Minnetaki's voice came to them faintly, and they answered it with a shout. But that was all. After a time Rod said,

"By George, this saying good-by is the toughest part of the whole business!"

His words cleared away the feeling of oppression that seemed to have fallen on them.

"It's always hard for me to leave Minnetaki," replied Wabigoon. "Some day I'm going to take her on a trip with me."

"She'd be a bully fellow!" cried Rod with enthusiasm.

From the stern of the canoe came a delighted chuckle from Mukoki.

"She brave—she shoot, she hunt, she be dam' fine!" he added, and both Rod and Wabi burst out laughing. The young Indian looked at his compass by the light of a match.

"We'll strike straight across Lake Nipigon instead of following the shore. What do you say, Muky?" he called back.

The old pathfinder was silent. In surprise Wabi ceased paddling, and repeated his question.

"Don't you think it is safe?"

Mukoki wet his hand over the side and held it above his head.

"Wind in south," he said. "Maybe no get stronger, but—"

"If she did," added Rod dubiously, noting how heavily laden the canoe was, "we'd be in a fix, as sure as you live!"

"It will take us all of to-day and half of to-morrow to follow the shore," urged Wabi, "while by cutting straight across the lake we can make the other side early this afternoon. Let's risk it!"

Mukoki grunted something that was a little less than approval, and Rod felt a peculiar sensation shoot through him as the frail birch headed out into the big lake. Their steady strokes sent the canoe through the water at fully four miles an hour, and by the time broad day had come the forest-clad shore at Wabinosh House was only a hazy outline in the distance. The white youth's unspoken fears were dispelled when the sun rose, warm and glorious, over the shimmering lake, driving the chill from the air, and seeming to bring with it the sweet scents of the forests far away. Joyfully he labored at his paddle, the mere exhilaration of the morning filling his arms with the strength of a young giant. Wabi whistled and sang wild snatches of Indian song by turns, Rod joined him with Yankee Doodle and The Star Spangled Banner, and even the silent Mukoki gave a whoop now and then to show that he was as happy as they.

One thought filled the minds of all. They were fairly started on that most thrilling of all trails, the trail of gold. In their possession was the secret of a great fortune. Romance, adventure, discovery, awaited them. The big, silent North, mysterious in its age-old desolation, where even the winds seemed to whisper of strange things that had happened countless years before, was just ahead of them. They were about to bury themselves in its secrets, to wrest from it the yellow treasure it guarded, and their blood tingled and leaped excitedly at the thought. What would be revealed to them? What might they not discover? What strange adventures were they destined to encounter in that Unknown World, peopled only by the things of the wild, that stretched trackless and unexplored before them? A hundred thoughts like these fired the brains of the three adventurers, and made their work a play, and every breath they drew one of joy.

The lake was alive with ducks. Huge flocks of big black ducks, mallards, blue bills and whistlers rose about them, and now and then, when an unusually large flock was seen floating upon the water ahead of them, one of the three would take a pot-shot with his rifle. Rod and Mukoki had each killed two, and Wabi three, when the old warrior stopped the fun.

"No waste too much shooting on ducks," he advised. "Need shells—big game."

Several times during the morning the three rested from their exertions, and at noon they ceased paddling for more than an hour while they ate the generous dinner that had been put up for them at Wabinosh House. The farther side of the lake was now plainly visible, and when the journey was resumed all eyes eagerly sought for signs of the mouth of the Ombabika, where their stirring adventures of the winter before had begun. For some time Wabi's gaze had been fixed upon a long, white rim along the shore, to which he now called his companions' attention.

"It seems to be moving," he said, turning to Mukoki. "Is it possible—" He paused doubtfully.

"What?" questioned Rod.

"That it's swans!" he completed.

"Swans!" cried the young hunter. "Great Scott, do you mean to say there could be enough swans—"

"They sometimes cover the lake in thousands," said Wabi. "I have seen them whitening the water as far as one could see."

"More swan as you count in twent' t'ous'nd year!" affirmed Mukoki. After a few moments he added, "Them no swan. Ice!"

There was an unpleasant ring in his voice as he spoke the last word, and though Rod did not fully understand what significance the discovery held for them he could not but observe that it occasioned both of his comrades considerable anxiety. The cause was not long in doubt. Another half hour of brisk paddling brought them to the edge of a frozen field of ice that extended for a quarter of a mile from the shore. In both directions it stretched beyond their vision. Wabi's face was filled with dismay. Mukoki sat with his paddle across his knees, uttering not a sound.

"What's the matter?" asked Rod. "Can't we make it?"

"Make it!" exclaimed Wabigoon. "Yes—perhaps to-morrow, or the next day!"

"Do you mean to say we can't get over that ice?"

"That's just exactly the predicament we are in. The edge of that ice is rotten."

The canoe had drifted alongside the ice, and Rod began pounding it with his paddle. For a distance of two feet it broke off in chunks, then became more firm.

"I believe that if we cut our way in for a canoe length or so it would hold us," he declared.

Wabi reached for an ax.

"We'll try it!"

Mukoki shook his head.

But for a second time that day Wabigoon persisted in acting against the old pathfinder's judgment, something that Rod had never known him to be guilty of before. Foot by foot he broke the ice ahead of the canoe, until the frail craft had thrust its length into the rotten field. Then, steadying himself on the bow, he stepped out cautiously upon the ice.

"There!" he cried triumphantly. "You next, Rod! Steady!"

In a moment Rod had joined him. What happened after that seemed to pass like a terrible nightmare. First there came a light cracking in the ice under their feet, but it was over in an instant. Wabi was laughing at him for the fear that had come into his face, and calling his name, when with a thunderous, crash the whole mass gave way under them, and they plunged down into the black depths of the lake. The last that Rod saw was his friend's horror-stricken face sinking in the crumbling ice; he heard a sharp, terrible cry from Mukoki, and then he knew that the cold waters had engulfed him, and that he was battling for his life under the surface.

Fiercely he struck out with arms and legs in an effort to rise, and in that moment of terror he thought of the great sheet of ice. What if he should come up under it? In which direction should he strike out? He opened his eyes but all was a black chaos about him. The seconds seemed like ages. There came a splitting, rending sensation in his head, an almost overpowering desire to open his mouth, to gasp, gasp for air where there was nothing but death! Then his head struck something. It was the ice! He had come up under the ice, and there was but one end to that!

He began to sink again, slowly, as if an invisible hand were pulling him down, and in his despair he made a last frantic effort, striking out blindly, knowing that in another second he must open his mouth. Even under the water he still had consciousness enough left to know that he tried to cry out, and he felt the first gurgling rush of water into his lungs. But he did not see the long arm that reached down where the bubbles were coming up, he did not feel the grip that dragged him out upon the ice. His first sense of life was that something very heavy was upon his stomach, and that he was being rubbed, and pummeled, and rolled about as if he had become the plaything of a great bear. Then he saw Mukoki, and then Wabigoon.

"You go build fire," he heard Mukoki say, and he could hear Wabi running swiftly shoreward. For he knew that they were still upon the ice. The canoe was drawn safely up a dozen feet away, and the old Indian was dragging blankets from it. When Mukoki turned he found Rod resting upon his elbow, looking at him.

"That—w'at you call heem—close shave!" he grinned, placing a supporting arm under Rod's shoulder.

With Mukoki's assistance the youth rose to his feet, and a thick blanket was wrapped about him. Slowly they made their way shoreward, and soon Wabi came running out to meet them, dripping wet.

"Rod, when we get thawed out, I want you to kick me," he pleaded. "I want you to kick me good and hard, and then I'll take great pleasure in kicking you. And ever after this, when we do a thing that Mukoki tells us not to do, we'll kick some more!"

"Who pulled us out?" asked Rod.

"Mukoki, of course. Will you kick me?"

"Shake!"

And the two dripping, half-frozen young adventurers shook hands, while Mukoki chuckled and grunted and gurgled until he set the others bursting into laughter.



CHAPTER VIII

THE YELLOW BULLET

Before a rousing fire of logs Rod and Wabigoon began to see the cheerful side of life again, and as soon as Mukoki had built them a balsam shelter they stripped off their clothes and wrapped themselves in blankets, while the old Indian dried their outfits. It was two hours before they were dressed. No sooner were they out than Wabi went into the bush and returned a few minutes later brandishing a good-sized birch in his hand. There was no sign of humor in his face as he eyed Rod.

"Do you see that log?" he said, pointing to the big trunk of a fallen tree near the fire "That will just fit your stomach, Rod. It will be better than kicking. Double yourself over that, face down, pantaloons up. I'm going to lick you first because I want you to know just how much to give me. I want it twice as hard, for I was more to blame than you."

In some astonishment Rod doubled himself over the log.

"Great Scott!" he ejaculated, peering up in dismay. "Not too hard, Wabi!"

Swish! fell the birch, and a yell of pain burst from the white youth's lips.

Swish!—Swish!—Swish!

"Ouch! Great Caesar—Let up!"

"Don't move!" shouted Wabi. "Take it like a man—you deserve it!"

Again and again the birch fell. Rod groaned as he rose to his feet after Wabi had stopped. "Oh, please—please give me that whip!"

"Not too hard, you know," warned Wabi, as he fitted himself over the log.

"You chose your own poison," reminded Rod, rolling up his sleeve. "Just twice as hard, no more!"

And the birch began to fall.

When it was over Rod's arm ached, and Wabi, despite his Indian stoicism, let out a long howl at the last blow.

During the entire scene of chastisement Mukoki stood like one struck dumb.

"We'll never be bad any more, Muky," promised Wabigoon, rubbing himself gently. "That is, if we are, we'll whip ourselves again, eh, Rod?"

"Not so long as I can run!" assured Rod with emphasis. "I'm willing to lend a helping hand at any time you think you deserve another, but beyond that please count me out!"

For an hour after the self-punishment of the young gold hunters the three gathered fuel for the night and balsam boughs for their beds. It was dark by the time they sat down to their supper, which they ate in the light of a huge fire of dry poplar.

"This is better than paddling all night, even if we did have a close shave," said Rod, after they had finished and settled themselves comfortably.

Wabi gave a grimace and shrugged his shoulders.

"Do you know how close your call was?" he asked. "It was so close that just by one chance in ten thousand you were saved. I had pulled myself upon the ice by catching hold of the bow of the canoe and when Muky saw that I was safe he watched for you. But you didn't show up. We had given you up for dead when a few bubbles came to the surface, and quicker than a wink Mukoki thrust down his arm. He got you by the hair as you were sinking for the last time. Think of that, Rod, and dream of it to-night. It'll do you good."

"Ugh!" shuddered the white youth. "Let's talk of something more cheerful. What a glorious fire that poplar makes!"

"Mak' light more as twent' t'ous'nd candles!" agreed Mukoki. "Heem bright!"

"Once upon a time, many ages ago, there was a great chief in this country," began Wabigoon, "and he had seven beautiful daughters. So beautiful were they that the Great Spirit himself fell in love with them, and for the first time in countless moons he appeared upon earth, and told the chief that if he would give him his seven daughters he, in turn, would grant the father seven great desires. And the chief, surrendering his daughters, asked that he might be given a day without night, and a night without day, and his wish was granted; and his third and fourth and fifth desires were that the land might always be filled with fish and game, the forests remain for ever green, and fire be given to his people. His sixth desire was that a fuel be given to him which would burn even in water, and the Great Spirit gave him birch; and his seventh desire was that he might possess another fuel, which would throw off no smoke, and might bring comfort and joy to his wigwams—and the poplar sprang up in the forests. And because of that chief, and his seven beautiful daughters, all of these things are true even to this day. Isn't it so, Mukoki?"

The old warrior nodded.

"And what became of the Great Spirit and the seven beautiful daughters?" questioned Rod.

Mukoki rose and left the fire.

"He believes in that as he believes in the sun and the moon," spoke Wabi softly. "But he knows that you do not, and that all white people laugh at it. He could tell you many wonderful stories of the creation of these forests and mountains and the things in them if he would. But he knows that you would not believe, and would laugh at him afterward."

In an instant Rod was upon his feet.

"Mukoki!" he called. "Mukoki!"

The old Indian turned and came back slowly. The white youth met him half-way, his face flushed, his eyes shining.

"Mukoki," he said gently, gripping the warrior's hand, "Mukoki—I love your Great Spirit! I love the one who made these glorious forests, and that glorious moon up there, and the mountains and lakes and rivers! I Want to know more about him. You must tell me, so that I will know when he talks about me, in the winds, in the stars, in the forests! Will you?"

Mukoki was looking at him, his thin lips parted, his grim visage relaxed, as if he were weighing the truthfulness of the white youth's words.

"And I will tell you about our Great Spirit, the white man's Great Spirit," urged Rod. "For we have a Great Spirit, too, Mukoki, and He did for the white man's world what yours did for you. He created the earth, the sky and the sea and all the things in them in six days, and on the seventh He rested. And that seventh day we call Sunday, Mukoki. And He made our forests for us, as your Great Spirit made them for you, only instead of giving them for the love of seven beautiful women He gave them for the love of man. I'll tell you wonderful things about Him, Mukoki, if you will tell me about yours. Is it a bargain?"

"Mebby—yes," replied the old pathfinder slowly. His face had softened, and for the second time Rod knew that he had touched the heartstrings of his red comrade. They returned to the fire, and Wabi made room for them upon the log beside him. In his hand he held a copy of the old birch-bark map.

"I've been thinking about this all day," he said, spreading it out so that the others could see. "Somehow I haven't been able to get the idea out of my head that—"

"What?" asked Rod.

"Oh, nothing," hastily added Wabi, as if he regretted what he had said. "It's a mighty curious map, isn't it? I wonder if we'll ever know its whole story."

"I believe we know it now," declared Rod. "In the first place, we found it clutched by one of the skeletons, and we know from the knife wounds in those skeletons, and the weapons near them, that the two men fought and killed themselves. They fought for this map, for the precious secret which each wished to possess alone. Now—"

He took the map from Wabi's fingers and held it up between them and the fire.

"Isn't the rest of it clear?"

For a few moments the three looked at it in silence.

From the faded outlines of the original it had been drawn with painstaking accuracy.

With a splinter Rod pointed to the top of the map, where were written the words, "Cabin and head of chasm."

"Could anything be clearer?" he repeated. "Here is the cabin in which the men killed themselves, and where we found their skeletons, and here they have marked the chasm in which I shot the silver fox, and down which we must go to find the gold. According to this we must go until we come to the third waterfall, and there we will find another cabin—and the gold."

"It all seems very simple—by the map," agreed Wabi.

Under the crude diagram were a number of lines in writing. They were:

"We, John Ball, Henri Langlois, and Peter Plante, having discovered gold at this fall, do hereby agree to joint partnership in the same, and do pledge ourselves to forget our past differences and work in mutual good will and honesty, so help us God. Signed,

"JOHN BALL, HENRI LANGLOIS, PETER PLANTE."

Through the name of John Ball had been drawn a broad black line which had almost destroyed the letters, and at the end of this line, in brackets, was printed a word in French, which for the hundredth time Wabi translated aloud:

"Dead!"

"From the handwriting of the original we know that Ball was a man of some education," continued Rod. "And there is no doubt but that the birch-bark sketch was made by him. All of the writing was in one hand, with the exception of the signatures of Langlois and Plante, and you could hardly decipher the letters in those signatures if you did not already know their names. From these lines it is quite certain that we were right at the cabin when we concluded that the two Frenchmen killed the Englishman to get him out of the partnership. Isn't that story clear enough?"

"Yes, as far as you have gone," replied Wabi. "These three men discovered gold, quarreled, signed this agreement, and then Ball was murdered. The two Frenchmen, as Mukoki suggested at the cabin, came out a little later for supplies, and brought the buckskin bag full of gold with them. They had come as far as the cabin at the head of the chasm when they quarreled over possession of the map and agreement, fought, and died. From the old guns and other evidences we found near them we know that all this happened at least fifty years ago, and perhaps more. But—"

He paused, whistling softly.

"Where is the third waterfall?"

"I thought we settled that last winter," replied Rod, a little irritated by his companion's doubt. "If writing goes for anything, Ball was a man of education, and he drew the map according to some sort of scale. The second fall is only half as far from the first fall as the third fall is from the second, which is conclusive evidence of this. Now Mukoki discovered the first waterfall fifty miles down the chasm!"

"And we figured from the distances between John Ball's marks on the birch, that the third fall was about two hundred and fifty miles from our old camp at the head of the chasm," rejoined Wabigoon. "It looks reasonable."

"It is reasonable," declared Rod, his face flushed with excitement. "From the head of the chasm our trail is as plain as day. We can't miss it!"

Mukoki had been listening in silence, and now joined in the conversation for the first time.

"Must get to chasm first," he grunted, giving his shoulders a hunch that suggested a great deal.

Wabi returned the map to his pocket.

"You're right, Muky," he laughed. "We're climbing mountains before we come to them. It will be tough work getting to the chasm."

"Much water—ver' swift. River run lak twent' t'ous'nd cari-boo!"

"I'll bet the Ombabika is a raging torrent," said Rod.

"And we've got forty miles of it, all upstream," replied Wabi. "Then we come to the Height of Land. After that the streams run northward, to Hudson Bay, and when we reach them we'll hold our breath and pray instead of paddling. Oh, it will be exciting fun rushing down-stream on the floods!"

"But there is work before us to-morrow—hard work," said Rod. "And I'm going to bed. Good night!"

Mukoki and Wabigoon soon followed their companion's example, and half an hour later nothing but the crackling of the fire disturbed the stillness of the camp. Mukoki was as regular as clockwork in his rising, and an hour before dawn he was up and preparing breakfast. When his young comrades aroused themselves they found the ducks they had shot the preceding day roasting on spits over the fire, and coffee nearly ready. Rod also noticed that a part of the contents of the canoe were missing.

"Took load up to river," explained Mukoki in response to the youth's questioning.

"Working while we sleep, as usual," exclaimed the disgusted Wabigoon. "If it keeps on we'll deserve another whipping, Rod!"

Mukoki examined a fat bluebill, roasted to a rich brown, and gave it to Rod. Another he handed to Wabigoon, and with a third in his own hands he found a seat for himself upon the ground close to the coffee and bread.

"Ah, if this isn't fit for a king!" cried Rod, poising his savory bluebill on the end of a fork.

Half an hour later the three went to their canoe. Mukoki had already packed a half of its contents to the river, a quarter of a mile away, and he now loaded himself with the remainder while the two boys hoisted the light birch upon their shoulders. As Roderick caught his first glimpse of the Ombabika in the growing light of day he gave a cry of astonishment. When he had gone up the stream the preceding winter it was scarce more than a dozen gun lengths in width. Now it was a veritable Amazon, its black, ugly waters rolling and twisting like the slow boiling of a thick liquid over a fire. There was little rush about it, no frenzied haste, no mountain-like madness in the advance of the torrent. Rod had expected to see this, and he would not have been startled by it.

But there was something vastly more appalling in the flood that rolled slowly before his eyes, with its lazily twisting whirlpools, its thousand unseen currents, rolling the water here and there—always in different places—like the gurgling eruptions he had often observed in a pot of simmering oatmeal. There was something uncanny about it, something terribly suggestive of giant hands under the surface, waiting to pull them down. He knew, without questioning, that there was more deadly power in that creeping flood than in a dozen boisterous torrents thundering down from the mountains. In it were the cumulative waters of a score of those torrents, and in its broad, deep sweep into the big lake the currents and perils of each were combined into one great threatening force.

The thoughts that were in Rod's mind betrayed themselves as he looked at his companions. Mukoki was reloading the canoe. Wabi watched the flood.

"She's running pretty strong," said the Indian youth dubiously. "What do you think of it, Muky?"

"Keep close to shore," replied the old warrior, without stopping his work. "We mak' heem—safe!"

There was a good deal of consolation in Mukoki's words, for both youths still bore smarting reminders of his caution and good judgment. In a short time the canoe was safely launched where a small eddy had worked into the shore, and the three adventurers dug in their paddles. Mukoki, who held the important position in the stern, kept the bow of the birch within half a dozen yards of the bank, and to Rod's mind they slipped up-stream with amazing speed and ease. Now and then one of the upheavings of the currents would catch the canoe, and from the way in which it was pitched either to one side or the other Rod easily imagined what perils the middle of the stream would have held for them. Quick action on the part of Mukoki and Wabigoon was always necessary to counteract the effect of these upheavals, and in the bow Wabi was constantly on the alert. At no time could they tell when to expect the attacks of the unseen forces below. Ten feet ahead the water might be running as smooth as oil, then—a single huge bubble, as if a great fish had sent up a gasp of air—and in an instant it would be boiling like a small maelstrom.

Rod noticed that each time they were caught near one of these some unseen power seemed sucking them down, and that at those times the canoe would settle several inches deeper than when they were in calm water. The discovery thrilled him, and he wondered what one of the big eruptions out in mid-stream would do to them if they were caught in it. Other perils were constantly near them. Floating logs and masses of brush and other debris swept down with the flood, and Wabi's warning cries of "right," "left," and "back" came with such frequency that Rod's arms ached with the mighty efforts which he made with his paddle in response to them. Again the stream would boil with such fury ahead of them that Mukoki would put in to shore, and a portage would be made beyond the danger point. Five times during the day were the canoe and its contents carried in this manner, so that including all time lost an average of not more than two miles an hour was made. When camp was struck late that afternoon, however, Mukoki figured that they had covered half the distance up the Ombabika.

The following day's progress was even slower. With every mile the stream became narrower and swifter. The treacherous upheavals caused by undercurrents no longer harassed the gold seekers, but logs and debris swept down with greater velocity. Several times the frail canoe was saved from destruction only by the quick and united action of the three. They worked now like a well-regulated machine, engineered by Wabigoon, whose sharp eyes were always on the alert for danger ahead. This second day was one of thrills and tense anxiety for Rod, and he was glad when it came to an end. It was early, and the sun was still two hours high, when they stopped to camp.

Mukoki had chosen an open space, backed by a poplar-covered rocky ridge, and scarce had the bow of the canoe touched shore when Wabi gave an excited exclamation, caught up his rifle, and fired three rapid shots in the direction of a small clump of spruce near the foot of the mountain.

"Missed, by all that's good and great!" he yelled. "Quick, Mukoki, shove her in! There's the biggest bear I've seen in all my life!"

"Where?" demanded Rod. "Where is he?"

He dropped his paddle and snatched his own rifle, while Mukoki, keeping his self-possession, brought the canoe so that Wabi could leap ashore. Rod followed like a flash, and the two excited youths sped in the direction of the bear, leaving their companion to care for himself and the heavily-laden birch. A short, swift run brought them to the edge of the spruce, and with hearts beating wildly the two scanned the barren side of the mountain ahead of them. There was no sign of the bear.

"He turned down-stream!" cried Wabi, "We must cut—"

"There he is," whispered Rod sharply.

Just beginning the ascent of the mountain, four or five hundred yards below them, was the bear. Even at that distance Rod was amazed at the size of the beast.

"What a monster!" he gasped.

"Blaze away!" urged Wabi. "It's four hundred yards if it's a foot! Aim for the top of his back and you'll bring him!"

Suiting action to his words he fired the two remaining shots in his rifle, and as he slipped in fresh cartridges Rod continued the long-range fusillade. His first and second shots produced no effect. At his third the running animal paused for a moment and looked down at them, and the young Hunter seized his opportunity to take a careful aim. At the report of his gun the bear gave a quick lunge forward, half-fell among the rocks, and then was off again.

"You hit him!" shouted Wabi, setting off on a dead run between the spruce and the mountain.

For a few brief moments Rod studied the situation as he reloaded. The bear was rapidly nearing the summit of the ridge. By, swift running Wabigoon would have another fair shot before the animal got out of range. If that shot were a miss they would lose their game. In a flash he discerned a break in the mountain. If he could make that, and the bear turned in his direction—

Without further thought he ran toward the break. He heard the sharp reports of Wabi's rifle behind him, but didn't stop to see the effect of the fire. If it was another miss—every second counted. The cut in the mountain was clear. Breathlessly he dashed through it and stopped on the opposite side, his eyes eagerly scanning the rock-strewn ridge. He made no attempt to suppress the exclamation of joy that came to his lips when, fully eight hundred yards away, he discerned the bear coming down the side of the mountain, and in his direction. Crouching behind a huge boulder Rod waited. Seven hundred yards, six hundred, five hundred, and the bear turned, this time striking into the edge of the plain. The animal was traveling slowly, partly stopping in his flight now and then, and Rod knew that he was badly wounded. It was soon evident that the course being taken by the game would bring it no nearer, and the young hunter leveled his rifle.

Five hundred yards, more than a quarter of a mile!

This was desperate shooting, shooting that sent a strange thrill through Roderick Drew. The magnificent weapon in his hands was equal to the task. It would kill easily at that distance. But would he fail? He was confident that his first shot went high. His second had no effect. To his third there came the sharp response of a fourth from the top of the mountain. Wabigoon had reached the summit, and was firing at six hundred yards!

The bear stopped. With deadly precision Rod now took aim at the motionless animal. An instant after he had fired a wild shout burst from his throat, and was answered by Wabigoon's joyful yell from the mountain. It was a wonderful shot, and the bear was down!

The animal was dead when the triumphant young hunters reached its side. It was some time before either of them spoke. Panting from their exertions, both looked down in silence upon the huge beast at their feet. That he had made a remarkable kill Rod could see by the look of wonder in his companion's face. They were still mutely regarding the dead animal when Mukoki came through the break in the ridge and hurried toward them. His face, too, became filled with amazement when he saw the bear.

"Big bear!" he exclaimed.

There was a world of meaning in his words, and Rod flushed with pleasure.

"He weighs five hundred," said Wabi, "and he stands four feet at the shoulders if an inch."

"Fine rug!" grinned Mukoki.

"Let's see, Rod; he'll make a rug—" Wabi walked critically around the bear. "He'll make you a rug over eight feet long by about six in width. I wonder where he is hit?"

A brief examination showed that while the honors of the actual kill were with Rod, at least one, and perhaps two, of Wabi's shots had taken effect. The last shot from the white youth's rifle had struck the bear just below the right ear, causing almost instantaneous death. On this same side, which had been exposed to Rod's fire, was a body wound, undoubtedly made by the shot on the mountain side. When the animal was rolled over by the combined efforts of the three two more wounds were discovered on the left side, which had mostly been exposed to Wabigoon's fire. It was while examining these that the sharp-eyed Mukoki gave a sudden grunt of surprise.

"Heem shot before—long time ago! Old wound—feel bullet!"

Between his fingers he was working the loose hide back of the foreleg. The scar of an old wound was plainly visible, and both Rod and Wabi could feel the ball under the skin. There is something that fascinates the big game hunter in this discovery of an old wound in his quarry, and especially in the vast solitudes of the North, where hunters are few and widely scattered. It brings with it a vivid picture of what happened long ago, the excitement of some other chase, the well-directed shot, and at last the escape of the game. And so it was now. The heads of Rod and Wabigoon hung close over Mukoki's shoulders while the old Indian dug out the bullet with his knife. Another grunt of surprise fell from the pathfinder's lips as he dropped the pellet in the palm of his hand.

It was a strange-looking object, smooth, and curiously flattened.

"Ver' soft bullet," said Mukoki. "Never know lead thin, thin out lak that!"

With his knife he peeled off a thin slice of the ball.

"Heem—"

He held up the two pieces. In the sun they gleamed a dull, rich yellow.

"That bullet made of gold!" he breathed, scarcely above a whisper. "No yellow lead. That gold, pure gold!"



CHAPTER IX

UP THE OMBABIKA

For a few moments after Mukoki's remarkable discovery the three stood speechless. Wabigoon stared as if he could not bring himself to believe the evidence of his eyes. Rod was quivering with the old, thrilling excitement that had first come to him in the cabin where they had found the skeletons and the buckskin bag with its precious nuggets, and Mukoki's face was a study. The thin, long fingers which held the two pieces of the gold bullet trembled, which was an unusual symptom in the old pathfinder. It was he who broke the silence, and his words gave utterance to the question which had rushed into the heads of the two young hunters.

"Who shoot gold bullets at bear?"

And to this question there was, for the time, absolutely no answer. To tell who shot that bullet was impossible. But why was it used?

Wabigoon had taken the parts of the yellow ball and was weighing them in the palm of his hand.

"It weighs an ounce," he declared.

"Twenty dollars' worth of gold!" gasped Rod, as if he lacked breath to express himself. "Who in the wide world is shooting twenty dollar bullets at bear?" he cried more excitedly, repeating Mukoki's question of a minute before.

He, too, weighed the yellow pellets in his hand.

The puzzled look had gone out of Mukoki's face. 'Again the battle-scarred old warrior wore the stoic mask of his race, which only now and then is lifted for an instant by some sudden and unexpected happening. Behind that face, immobile, almost expressionless, worked a mind alive to every trick and secret of the vast solitudes, and even before his young comrades had gained the use of their tongues he was, in his savage imagination, traveling swiftly back over the trail of the monster bear to the gun that had fired the golden bullet. Wabigoon understood him, and watched him eagerly.

"What do you think of it, Muky?"

"Man shoot powder and ball gun, not cartridge," replied Mukoki slowly. "Old gun. Strange; ver' strange!"

"A muzzle loader!" said Wabi.

The Indian nodded.

"Had powder, no lead. Got hungry; used gold."

Eight words had told the story, or at least enough of it to clear away a part of the cloud of mystery, but the other part still remained.

Who had fired the bullet, and where had the gold come from?

"He must have struck it rich," said Wabi "else would he have a chunk of gold like that?"

"Where that come from—more, much! more," agreed Mukoki shortly.

"Do you suppose—" began Rod. There was a curious thrill in his voice, and he paused, as if scarce daring to venture the rest of what he had meant to say. "Do you suppose—somebody has found—our gold?"

Mukoki and Wabigoon stared at him as if he had suddenly exploded a mine. Then Wabi turned and looked silently at the old Indian. Not a word was spoken. Silently Rod drew something from his pocket, carefully wrapped in a bit of cloth.

"You remember I kept this little nugget from my share in the buckskin bag, intending to have a scarf-pin made of it," he explained. "When I took my course in geology and mineralogy I learned that, if one had half a dozen specimens of gold, each from a different mine, the chances were about ten to one that no two of them would be exactly alike in coloring. Now—"

He exposed the nugget, and made a fresh cut in it with his knife, as Mukoki had done with the yellow bullet. Then the two gleaming surfaces were compared.

One glance was sufficient.

The gold was the same!

Wabi drew back, uttering something under his breath, his eyes gleaming darkly. Rod's face had suddenly turned a shade whiter, and Mukoki, not understanding the mysteries of mineralogy, stared at the youth in mute suspense.

"Somebody has found our gold!" cried Wabi, almost savagely.

"We are not sure," interrupted Rod. "We know only that the evidence is very suspicious. The rock formation throughout this country is almost identically the same, deep trap on top, with slate beneath, and for that reason it is very possible that gold found right in this locality would be of exactly the same appearance as gold found two hundred miles from here. Only—it's suspicious," Rod concluded.

"Man probably dead," consoled Mukoki. "No lead—hungry—shoot bear an' no git heem. Mebby starve!"

"The poor devil!" exclaimed Wabigoon. "We've been too selfish to give a thought to that, Rod. Of course he was hungry, or he wouldn't have used gold for bullets. And he didn't get this bear! By George—"

"I wish he'd got him," said Rod simply.

Somehow Mukoki's words sent a flush into his face. There came to him, suddenly, a mental picture of that possible tragedy in the wilderness: the starving man, his last hopeless molding of a golden bullet, the sight of the monster bear, the shot, and after that the despair and suffering and slow death of the man who had fired it.

"I wish he'd got it," he repeated. "We have plenty of grub."

Mukoki was already at work skinning the bear, and Rod and Wabigoon unsheathed their knives and joined him.

"Wound 'bout fi', six month old," said the Indian. "Shot just before snow."

"When there wasn't a berry in the woods for a starving man to eat," added Wabi. "Well, here's hoping he found something, Rod."

An hour later the three gold seekers returned to their canoe laden with the choicest of the bear meat, and the animal's skin, which was immediately stretched between two trees, high up out of the reach of depredating animals. Rod gazed at it proudly.

"We'll be sure and get it when we come back, won't we?"

"Sure," replied Wabi.

"It will be safe?"

"As safe as though it were at home."

"Unless somebody comes along and steals it," added Rod.

Wabi was busy unloading certain necessary articles from the canoe, but he ceased his work to look at Rod.

"Steal!" he cried in astonishment.

Mukoki, too, had heard Rod's remark and was listening.

"Rod," continued Wabigoon quietly, "that is one thing we don't have up here. Our great big glorious North doesn't know the word thief, except when it is applied to a Woonga. If a white hunter came along here to-morrow, and found that hide stretched so low that the animals were getting at it, he would nail it higher for us. An Indian, if he camped here, would build his fire so that the sparks wouldn't strike it. Rod, up here, where we don't know civilization, we're honest!"

"But down in the States," said Rod, "the Indians steal."

The words slipped from him. The next instant he would have given anything to have been able to recall them. Mukoki had grown a little more tense in his attitude.

"That's because white men have lived so much among them, white men who are called civilized," answered the young scion of Wabinosh House, his eyes growing bright. "White blood makes thieves. Pardon me for saying it, Rod, but it does, at least among Indians. But our white blood up here is different from yours. It's the same blood that's in our Indians, every drop of it honest, loyal to its friends, and it runs red and strong with the love of this great wilderness. There are exceptions, of course, as you have seen in the Woongas, who are an outlaw race. But we are honest, and Mukoki there, if he were dying of cold, wouldn't steal a skin to save himself. An ordinary Indian might take it, if he were dying for want of it, but not unless he had a gun to leave in its place!"

"I didn't mean to say what I did," said Rod. "Oh, I wish I were one of you! I love this big wilderness, and everything in it, and it's glorious to hear you say what you do!"

"You are one of us," cried Wabi, gripping his hand.

That evening, after they had finished their supper and the three were gathered about the fire, Wabigoon said:

"Muky could tell you one reason why the Indians of the North are honest if he wanted to, Rod. But he won't, so I will. There was once a tribe in the country of Mukoki's fore-fathers, along the Makoki River, which empties into the Albany, whose men were great thieves, and who stole from one another. No man's snare was safe from his neighbor, fights and killings were of almost daily occurrence, and the chief of the tribe was the greatest thief of all, and of course escaped punishment. This chief loved to set his own snares, and one day he was enraged to find that one of his tribe had been so bold as to set a snare within a few inches of his own, and in the trail of the same animal. He determined on meting out a terrible punishment, and waited.

"While he was waiting a rabbit ran into the snare of his rival. Picking up a stick he approached to kill the game, when suddenly there seemed to pass a white mist before his eyes, and when he looked again there was no rabbit, but the most wonderful creature he had ever beheld in the form of man, and he knew that it was the Great Spirit, and fell upon his face. And a great voice came to him, as if rolling from far beyond the most distant mountains, and it told him that the forests and streams of the red man's heaven were closed to him and his people, that in the hunting-grounds that came after death there was no place for thieves.

"'Go to your people,' he said, 'and tell them this. Tell them that from this day on, moon upon moon, until the end of time, must they live like brothers, setting their snares side by side without war, to escape the punishment that hovers over them.'

"And the chief told his people this," finished Wabi, "and from that hour there was no more thievery in the land. And because the Great Spirit came in the form he did the rabbit is the good luck animal of the Crees and Chippewayans of the far North, and wherever the snows fall deep, men set their traps side by side to this day, and do not rob."

Rod had listened with glowing eyes.

"It's glorious!" he repeated. "It's glorious, if it's true!"

"It is true," said Wabi. "In all this great country between here and the Barren Lands, where the musk-ox lives, there is not one Indian in a hundred who would steal another Indian's trap, or the game in it. It is one of the understood laws of the North that every hunter shall have his 'trap line,' or 'run,' and it is not courtesy for another trapper to encroach upon it; but if he should, and he should lay a trap close beside another's, it would not be wrong, for the law of the Great Spirit is greater than the law of man. Why, last winter even the outlaw Woongas made no effort to steal our traps, though they thirsted for our lives!"

"Mukoki," said Rod, rising, "I want to shake hands with you before I go to bed. I'm learning—fast. I wish I were half Indian!"

The next morning the journey up the Ombabika was resumed, and a little more of anxiety was now mingled with the enthusiasm of the adventurers. For no one of them could relieve himself of the possible significance of the gold bullet, the fear that their treasure had been discovered by another. Wabi regained his confidence first.

"I don't believe it!" he exclaimed at last. Without questioning, the others knew to what he referred. "I don't believe that our gold has been found. It is in the heart of the wildest country on the continent, and surely if such a rich find had been made we would have heard something about it at Wabinosh House or Kenegami, which are the nearest points of supply."

"Or, if it was found, the discoverer is dead," added Rod.

"Yes."

In the stern, Mukoki nodded and grunted his conviction.

"Dead," he repeated.

The Ombabika had now become narrow and violent. Against its swift current the canoe made but little headway, and at noon Mukoki announced that the river journey was at an end. For a few moments Rod did not recognize where they had landed. Then he gave a sudden cry of glad surprise.

"Why, this is where we had supper that night after our terrible adventure on the river last winter," he exclaimed.

From far off there came faintly to his ears a low, rumbling thunder.

"Listen! That's the river rushing through the break in the mountain where we walked the edge of the precipice!"

Wabi shrugged his shoulders at the memory of that fearful night and its desperate race to escape from the Woonga country.

"We've got to do the same thing again, only this time it will be in daylight."

"Long portage," said Mukoki. "Six mile. Carry everything."

"Until we reach the little creek in the plains beyond the mountain, where you shot the caribou?" asked Rod.

"Yes," replied Wabigoon. "That little creek will now be a pretty husky stream, and by hard work we can paddle up it until we come within about eight miles of our old camp at the head of the chasm, where we found the skeletons and the map."

"And from that point we shall have to carry our canoe and supplies to the creek in the chasm," finished Rod. "And then—hurrah for the gold!"

"Mak' old camp on mountain by night," said Mukoki.

Wabi broke into a happy laugh and thumped Rod on the back.

"Remember the big lynx you shot, Rod, and thought it was a Woonga, and had us all frightened out of our wits?" he cried.

Rod colored at the memory of his funny adventure, which was thrilling enough at the time, and began assisting Mukoki in unloading the canoe. Two hours were taken for dinner and rest, and then the young hunters shouldered their canoe while Mukoki hurried on ahead of them, weighted with a half of their supplies. Every step now brought the thunder of the torrent rushing through the mountain more clearly to their ears, and they had not progressed more than a mile when they were compelled to shout to make each other hear. On their right the wall of the mountain closed in rapidly, and as they stumbled with their burden over a mass of huge boulders the two boys saw just ahead of them the narrow trail at the edge of the precipice.

At its beginning they rested their canoe. On one side of them, a dozen yards away, the face of the mountain rose sheer above them for a thousand feet; on the other, scarce that distance from where they stood, was the roaring chasm. And ahead of them the mountain wall and the edge of the precipice came nearer and nearer, until there was no more than a six-foot ledge to walk upon. Rod's face turned strangely white as he realized, for the first time, the terrible chances they had taken on that black, eventful night of a few months ago; and for a time Wabi stood silent, his face as hard-set as a rock. Up out of the chasm there came a deafening thunder of raging waters, like the hollow explosions of great guns echoing and reechoing in subterranean caverns.

"Let's take a look!" shouted Wabi close up to his companion's ear.

He went to the edge of the precipice, and Rod forced himself to follow, though there was in him a powerful inclination to hug close to the mountain wall. For half a minute he stood fascinated, terror-stricken, and yet in those thirty seconds he saw that which would remain with him for a lifetime. Five hundred feet below him the over-running floods of spring were caught between the ragged edges of the two chasm walls, beating themselves in their fury to the whiteness of milk froth, until it seemed as though the earth itself must tremble under their mad rush. Now and then through the twisting foam there shot the black crests of great rocks, as though huge monsters of some kind were at play, whipping the torrent into greater fury, and bellowing forth thunderous voices when they rose triumphant for an instant above the sweep of the flood.

All this Rod saw in less than a breath, and he drew back, shivering in every fiber of his body. But Wabigoon did not move. For several minutes the Indian youth stood looking down upon the wonderful force at play below him, his body as motionless as though hewn out of stone, the wild blood in his veins leaping in response to the tumult and thunder of the magnificent spectacle deep down in the chasm. When he turned to Rod his lips made no sound, but his eyes glowed with that half-slumbering fire which came only when the red blood of the princess mother gained ascendency, and the wild in him called out greeting to the savage in nature. It is not music, or fine talk, or artificial wonders that waken a thrill deep down in the Indian soul, it is the great mountain, the vast plain, the roaring cataract! And so it was with Wabigoon.

They went on, now, with the canoe upon their shoulders, and hugging close to the mountain wall. Slowly, avoiding every stone and stick that might cause one of them to stumble, they passed along the perilously narrow ledge, and did not rest again until they had come in safety to the broader trail leading up the mountain. An hour later Mukoki met them on his return for the remainder of their supplies. Shortly after this they reached the small plateau where they had camped during the previous winter, and lowered their canoe close to the old balsam shelter.

Everything was as they had left it. Neither snow nor storm had destroyed their lodging of boughs. There were the charred remains of their fire, the bones of the huge lynx which Roderick had thought was an attacking Woonga, and had killed; and beside the shelter was a stake driven into the ground, the stake to which they had fastened their faithful comrade of many an adventure, the tame wolf.

To this stake went Wabigoon, speaking no word. He sat down close beside it, with his arm resting upon it, and when he looked up at Rod there was an expression in his face which spoke more than words.

"Poor old Wolf!"

Rod turned and walked to the edge of the plateau, something hot and uncomfortable filling his eyes. Below him, as far as he could see, there stretched the vast, mysterious wilderness that reached to Hudson Bay. And somewhere out there in that limitless space was Wolf.

As he looked, the hot film clouding his vision, he thought of the old tragedy in Mukoki's life, and of how Wolf had helped him to avenge himself. In his imagination he went back to that terrible day many, many years ago, when Mukoki, happy in the strength of his youth, found his young wife and child dead upon the trail, killed by wolves; he thought of the story that Wabi had told him of the madness that came to the young warrior, of how year after year he followed the trail of wolves, wreaking his vengeance on their breed. And last he thought of Wolf—how Mukoki and Wabigoon had found the whelp in one of their traps; how they tamed him, grew to love him, and taught him to decoy other wolves to their riffes. Wolf had been their comrade of a few months before; fearless, faithful, until at last, escaping from the final murderous assault of the Woongas, he had fled into the forests, while his human friends fought their way back to civilization.

Where was Wolf now?

Unconsciously Rod questioned himself aloud, and from close behind him Wabi answered.

"With the hunt-pack, Rod. He's forgotten us; gone back to the wild."

"Gone back to the wild, yes," said Rod; "but forgotten us, no!"

Wabi made no reply.



CHAPTER X

THE MYSTERIOUS SHOT

For many minutes the two stood silently gazing into the North. At their feet spread the broad plain where Mukoki had killed the caribou while they watched him from the plateau; beyond that were the dense stretches of forest, broken here and there by other plains and meadows, and a dozen lakes glistened in the red tints of the setting sun. When Rod first looked upon that country a few months before it was a world of ice and snow, a cold, dazzling panorama of white that reached from where he stood to the Pole. Now it was wakening under the first magic touch of spring. Far away the two young gold hunters caught a glimmer of the stream which they were to follow up to the chasm. Last winter it had been a tiny creek; now it was swollen to the size of a river.

Suddenly, as they looked, two dark objects came slowly out into an opening a mile away. At that distance they appeared hardly larger than dogs, and Rod, whose mind was still filled with thoughts of Wolf, exclaimed "Wolves!"

In the same breath he caught himself, and added:

"Moose!"

"A cow and her calf," said Wabi.

"How do you know?" asked Rod.

"There; watch them now!" cried Wabi, catching his companion by the arm. "The mother is ahead, and even from here I can see that she is pacing. A moose never trots or gallops, like a deer, but paces, using both feet on a side at the same time. Notice how the calf jumps about. An old moose would never do that."

"But both animals look to be about the same size," replied Rod, still doubtful.

"It's a two-year-old calf; almost as big as its mother. In fact, it's not really a calf, because it is too old; but so long as young moose stick to their mothers we call them calves up here. I've known them to remain together for three years."

"They're coming this way!" whispered the white youth.

The moose had turned, heading for the base of the mountain upon which they stood. Wabi drew his companion behind a big rock, from which both could look down without being seen.

"Be quiet!" he warned. "They're coming to feed on the sprouting poplar along the mountain side. Just been over to the creek to get a drink. We may have some fun!"

He wet a finger in his mouth and held it above his head, the forest pathfinder's infallible method of telling how the wind blows. No matter how slight the movement of the air may be, one side of the finger dries first, in an instant, and is warm, while the side that remains damp is cold, and in the lee, that side toward which the wind is blowing.

"The wind is wrong, dead wrong," said Wabi. "It's blowing straight toward them. Unless we are so high that our scent goes above them they won't come much nearer."

Another minute and Rod nudged Wabigoon.

"They're within range!"

"Yes, but we won't shoot. We don't need meat."

As the young Indian spoke the cow brought herself to a dead stop so suddenly that Wabi gave a delighted grunt.

"Great!" he whispered. "She's caught a whiff of us, a quarter of a mile away. See how she holds her head, her great ears chucked forward to hear, her nose half to the sky! She knows there's danger on this mountain. Now—"

He did not finish. Like a flash the cow had darted ahead of her calf, seeming to shoulder it back, and in another moment the two were racing swiftly into the North, the mother this time in the rear instead of leading.

"I love moose," said Wabi, his eyes glowing. "Do you notice that I never shoot them, Rod?"

"By George, so you don't! I never thought of it. What is the reason?"

"There are a good many reasons. Of course I have shot them, when in very great need of meat; but it's an unpleasant job for me. You call the lion the king of beasts. Well, he isn't. The moose is monarch of them all. You saw how the mother moose acted. She led her calf when approaching, because if there should be danger she wanted to meet it first; and when she found danger she drove her calf ahead of her in retreat, so that if harm came to either of them it would come to her. Isn't that the human mother instinct? And the bull is glorious! In the mating season he will face a dozen men in defense of his cow. If she falls first he will stand between her body and the hunters' rifles, pawing the earth, his eyes glaring defiance, until he is riddled with bullets. Once I saw a wounded cow, and as she staggered away the big bull that was with her hugged her close behind, never for a moment leaving her exposed to the fire, but unflinchingly taking every bullet in his own body. So beautiful was his courage that you would not have known he was wounded until he fell dead in his tracks, literally cut to pieces. It was that sight that made me swear never to kill another moose—unless I had to."

Rod was silent. The mother and the calf had disappeared when he turned to Wabigoon.

"I'm glad you told me that, Wabi," he said. "You are teaching me new things about this big wilderness every day. I've shot one moose. I won't shoot another unless we need him."

They went back to their old camp, and by the time Mukoki returned with his second load everything was in shape for the night, and a supper of delicious bear steaks, coffee and "hot-stone biscuits," as Rod called their baked combination of flour, water and salt, was soon ready. After their meal the three sat for a long time near the fire, for there was still a slight chill in the night air, and talked mostly about Wolf and his adventures. Rod, in his distant home in civilization had read and heard much that was false about wild animals, was confident that Wolf would find they had returned into the wilderness and would join them again, and to corroborate his belief he narrated several stories of similar happenings. Wabigoon listened courteously to him, which is the way of the Indian. Then he said:

"Such stories as those are false, Rod. When I spent my year at school with you I read dozens of stories about wild animals, and very few of them were true. All sorts of people write about the wilderness, and yet not one out of a hundred of those same people have ever been in the real wilderness. And it is wonderful what some of them make wild animals do!"

Rod straightened himself with a jerk.

"I have been here only a few months, Wabi, and yet I have seen more wonderful things about animals than I have ever read in print," he declared.

"Of course you have," agreed his companion. "And there is just the point I want to make clear. Wild animals are the most wonderful creatures in existence, and if some of their actual habits and adventures were told they would be laughed at down where you came from. Where your writers make their mistake is in bringing them into too close association with human beings, and making them half human. Wolf remained with us because he knew no better. We caught him when he was a whelp, and as he grew older both Mukoki and I could see that at times he was filled with a wild longing to join his people. We knew that it was coming. He will never return to us."

Mukoki made a soft sound deep down in his throat, and Rod turned suddenly toward him.

"You believe that, Mukoki?"

"Wolf gone!"

"But animals think, don't they?" persisted Rod, to whom the discussion was of absorbing interest. "They reason, they remember!"

"They do all of that," replied Wabi, "and more. I have read certain so-called natural history stories which ridiculed the idea of wild animals possessing mental abilities, and which ascribed pretty nearly all their actions to instinct. Such stories are as wrong as those which give wild animals human endowments. Animals do think. Don't you suppose that mother moose was thinking when she stopped out there in the plain? Wasn't she turning the situation over in her mind, if you want to speak of it as that, and mentally figuring just where the danger lay, and in which direction she ought to take flight? And besides reason wild animals have instinct. One proof of this is their sixth sense; the sense of—of—what do you call it?"

"Orientation?" assisted Rod.

"Yes; that's it. Orientation. A bear, for instance, doesn't carry a compass with him, as some nature writers would like to have you believe, and yet he can go from this mountain to a den a hundred miles away as straight as a bird can fly. That's instinct."

"Then Wolf—" mused Rod slowly.

"Is with the hunt pack," finished the young Indian.

Mukoki spoke softly, as though to himself.

"Last winter the snow came, and now it is water. Two moons past, Wolf, heem tame. Now wild. The Great Spirit say that is right, I guess so."

"He means that it is nature," said Wabi.

For an hour after the others had wrapped themselves in their blankets Rod sat alone beside the fire, listening, and thinking. And after that he went to the edge of the plateau, and watched the great spring moon as it floated slowly over the vast, still wilderness. How wonderful these solitudes were, how little the teeming millions of civilization knew about them! Somehow, in those moments, as he watched the shivering Northern Lights playing far beyond the farthest footstep of man, there came to Roderick Drew the thought that God must be nearer to earth here than anywhere else in the world. For the first time his soul was filled with something that was almost love for the red man's Great Spirit. And why not? For was not that Great Spirit his own God? Sad, lonely, silent, mysterious, a whole world lay before him, a world that was the Indian Bible, that contained for the red man of the North the teachings and the voice of the Creator of all things. A wind had risen and was whispering over the plains; he heard the hushed voices of the quivering poplar boughs, and there came from far below him the soft, chuckling, mating hoot of an owl. Gradually his eyes closed, and he leaned more heavily upon the rock against which he had seated himself. After that he dreamed of what he had looked upon, while the fire at the camp died away, and Mukoki and Wabigoon slumbered, oblivious of his absence.

Of how long he slept Rod had no idea. He was suddenly brought back into wakefulness by a sound that startled him to the marrow of his bones, a terrible scream close to his ears. He sat bolt upright, quaking in every limb. For a moment he tried to cry out, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. What had happened? Was it Wabi, or Mukoki?

A dozen paces away was a huge rock and as he looked he saw something move upon it, a long, lithe object that shone a silvery white in the moonlight, and he knew that it was a lynx. Stealthily Rod reached for his rifle, which had slipped between his knees, and as he did so the lynx sent forth another of its blood-curdling screams. Even now the white youth shivered at the sound, so much like the terrible cry of some person in dying agony. He leveled his gun. There was a flash in the moonlight, a sharp report, and a shout from the direction of the camp. In another moment Rod was upon his feet, and sorry that he had shot. It flashed upon him that he might have watched the lynx, one of the night pirates of all this strange wilderness, and that its pelt, at this season, would be worthless. He went to the rock cautiously. The lynx was not there. He walked around it, holding his rifle in readiness for attack. The lynx was gone. He had made a clean miss!

Both Mukoki and Wabigoon met him on the opposite side of the rock.

"'Nother heap big Woonga," grinned the old pathfinder remembering Rod's former adventure on this same plateau. "Kill?"

"Missed!" said Rod shortly. "What a scream that was! Ugh!"

This time he went to bed with the others, and slept until early dawn. The morning was one of those rare gifts of budding spring, warm and redolent with the sweetness of new life, and its beauty acted as a tonic on the three adventurers. Their fears of the day before were gone, and with song and whistle and cheery voice they began the descent of the mountain. Mukoki went on ahead of Rod and Wabigoon with his pack, and the two boys had not made more than two of the six miles in the portage across the plain when he met them again, returning for his second load. By noon the canoe and its contents were safely at the creek, and the gold hunters halted until after dinner. The little stream across which Rod had easily leaped without wetting his feet a few weeks before had swollen into a fair-sized river, and in places its searching waters had formed tiny lakes. Unlike the Ombabika, sweeping down from its mountain heights, there was but little current here, a fact that immensely pleased Mukoki and his companions.

"We near mak' cabin to-night," said the old Indian. "I take load to-night."

During the two hours' paddle up-stream Mukoki spoke but little, and as they approached nearer to their last winter's thrilling fight with the Woongas, in which they had so nearly lost their lives, he ceased even to respond by nod or grunt to the conversation of his companions. Once Wabigoon spoke again of Wolf, and for an instant the old Indian, who was in the bow, half turned to them, and for two strokes his paddle rested in mid air. From the stern Wabi reached forward and poked Rod, and the white youth understood. Next to Minnetaki and Wabigoon, and perhaps himself, he knew that the faithful pathfinder loved Wolf best, and that; he was filled with a little of that savage madness which came to him now and then when he dwelt on the terrible tragedy that had entered his life many years before. When the hunters reached the end of their canoe journey up the stream Mukoki silently shouldered his pack and set out over the plain. He spoke no word, made no sign.

"It would be useless," said Wabigoon, as Rod made a movement as if to follow and stop their comrade. "No persuasion could turn Mukoki now. He wants to reach the old camp to-night, where Wolf disappeared. He won't be back until morning."

And Mukoki went on, never for an instant turning his face, until his companions lost sight of him. But once out of their vision his, manner took on a strange and sudden change. He lowered the head strap of his pack over his breast, so that he might clutch at it with one hand, and move his head freely. His eyes glowed with the dull fire of wakening excitement; his steps were quick, and yet cautious, every movement in his advance was one of listening and watchful expectancy. A person watching the old warrior would have said that he was keenly on the alert for game, or danger. And yet the safety of his rifle was locked, a fresh trail of bear aroused no new interest in him, and when he heard a crashing in the brush on his right, where a buck had got wind of him, he gave but a single glance in its direction. He was not seeking game. Nor were his fears aroused by suspicion of possible danger. Wherever the ground was soft and moist he traveled slowly, with his eyes on the earth, and at one of these spots he came to a sudden pause. Before him were the clearly defined imprints of a wolf's feet.

With a low cry Mukoki threw off his pack and fell upon his knees. His eyes burned fiercely now. There was something of madness in the way in which he groveled in the soft earth, creeping from one footprint to the next ahead of it, and stopping always where the right forefoot had left its track. It was that foot which had held Wolf a captive in Mukoki's trap, and he had lost two toes. None was missing here, and the old pathfinder rose to his feet again, disappointment shadowing the twitching expectancy in his face.

Five times that afternoon Mukoki fell on his knees beside the trails of wolves, and five times the light of hope went out for a moment in his eyes. It was sunset when he climbed the mountain ridge to the little lake hidden away in the dip; only a last pale glow tinted the sky behind the forests when he set down his pack close to the charred remains of the old cabin. For many minutes he rested, his gaze fixed on those blackened reminders of their thrilling battle for life the winter before. His wild blood leaped again at the thought of the strife, of the desperate race that he and Roderick had run over the mountain to the burning cabin, and of their rescue of Wabigoon. Suddenly his eyes caught the white gleam of something half a hundred paces away, and he rose and walked toward it, grunting and chuckling in half-savage pleasure. The Woongas had not returned to bury their dead, and the bones beside which he stopped were those of the outlaw whom Wabigoon had killed, picked clean by the small animals of the forest.

Mukoki returned to his pack and sat down As darkness fell about him he made no effort to build a fire. He had brought food, but did not eat it. More dense grew the shadows in the forest, thicker the gloom that hung over the mountains. Still he sat, silent, listening. To him, softly and timidly at first, came the sounds of the night: the chuckling notes of birds that awakened when the earth masked itself in darkness, the hoot of an owl, the faint wailing echo of a far-away lynx cry, the plunge of a mink in the lake. And now the wind began whispering in the balsams, singing gently its age-old song of loneliness, of desolation, of mystery, and Mukoki straightened himself and looked to where the red glow of the moon was rising above the mountain. After a little he rose to his feet, took his rifle, and climbed to the summit of the ridge, with a thousand miles of wilderness sweeping between him and the Arctic sea somewhere out there in that wilderness—was Wolf!

The moon rose higher. It disclosed the old Indian, as rigid as a rock, with his back to a white, barkless tree in which the sap had run dry a generation before. As he stood there he heard a sound, and turned his face toward it, a sound that came from a mass of tumbled boulders, like the falling of a small rock upon a larger one. And as he looked there came from the darkness of the boulders a flash of fire and the explosion of a gun, and as Mukoki crumpled down in his tracks there followed a cry so terrible, so unhuman, so blood-curdling that, as he fell, an answering cry of horror burst from the lips of the old warrior. He lay like dead, though he was not touched. Instinct more than reason had impelled him to fall at the sound of the mysterious shot. Cautiously he wormed his rifle to his shoulder. But there came no movement from the rocks.

Then, from half-way down the mountain, there came again that terrible cry, and Mukoki knew that no animal in all these wilds could make it, but that it was human, and yet more savage than anything that had ever brought terror into his soul. Trembling, he crouched to the earth, a nameless fear chilling the blood in his veins. And the cry came again, and yet again, always farther and farther away, now at the foot of the mountain, now upon the plain, now floating away toward the chasm, echoing and reechoing between the mountain ridges, startling the creatures of the night into silence, and wresting deep sobbing breaths from out of Mukoki's soul. And the old warrior moved not a muscle until far away, miles and miles, it seemed, there died the last echo of it, and only the whispering winds rustled over the mountain top.



CHAPTER XI

THE CRY IN THE CHASM

If Mukoki had been a white man he would have analyzed in some way the meaning of those strange cries. But the wild and its savage things formed his world; and his world, until this night, had never known human or beast that could make the terrible sounds he had heard. So for an hour he crouched where he had fallen, still trembling with that nameless fear, and trying hard to form a solution of what had happened. Slowly he recovered himself. For many years he had mingled with white people at the Post and reason now battled with the superstitions of his race.

He had been fired at. He had heard the whistling song of the ball over his head, and had heard it strike the tree behind him. For a time those rocks toward which he stared like fascinated beast had concealed a man. But what kind of man! He remembered the ancient battle-cries of his tribe, and of the enemies of his tribe, but none was like the cries that had followed the shot. He heard them still; they rang in his ears, and sent shivering chills up his back. And the more he tried to reason the greater that nameless fear grew in him, until he slunk like an animal down the side of the mountain, through the dip, and out again upon the plain. And with that same nameless fear always close behind him, urging him on with its terrors, he sped back over the trail that he had followed that day, nor for an instant did he stop to rest until he came to the camp-fire of Rod and Wabigoon.

Usually an Indian hides his fears; he conceals them as a white man does his sins. But to-night Mukoki's experience had passed beyond the knowledge of his race, and he told of what had happened, trembling still, cringing when a great white rabbit darted close to the fire. Rod and Wabi listened to him in mute astonishment.

"Could it have been a Woonga?" asked Wabi.

"No Woonga," replied the old warrior quickly, shaking his head. "Woonga no mak' noise lak that!"

He drew away from the fire, wrapped himself in a blanket, and crept into the shelter that Rod and Wabigoon had built. The two boys looked at each other in silence.

"Muky has certainly had some most extraordinary adventure," said Wabi at last. "I have never seen him like this before. It is easy to guess the meaning of the shot. Some of the Woongas may still be in the country, and one of them saw Mukoki, and fired at him. But the scream! What do you make of that?"

"Do you suppose," whispered Rod, speaking close to his companion's ear, "that Mukoki's imagination helped him out to-night?" He paused for a moment as he saw the look of disapproval in Wabigoon's eyes, and then went on. "I don't mean to hint that he stretched his story purposely. He was standing on the mountain top. Suddenly there came a flash of fire, the report of a rifle, and a bullet zipped close to his head. And at that same instant, or a moment later—well, you remember the scream of the lynx!"

"You believe that it might have been a lynx, startled by the shot, and sent screaming across the plain?"

"Yes."

"Impossible. At the sound of that shot a lynx would have remained as still as death!"

"Still there are always exceptions," persisted the white youth.

"Not in the case of lynx," declared Wabigoon. "No animal made those cries. Mukoki is as fearless as a lion. The cry of a lynx would have stirred his blood with pleasure instead of fear. Whatever the sounds were they turned Mukoki's blood into water. They made him a coward, and he ran, ran, mind you! until he got back to us! Is that like Mukoki? I tell you the cries—"

"What?"

"Were something very unusual," finished Wabigoon quietly, rising to his feet "Perhaps we will find out more to-morrow. As it is, I believe we had better stand guard in camp to-night. I will go to bed now and you can awaken me after a while."

Wabigoon's words and the strangeness of his manner put Rod ill at ease, despite his arguments of a few moments before, and no sooner did he find himself alone beside the fire than he began to be filled with an unpleasant premonition of lurking danger. For a time he sat very still, trying to peer into the shadows beyond the fire and listening to the sounds that came to him from out of the night. As he watched and listened his brain worked ceaselessly, conjuring picture after picture of what that danger might be, and at last he drew out of the firelight and concealed himself in the deep gloom of the bush. From here he could see the camp, and at the same time was safe from a possible rifle shot.

The night passed with tedious slowness, and he was glad when, a little after midnight, Wabi came out to relieve him. At dawn he was in turn awakened by the young Indian. Mukoki was already up and had prepared his pack. Apparently he had regained his old spirits, but both Rod and Wabigoon could see that behind them the fear of the preceding night still haunted him. That morning he did not set off ahead of the two boys with his pack but walked beside them, stopping to rest when they lowered their canoe, his eyes never ceasing their sharp scrutiny of the plain and distant ridges. Once when Mukoki mounted a big rock to look about him, Wabi whispered,

"I tell you it's strange, Rod—mighty strange!"

An hour later the old warrior halted and threw off his load. The three had approached within a quarter of a mile of the dip in the mountain.

"Leave canoe here," he said. "Go lak fox to old camp. Mebbe see!"

He took the lead now, followed closely by the boys. The safety of the old pathfinder's rifle was down, and following his example Rod and Wabigoon held their own guns in readiness for instant fire. As they neared the summit of the ridge on which Mukoki's life had been attempted the suspense of the two young hunters became almost painfully acute. Mukoki's actions not only astonished them, but set their blood tingling with his own strange fear. Many times had Wabigoon seen his faithful comrade in moments of deadly peril but never, even when the Woongas were close upon their trail, had he known him to take them as seriously as he did the ascent of this mountain. Every few steps Mukoki paused, listening and watchful. Not the smallest twig broke under his moccasined feet; the movement of the smallest bird, the trembling of a bush, the scurry of a rabbit halted him, rigid, his rifle half to shoulder. And Rod and Wabigoon soon become filled with this same panic-stricken fear. What terrible dread was it that filled Mukoki's soul? Had he seen something of which he had not told them? Did he think something which he had not revealed?

Foot by foot the three came to the top of the ridge. There Mukoki straightened himself, and stood erect. There were no signs of a living creature about them. Down in the dip nestled the little lake, gleaming in the midday sun. They could make out the debris of the burned cabin in which they had passed their hunting season, and close to this was the pack which Mukoki had dropped there the night before. No one had molested it. Wabi's face relaxed. Rod, breathing easier, laughed softly. What had there been to fear? He glanced questioningly at Mukoki.

"There rocks, there tree," said the old warrior, in answer to Rod's glance, "down there went scream!" He pointed far out across the plain.

Wabi had gone to the tree.

"See here, Rod!" he cried. "By George, this was a close shave!" He pointed to a tiny hole freshly made in the smooth white surface of the tree as the others came up. "There—stand there, Mukoki, back to the tree, as you said you were when the shot was fired. Great Caesar, that fellow had a dead line on your head—two inches high! No wonder it made you think the scream of a lynx was something else!"

"No lynx," said Mukoki, his face darkening.

"Shame on you, Muky!" laughed Wabigoon. "Don't get angry. I won't say it again if it makes you mad."

Rod had drawn his hunting-knife and was prodding the point of it in the bullet hole.

"I can feel the ball," he said. "It's not in more than an inch."

"That's curious," exclaimed Wabigoon, coming close beside him. "It ought to be half-way through the tree at least! Eh, Muky? I don't believe it would have hurt—"

He stopped. Rod had turned with a sudden excited cry. He held out his knife, tip upward, and pointed to it with the index finger of his free hand. Wabi's eyes fell on the tip of the blade. Mukoki stared. For a full half minute the three stood in speechless amazement. Clinging to the knife tip was a tiny fleck of yellow, gleaming lustrously in the sun as Rod slowly turned the handle of his weapon.

"Another—gold—bullet!"

The words fell from Wabi's lips very slowly, and so low that they were scarce above a whisper. Mukoki seemed to have ceased breathing. Rod's eyes met the old warrior's.

"What does it mean?"

Wabi had pulled his knife and was digging into the tree. A few deep cuts and the golden bullet lay exposed to view.

"What does it mean?" repeated the white youth.

Again he addressed his question to Mukoki.

"Man who shoot bear—heem no dead," replied the old pathfinder. "Same gun, same gold, same—"

"Same what?"

A strange gleam came for an instant into Mukoki's eyes, and without finishing he turned and pointed across the narrow plain that lay between them and the mysterious chasm which they were to follow in their search for treasure.

"Cry went there!" he said shortly.

"To the chasm!" said Wabi.

"To the chasm!" repeated Rod.

Impelled by the same thought the three adventurers went toward the rocks from which the shot had been fired. Surely they would discover some sign there, or lower down upon the plain, where the melting snows had softened the earth. Mukoki led in the search, and foot by foot they examined the spot where the mysterious marksman must have stood when he sent his golden bullet so close to the Indian's head.

But not a trace of his presence had he left behind. Working abreast, the three began the descent of the ridge. Hardly had they covered a third of the distance to the plain when Wabi, who was trailing between Rod and the old Indian, called out that he had made a discovery. Mukoki had already reached him when Rod came up, and the two were gazing silently at something fluttering from a bush.

"Lynx hair!" cried Rod. "A lynx has been this way!" He could not entirely conceal the triumph in his voice. He had been right in his conjecture of the night before, the cry that had frightened Mukoki had been made by a lynx!

"Yes, a lynx has been this way, a lynx four feet high," said Wabigoon quietly, and the touch of raillery in his voice assured Rod that he had still other lessons to learn in the life of this big wilderness. "Lynx don't grow that big, Rod!"

"Then it's—" Rod feared to go on.

"Lynx fur. That's just what it is. Whoever fired at Mukoki last night was dressed in skins! Now, can you tell us what that means?"

Without waiting for an answer Wabigoon resumed his search. But the mountain side gave no further evidence. Not a footprint was found upon the plain. If the mysterious person who had fired the golden bullet had leaped from the mountain top into space he could have left no fewer traces behind him. At the end of an hour Rod and his companions returned to the canoe, carried their loads to the pack in the dip, and prepared dinner. Their suspense and fear, and specially Mukoki's dread, were in a large measure gone. But at the same time they were more hopelessly mystified than ever. That there was danger ahead of them, that the menace of golden bullets was actual and thrilling, all three were well agreed, but the sunlight of day and a little sound reasoning had dispelled their half superstitious terrors of the previous night and they began to face the new situation with their former confidence.

"We can't let this delay us," said Wabi, as they ate their dinner. "By night we ought to be in our old camp at the head of the chasm, where we held the Woongas at bay last winter. The sooner we get out of the way of these golden bullets the better it will be for us!"

Mukoki shrugged his shoulders.

"Gold bullet follow, I guess so," he grunted, "Cry went there—to chasm!"

"I don't believe this fellow, whoever he is, will hang to our trail," continued Wabi, giving Rod a suggestive look. A few moments later he found an opportunity to whisper, "We've got to get that cry out of Muky's head, Rod, or we'll never find our gold!"

When Mukoki had gone to arrange his pack the young Indian spoke earnestly to his companion.

"Muky isn't afraid of bullets, either gold or lead; he isn't afraid of any danger on earth. But that cry haunts him. He is trying not to let us know, yet it haunts him just the same. Do you know what he is thinking? No? Well, I do! He is superstitious, like the rest of his race, and the two gold bullets, the terrible cries, and the fact that we found no tracks upon the plain are all carrying him toward one conclusion, that the strange thing that fired at him is—"

Wabigoon paused and wiped his face, and it was easy for Rod to see that he was suppressing some unusual excitement.

"What does he think it is?"

"I'm not sure, not quite sure, yet," went on the Indian youth. "But listen! It is a legend in Mukoki's tribe, and always has been, that once in every so many generations they are visited by a terrible warrior sent by the Great Spirit who takes sacrifice of them, a sacrifice of human life, because of a great wrong that was once done by their people. And this warrior, though invisible, has a voice that makes the mountains quake and the rivers stand still with fear, and in his great bow he shoots shafts that are made of gold! Do you understand? Last night I heard Mukoki talking about it in his sleep. Either we must hear this cry, and find out more about it, or hurry to a place where it won't be heard again. Golden bullets and cries and Mukoki's superstitions are going to be worse than Woongas if we don't watch out!"

"But the whole thing is as plain as day!" declared Rod in astonishment. "A man shot at the bear, and the same man shot at Mukoki, and he fired gold each time. Surely—"

"It's not the man part of it," interrupted the other. "It's the cry. There, Mukoki has his pack ready. Let's start for the chasm at once!"

This time the boys had a heavier burden than usual, for in the canoe they placed one of the two loads carried by Mukoki, and consequently their progress toward the chasm was much slower than that across the plain. It was late in the afternoon when they reached the break that led into the chasm, and as they cautiously made the descent now Rod thought of the thrilling pursuit of the Woonga horde, and how a few weeks before they had discovered this break just in time for Wabi and him to save their lives, and that of the wounded Mukoki. It was with a feeling almost of awe that the three adventurers penetrated deeper and deeper into the silent gloom of this mystery-filled gulch between the mountains, and when they reached the bottom they set their loads down without speaking, their eyes roving over the black walls of rock, their hearts throbbing a little faster with excitement.

For here, at this break in the mountain, began the romantic trail drawn by men long dead, the trail that led to a treasure of gold.

As the three sat in silence, the gloom in the chasm thickened. The sun had passed beyond the southwestern forests, and through the narrow rift between the mountain walls there fell but the ebbing light of day, dissolving itself into the shadows of dusk as it struggled weakly in the cavernous depths. For a few minutes this swift fading of day into night gripped the adventurers in its spell. What did the lonely solitudes of that chasm hold for them? Where would they lead them? To Rod's mind there came a picture of the silver fox and a thought of his dream, when for a few miles he had explored the mysteries of this strange, sunless world shut in by rock walls. Again he saw the dancing skeletons, heard the rattle of their bones, and watched the wonderful dream-battle that had led him to the birch-bark map. Wabigoon, his eyes gleaming in the gathering darkness, thought of their flight from the outlaw savages, and Mukoki—

The white youth had turned a little to look at the old warrior. Mukoki sat as rigid as a pillar of stone an arm's reach from him. Head erect, arms tense, his eyes gleaming strangely, he stared straight out into the gloom between the chasm walls. Rod shivered. He knew, knew without questioning, that Mukoki was thinking of the cry!

And at that instant there floated up from the black chaos ahead a sound, a sound low and weird, like the moaning of a winter's wind through the pine tops, swelling, advancing, until it ended in a shriek—a shriek that echoed and reechoed between the chasm walls, dying away in a wail that froze the blood of the three who sat and listened!



CHAPTER XII

WABI MAKES A STRANGE DISCOVERY

Mukoki broke the silence which followed the terrible cry. With a choking sound, as if some unseen hand were clutching at his throat, he slipped from the rock upon which he was sitting and crouched behind it, his rifle gleaming faintly as he leveled it down the chasm. There came the warning click of Wabigoon's gun, and the young Indian hunched himself forward until he was no more than an indistinct shadow in the fast-deepening gloom of night. Only Rod still sat erect. For a moment his heart seemed to stand still. Then something leaped into his brain and spread like fire through his veins, calling him to his feet, trembling with the knowledge of what that cry had told him! It was not a lesson from the wilderness that Roderick Drew was learning now. As fast as the mind could travel he had gone far back into the strife and misery and madness of civilization, and there he found the language of that fearful cry floating up the chasm. He had heard it once, twice—yes, again and again, and the memory of it had burned deep down into his soul. He turned to his companions, trying to speak, but the horror that had first filled Mukoki now fastened itself on him, and his tongue was lifeless.

"A madman!"

Wabi's fingers dug into his arm like the claws of a bear.

"A what!"

"A madman!" repeated Rod, trying to speak more calmly. "The man who shot the bear and fired at Mukoki and who uses gold bullets in his gun is mad—raving mad! I have heard those screams before—in the Eloise insane asylum, near Detroit. He's—"

The words were frozen on his lips. Again the cry echoed up the chasm. It was nearer this time, and with a sobbing, terrified sound, something that Wabi had never heard fall from Mukoki's lips before, the old warrior clung to Roderick's arm. Darkness hid the terror in his face, but the white boy could feel it in the grip of his hands.

"Mad, raving mad!" he cried. Suddenly he gripped Mukoki fiercely by the shoulders, and as Wabigoon crouched forward, ready to fire at the first movement in the gloom, he thrust the butt of his rifle in his back. "Don't shoot!" he commanded. "Mukoki, don't be a fool! That's a man back there, a man who has suffered and starved, starved, mind you!—until he's mad, stark mad! It would be worse than murder to kill him!"

He stopped, and Mukoki drew back a step, breathing deeply.

"Heem—starve—no eat—gone bad dog?" he questioned softly. In an instant Wabi was at his side.

"That's it, Muky—he's gone bad dog, just like that husky of ours who went bad because he swallowed a fish bone. White men sometimes go bad dog when they are thirsty and starving!"

"Our Great Spirit tells us that we must never harm them," added Rod. "We put them in big houses, larger than all of the houses at the Post together, and feed them and clothe them and care for them all their lives. Are you afraid of a bad dog, Muky, or of a man who has gone bad dog?"

"Bad dog bite deep—mebby so we kill heem!"

"But we don't kill them until we have to," persisted the quick-witted Wabigoon, who saw the way in which Rod's efforts were being directed. "Didn't we save our husky by taking the fish bone out of his throat? We must save this bad dog, because he is a white man, like Rod. He thinks all men are his enemies, just as a bad dog thinks all other dogs are his enemies. So we must be careful and not give him a chance to shoot us but we mustn't harm him!"

"It will be best if we don't let him know we are in the chasm," said Rod, still speaking for Mukoki's benefit. "He's probably going out on the plain, and must climb up this break in, the mountain. Let's move our stuff a little out of his path."

As the two boys went to the canoe their hands touched. Wabi was startled by the coldness of his friend's fingers.

"We've fixed Mukoki," he whispered. "He won't shoot. But—"

"We may have to," replied Rod. "That will be up to you and me, Wabi. We must use judgment, and unless it's a case of life or death—"

"Ugh!" shuddered the young Indian.

"If he doesn't discover our presence to-night we will get out of his way to-morrow," continued Rod. "No fire—no talking. We must be as still as death!"

For some time after their outfit was concealed among the rocks Wabigoon sat with his mouth close to the old pathfinder's ear. Then he returned to Rod.

"Muky understands. He has never seen or heard of a madman, and it is hard for him to comprehend. But he knows—now, and understands what he must do."