“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 w
inter,” 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.
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