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Updated: May 20, 2025
"I believe we did a good job, Mukoki!" Mukoki's reply was to slip down his tree. The others followed, and hastened across to the rock. Five bodies lay motionless in the snow. A sixth was dragging himself around the side of the rock, and Mukoki attacked it with his belt-ax.
"You'll make the other side in four hours," he called, as Mukoki's cries sent the dogs trotting out upon the lake. "And then I'd camp!" Running on ahead Mukoki set the pace and marked the trail. Wabi took the first turn on the sledge, and Rod, who was fresher than either of his comrades, followed close behind.
As it became lighter Rod found his eyes glued with keen interest to Mukoki's snow-shoes, and for the first time in his life he realized what it really meant to "make a trail." The old Indian was the most famous trailmaker as well as the keenest trailer of his tribe, and in the comparatively open bottoms through which they were now traveling he was in his element.
Somewhere near that pool must be the very source of the treasure itself, and the gold hunters were confident of finding it. Besides, they had already accumulated what to them was a considerable fortune, at least two thousand dollars apiece. For three more days the work continued, and then Mukoki's dredge no longer brought up pebbles or sand from the bottom of the pool.
He turned one look upon the white youth, and it was a look that Rod had never thought could come into the face of a human being. If that was Wabi down there if Wabi had been killed what would Mukoki's vengeance be! His companion was no longer Mukoki as he had known him; he was the savage. There was no mercy, no human instinct, no suggestion of the human soul in that one terrible look.
In the silence of the two Indians as they contemplated the strange fire he read an ominous meaning. In Mukoki's eyes was a dull sullen glare, not unlike that which fills the orbs of a wild beast in a moment of deadly anger. Wabi's face was filled with an eager flush, and three times, Rod observed, he turned eyes strangely burning with some unnatural passion upon Mukoki.
A huge fire was built a few feet away from the open door and the light and heat from this made the interior of the cabin quite light and warm, and, with the assistance of a couple of candles, more home-like than any camp they had slept in thus far. Mukoki's supper was a veritable feast broiled caribou, cold beans that the old Indian had cooked at their last camp, meal cakes and hot coffee.
When he saw that Rod and Wabi were observing him he quickly came toward them, and Wabigoon, who was quick to notice any change in him, was confident that he had made a discovery of some kind. "What have you found, Muky?" "No so ver' much. Funny tree," grunted the Indian. "Smooth as a fireman's brass pole," added Rod, seeing no significance in Mukoki's words. "Listen!"
His last words had come to them with metallic hardness, and their effect, in a way, had been rather appalling: "There will be no prayer." Why? The question was in Mukoki's gleaming, narrow eyes as he faced the dark spruce, and it was on David's lips as he turned at last to look at the Cree. There was to be no prayer for Tavish!
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.
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