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Updated: May 20, 2025
Mukoki's eyes began to gleam again with the old fire with which he had searched the cabin for gold. The skeletons were buried only a few inches deep in the frozen earth in the edge of the cedar forest, and Mukoki soon exposed them to view. Almost the first object that met their eyes was the skeleton hand clutching its roll of birch-bark. It was Rod who dropped upon his knees to the gruesome task.
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.
And when he returns he will be as sane as you and I, and if you ask him where he has been he will say that he went out to see if he could get a shot at something." Rod had listened in rapt attention. To him, as Wabi proceeded with his story of the tragedy in Mukoki's life, the old Indian was transformed into another being. No longer was he a mere savage reclaimed a little from the wilderness.
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.
There was no window, and where the door had once been there had grown a tree a foot in diameter, almost closing the narrow aperture through which the mysterious inhabitants had passed years before. A dozen paces, five paces from this door, and Mukoki's hand reached out and laid itself gently upon Wabi's shoulder. Rod saw the movement and stopped.
He bent over, seized an object, and flung it in the light of the fire. "Heap big Woonga! Kill nice fat lynx!" With a wail, half feigned, half real, Rod flung himself back upon the balsam while Wabi set up a roar that made the night echo. Mukoki's face was creased in a broad grin. "Heap big Woonga heem!" he repeated, chuckling. "Nice fat lynx shot well in face.
The sharp commands of the two adventurers and the cracking of Mukoki's whip brought the tired and bleeding animals to their feet. Over the pads of three of the largest and strongest were drawn the buckskin moccasins, and to these three, hitched to Wabigoon's sledge, were added six others that appeared to have a little endurance still left in them.
Wabi motioned for him to take Mukoki's other arm. "He has bled a good deal," he said. There was a hardness in his voice that made Rod shudder, and he caught his breath as Wabi shot him a meaning glance behind the old warrior's doubled shoulders. They went faster now, almost carrying their wounded comrade between them. Suddenly, Wabi paused, threw his rifle to his shoulder, and fired.
Then, very slowly inch by inch, as though afraid of awakening a sleeping person, he lowered himself to the ground. When he turned toward the young hunters it was with an expression that Rod had never seen upon Mukoki's face before. "What is it, Mukoki?" The old Indian gasped, as if for fresh air. "Cabin she filled with twent' t'ousand dead men!" he replied.
Frequently the two would stop and scan the openings for signs of life. Twice they set fox traps where there were evident signs of runways; in a wild ravine, strewn with tumbled trees and masses of rock, they struck a lynx track and set a trap for him at each end of the ravine; but even during these operations Mukoki's interest was divided.
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