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Updated: May 6, 2025
Mukoki started down the hill, and Rod, close behind, could hear him breathing heavily; there was no longer fear for himself in his soul, but for that grim faithful warrior ahead, who would die in his tracks without a murmur and with a smile of triumph and fearlessness on his lips. They traveled more slowly now and Rod found his strength returning.
Mukoki grinned, chuckled in his curious way, and a few moments later signaled Wabi to guide the canoe ashore. "We portage here," he explained. "Current swift there mebby go over fall!" A short carry of two or three hundred yards brought them to the cataract. It was, as Mukoki had said after his long trip of exploration a few months before, a very small fall, not more than a dozen feet in height.
Mukoki, hearing Rod's cry, hurried to the pool, but before he reached the spot where the white youth was standing with the yellow nugget in his hand Wabigoon had again plunged beneath the surface.
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.
It was two hours later when Rod and Wabigoon extinguished the candles and returned to their blankets. And for another hour after that the former found it impossible to sleep. He wondered where Mukoki was wondered what he was doing, and how in his strange madness he found his way in the trackless wilderness.
"It wouldn't do any harm to see." He stepped to the stove and took off the partly cooked steak. Rod slipped on his coat and hat and Mukoki seized his belt-ax and the shovel. No words were spoken, but there was a mutual understanding that the investigation was to precede dinner. Wabi was silent and thoughtful and Rod could see that his suggestion had at least made a deep impression upon him.
In a flash all that passed after that came before him like a picture; the days that he and Minnetaki had rambled together in the forest, the furious battle in which, single-handed, he had saved her from those fierce outlaw Indians of the North, the Woongas; and after that he thought of the weeks of thrilling adventure they three Mukoki, Wabigoon and himself had spent in the wilderness far from the Hudson Bay Post, of their months of trapping, their desperate war with the Woongas, the discovery of the century-old cabin and its ancient skeletons, and their finding of the birch-bark map between the bones of one of the skeleton's fingers, on which, dimmed by age, was drawn the trail to a land of gold.
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.
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 glimpse he had caught of Wabi's bloodshot eyes, the terrible thinness of the Indian youth's face, the chilling lifelessness of his hands, made him shiver with dread. Was it possible that a few short hours could bring about that remarkable transformation? And where was Mukoki, the faithful old warrior from whose guardianship Wabigoon and Minnetaki were seldom allowed to escape?
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