The Gold Hunters | Page 8

and home. And now so
suddenly that he had hardly come to realize the situation he was
plunged into what gave promise of being the most thrilling and tragic
adventure of his life. A few weeks more, when spring had come, he
would have returned to his friends accompanied by his mother, and
they three--Mukoki, Wabigoon and he--would have set out on their
romantic quest for the lost gold-mine that had been revealed to them by
the ancient skeletons in the old cabin. Even as these visions were
glowing in his brain there had come the interruption, the signal shots on
the lake, the return of the dog mail, and now this race to save the life of
Minnetaki!
In his eagerness he ran ahead of the sledge and urged Mukoki into a
faster pace. Every ten minutes the one who rode exchanged place with
one of the runners, so that there were intervals of rest for each two
times an hour. Quickly the red glow over the southwestern forests
faded away; the gloom grew thicker; far ahead, like an endless sheet
losing itself in a distant smother of blackness, stretched the ice and
snow of Lake Nipigon. There was no tree, no rock for guidance over
the trackless waste, yet never for an instant did Mukoki or Wabigoon
falter. The stars began burning brilliantly in the sky; far away the red
edge of the moon rose over this world of ice and snow and forest,
throbbing and palpitating like a bursting ball of fire, as one sees it now
and then in the glory of the great northern night.
Tirelessly, mile after mile, hour after hour, broken only by the short
intervals of rest on the sledge, continued the race across Lake Nipigon.
The moon rose higher; the blood in it paled to the crimson glow of the
moose flower, and silvered as it climbed into the sky, until the orb hung
like a great golden-white disk. In the splendor of it the solitude of ice
and snow glistened without end. There was no sound but the slipping of
the sledge, the pattering of the dogs' moccasined feet, and now and then
a few breathless words spoken by Rod or his companions. It was a little

after eight o'clock by Rod's watch when there came a change in the
appearance of the lake ahead of them. Wabi, who was on the sledge,
was the first to notice it, and he shouted back his discovery to the white
youth.
"The forest! We're across!"
The tired dogs seemed to leap into new life at his words, and the leader
replied with a whining joyous cry as the odors of balsam and fir came
to him. The sharp pinnacles of the forest, reaching up into the night's
white glow, grew more and more distinct as the sledge sped on, and
five minutes later the team drew up in a huddled, panting bunch on the
shore. That day the men and dogs from Wabinosh House had traveled
sixty miles.
"We'll camp here!" declared Wabi, as he dropped on the sledge. "We'll
camp here--unless you leave me behind!"
Mukoki, tireless to the last, had already found an ax.
"No rest now," he warned, "Too tired! You rest now--build no camp.
Build camp--then rest!"
"You're right, Muky," cried Wabi, jumping to his feet with forced
enthusiasm. "If I sit down for five minutes I'll fall asleep. Rod, you
build a fire. Muky and I will make the shelter."
In less than half an hour the balsam bough shelter was complete, and in
front of it roared a fire that sent its light and heat for twenty paces
round. From farther back in the forest the three dragged several small
logs, and no sooner had they been added to the flames than both
Mukoki and Wabigoon wrapped themselves in their furs and burrowed
deep into the sweet-scented balsam under the shelter. Rod's experience
that day had not been filled with the terrible hardships of his
companions, and for some time after they had fallen asleep he sat close
to the fire, thinking again of the strangeness with which his fortunes
had changed, and watching the flickering firelight as it played in a
thousand fanciful figures in the deeper and denser gloom of the forest.

The dogs had crept in close to the blazing logs and lay as still as though
life no longer animated their tawny bodies. From far away there came
the lonely howl of a wolf; a great white man-owl fluttered close to the
camp and chortled his crazy, half-human "hello, hello, hello;" the trees
cracked with the tightening frost, but neither wolf howl nor frost nor
the ghostly visitant's insane voice aroused those who were sleeping.
An hour passed and still Rod sat by the