The Gold Hunters - James Oliver Curwood (superbooks4u .TXT) 📗

is!" declared Rod, his words now rising in the excitement which he was vainly striving to suppress. "It's hard, but see how your knife point has scratched it! It weighs a quarter of an ounce! Are there any more nuggets in there?"

He fell upon his knees beside Wabi, and their two heads were close together, their four eyes eagerly searching the contents of the pan, when Mukoki came up behind them. Rod passed the golden nugget to the old Indian, and rose to his feet.

"That settles it, boys. We've hit the right spot. Let's give three cheers for John Ball and the old map, and go to dinner!"

"I agree to dinner, but cut out the cheers." said Wabi, "or else let's give them under our breath. Notice how hollow our voices sound in this chasm! I believe we could hear a shout half a dozen miles away!"

For their camp Mukoki had chosen a site in the edge of the cedars, and had spread dinner on a big flat rock about which the three now gathered. For inspiration, as Wabi said, the young Indian placed the yellow nugget in the center of the improvised table, and if the enthusiasm with which they hurried through their meal counted for anything there was great merit in the golden centerpiece. Mukoki joined the young gold seekers when they again returned to the chasm stream, and the quest of the yellow treasure was vigorously renewed in trembling and feverish expectancy.

Only those who have lived in this quest and who have pursued that elusive ignis fatuus of all nations—the lure of gold—can realize the sensations which stir the blood and heat the brain of the treasure seeker as he dips his pan into the sands of the stream where he believes nature has hidden her wealth. As Roderick Drew, a child of that civilization where the dollar is law as well as might, returned to the exciting work which promised him a fortune he seemed to be in a half dream. About him, everywhere, was gold! For no moment did he doubt it; not for an instant did he fear that there might be no more gold in the sand and gravel from which Wabigoon's nugget had come. Treasure was in the very sandbar under his feet! It was out there among the rocks, where the water beat itself angrily into sputtering froth; it was under the fall, and down in the chasm, everywhere, everywhere about him. In one month John Ball and his companions had gathered twenty-seven pounds of it, a fortune of nearly seven thousand dollars! And they had gathered it here! Eagerly he scooped up a fresh pan of the precious earth. He heard the swish-swish of the water in Wabigoon's and Mukoki's pans. But beyond this there were no sounds made by them.

In these first minutes of treasure seeking no words were spoken. Who would give the first shout of discovery? Five minutes, ten, fifteen of them passed, and Rod found no gold. As he emptied his pan he saw Wabi scooping up fresh dirt. He, too, had failed. Mukoki had waded out waist deep among the rocks. A second and a third pan, and a little chill of disappointment cooled Rod's blood. Perhaps he had chosen an unlucky spot, where the gold had not settled! He moved his position, and noticed that Wabigoon had done the same. A fourth and a fifth pan and the result was the same. Mukoki had waded across the stream, which was shallow below the fall, and was working on the opposite side. A sixth pan, and Rod approached the young Indian. The excitement was gone out of their faces. An hour and a half—and no more gold!

"Guess we haven't hit the right place, after all," said Wabi.

"It must be here," replied Rod. "Where there is one nugget there must be more. Gold is heavy, and settles. Perhaps it's deeper down in the river bed."

Mukoki came across to join them. Out among the rocks he had found a fleck of gold no larger than the head of a pin, and this new sign gave them all fresh enthusiasm. Taking off their boots both Rod and Wabi joined the old pathfinder in midstream. But each succeeding pan added to the depressing conviction that was slowly replacing their hopes. The shadows in the chasm began growing longer and deeper. Far overhead the dense canopies of red pine shut out the last sun-glow of day, and the gathering gloom between the mountains gave warning that in this mysterious world of the ancient cabin the dusk of night was not far away. But not until they could no longer see the gleaming mica in their pans did the three cease work. Wet to the waist, tired, and with sadly-shattered dreams they returned to their camp. For a short time Rod's hopes were at their lowest ebb. Was it possible that there was no more gold, that the three adventurers of long ago had discovered a "pocket" here, and worked it out? The thought had been growing in his head. Now it worried him.

But his depression did not last long. The big fire which Mukoki built and the stimulating aroma of strong coffee revived his natural spirits, and both Wabi and he were soon laughing and planning again as they made their cedar-bough shelter. Supper on the big flat stone—a feast of bear steak, hot-stone biscuits, coffee, and that most delectable of all wilderness luxuries, a potato apiece,—and the two irrepressible young gold hunters were once more scheming and building their air-castles for the following day. Mukoki listened, and attended to the clothes drying before the fire, now and then walking out into the gloom of the chasm to look up to where the white rim of the fall burst over the edge of the great rock above them. All that afternoon Wabi and Rod had forgotten the mad hunter and the strange, smoothly worn tree. Mukoki had not.

In the glow of the camp-fire the two boys read over again the old account of John Ball and the two Frenchmen. The tiny slip of paper, yellow with age, was the connecting link between them and the dim and romantic past, a relic of the grim tragedy which these black and gloomy chasm walls would probably keep for ever a secret.

"Twenty-seven pounds," repeated Rod, as if half to himself. "That was one month's work!"

"Pretty nearly a pound a day!" gasped Wabi. "I tell you, Rod, we haven't hit the right spot—yet!"

"I wonder why John Ball's share was twice that of his companions'? Do you suppose it was because he discovered the gold in the first place?" speculated Rod.

"In all probability it was. That accounts for his murder. The
Frenchmen were getting the small end of the deal."

"Eighteen hundred fifty-nine," mused Rod. "That was forty-nine years ago, before the great Civil War. Say—"

He stopped and looked hard at Wabigoon.

"Did it ever strike you that John Ball might not have been murdered?"

Wabi leaned forward with more than usual eagerness.

"I have had a thought—" he began.

"What?"

"That perhaps he was not killed."

"And that after the two Frenchmen died in the knife duel he returned and got the gold," continued Rod.

"No, I had not thought of that," said Wabi. Suddenly he rose to his feet and joined Mukoki out in the gloom of the chasm.

Rod was puzzled. Something in his companion's voice, in his face and words, disturbed him. What had Wabigoon meant?

The young Indian soon rejoined him, but he spoke no more of John Ball.

When the two boys went to their blankets Mukoki still remained awake. For a long time he sat beside the fire, his hands gripping the rifle across his knees, his head slightly bowed in that statue-like posture so characteristic of the Indian. For fully an hour he sat motionless, and in his own way he was deeply absorbed in thought. Soon after their discovery of the first golden bullet Wabigoon had whispered a few words into his ear, unknown to Rod; and to-night out in the gloom of the chasm, he had repeated those same words. They had set Mukoki's mind working. He was thinking now of something that happened long ago, when, in his reasoning, the wilderness was young and he was a youth. In those days his one great treasure was a dog, and one winter he went with this faithful companion far into the hunting regions of the North, a long moon's travel from his village. When he returned, months later, he was alone. From his lonely hunting shack deep in the solitudes his comrade had disappeared, and had never returned. This all happened before Mukoki met the pretty Indian girl who became his wife, and was afterward killed by the wolves, and he missed the dog as he would have missed a human brother. The Indian's love, even for brutes, is some thing that lives, and more than twenty moons later—two years in the life of a man—he returned once again to the old shack, and there he found Wholdaia, the dog! The animal knew him, and bounded about on three legs for joy, and because of the missing leg Mukoki understood why he had not returned to him two years before. Two years is a long time in the life of a dog, and the gray hairs of suffering and age were freely sprinkled in Wholdaia's muzzle and along his spine.

Mukoki was not thinking of Wholdaia without a reason. He was thinking of Wabigoon's words—and the mad hunter. Could not the mad hunter do as Wholdaia had done? Was it possible that the bad-dog man who shot golden bullets and who screamed like a lynx was the man who had lived there many, many years ago, and whom the boys called John Ball? Those were the thoughts that Wabi had set working in his brain. The young Indian had not suggested this to Rod. He had spoken of it to Mukoki only because he knew the old pathfinder might help him to solve the riddle, and so he had started Mukoki upon the trail.

The next morning, while the others were finishing their breakfast,
Mukoki equipped himself for a journey.

"Go down chasm," he explained to Rod "Fin' where get out to plain.
Shoot meat."

That day the gold hunters were more systematic in their work, beginning close to the fall, one on each side of the stream, and panning their way slowly down the chasm. By noon they had covered two hundred yards, and their only reward was a tiny bit of gold, worth no more than a dollar, which Rod had found in his pan. By the time darkness again compelled them to stop they had prospected a quarter of a mile down stream without discovering other signs of John Ball's treasure. In spite of their failure they were less discouraged than the previous evening, for this failure, in a way, was having a sedative and healthful effect. It convinced them that there was a hard and perhaps long task ahead of them, and that they could not expect to find their treasure winnowed in yellow piles for them.

Early in the evening Mukoki returned laden with caribou meat, and with the news that the first break in the chasm walls was fully five miles below. The adventurers now regretted that they had chopped down the stub, for it was decided that the next work should be in the stream above the fall, which would necessitate a ten-mile tramp, five miles to the break and five miles back. When the journey was begun at dawn the following morning several days' supplies were taken along, and also a stout rope by means of which the gold hunters could lower themselves back into their old camp when their work above was completed. Rod noticed that the rocks in the stream seemed much larger than when he had first seen them, and he mentioned the fact to Wabigoon.

"The floods are going down rapidly," explained the young Indian. "All of the snow is melted from the sides of the mountains, and there are no lakes to feed this chasm stream. Within a week there won't be more than a few inches of water below the fall."

"And that is when we shall find the gold!" declared Rod with his old enthusiasm. "I tell you, we haven't gone deep enough! This gold has been here for centuries and centuries, and it has probably settled several feet below the surface of the river-bed. Ball and the Frenchmen found twenty-seven pounds in June, when the creek was practically dry. Did you ever read about the discoveries of gold in Alaska and the Yukon?"

"A little, when I