RODERICK DISCOVERS THE BUCKSKIN BAG
For one long breath Rod and Wabi stared at their companion, only half
believing, yet startled by the strange look in the old warrior's face.
"Twent' t'ousand dead men!" he repeated. As he raised his hand, partly
to give emphasis and partly to brush the cobwebs from his face, the boys
saw it trembling in a way that even Wabi had never witnessed before.
"Ugh!"
In another instant Wabi was at the window, head and shoulders in, as
Mukoki had been before him. After a little he pulled himself back and as
he glanced at Rod he laughed in an odd thrilling way, as though he had
been startled, but not so much so as Mukoki, who had prepared him for
the sight which had struck his own vision with the unexpectedness of a
shot in the back.
"Take a look, Rod!"
With his breath coming in little uneasy jerks Rod approached the black
aperture. A queer sensation seized upon him--a palpitation, not of fear,
but of something; a very unpleasant feeling that seemed to choke his
breath, and made him wish that he had not been asked to peer into that
mysterious darkness. Slowly he thrust his head through the hole. It was
as black as night inside. But gradually the darkness seemed to be
dispelled. He saw, in a little while, the opposite wall of the cabin. A
table outlined itself in deep shadows, and near the table there was a
pile of something that he could not name; and tumbled over that was a
chair, with an object that might have been an old rag half covering it.
His eyes traveled nearer. Outside Wabi and Mukoki heard a startled,
partly suppressed cry. The boy's hands gripped the sides of the window.
Fascinated, he stared down upon an object almost within arm's reach of
him.
There, leaning against the cabin wall, was what half a century or more
ago had been a living man! Now it was a mere skeleton, a grotesque,
terrible-looking object, its empty eye-sockets gleaming dully with the
light from the window, its grinning mouth, distorted into ghostly life
by the pallid mixture of light and gloom, turned full up at him!
Rod fell back, trembling and white.
"I only saw one," he gasped, remembering Mukoki's excited estimate.
Wabi, who had regained his composure, laughed as he struck him two or
three playful blows on the back. Mukoki only grunted.
"You didn't look long enough, Rod!" he cried banteringly. "He got on
your nerves too quick. I don't blame you, though. By George, I'll bet
the shivers went up Muky's back when he first saw 'em! I'm going in to
open the door."
Without trepidation the young Indian crawled through the window. Rod,
whose nervousness was quickly dispelled, made haste to follow him, while
Mukoki again threw his weight against the door. A few blows of Wabi's
belt-ax and the door shot inward so suddenly that the old Indian went
sprawling after it upon all fours.
A flood of light filled the interior of the cabin. Instinctively Rod's
eyes sought the skeleton against the wall. It was leaning as if, many
years before, a man had died there in a posture of sleep. Quite near
this ghastly tenant of the cabin, stretched at full length upon the log
floor, was a second skeleton, and near the overturned chair was a small
cluttered heap of bones which were evidently those of some animal. Rod
and Wabi drew nearer the skeleton against the wall and were bent upon
making a closer examination when an exclamation from Mukoki attracted
their attention to the old pathfinder. He was upon his knees beside the
second skeleton, and as the boys approached he lifted eyes to them that
were filled with unbounded amazement, at the same time pointing a long
forefinger to come object among the bones.
"Knife--fight--heem killed!"
Plunged to the hilt in what had once been the breast of a living being,
the boys saw a long, heavy-bladed knife, its handle rotting with age,
its edges eaten by rust--but still erect, held there by the murderous
road its owner had cleft for it through the flesh and bone of his
victim.
Rod, who had fallen upon his knees, gazed up blankly; his jaw dropped,
and he asked the first question that popped into his head.
"Who--did it?"
Mukoki chuckled, almost gleefully, and nodded toward the gruesome thing
reclining against the wall.
"Heem!"
Moved by a common instinct the three drew near the other skeleton. One
of its long arms was resting across what had once been a pail, but
which, long since, had sunk into total collapse between its hoops. The
finger-bones of this arm were still tightly shut, clutching between them
a roll of something that looked like birch-bark. The remaining arm had
fallen close to the skeleton's side, and it was on this side that
Mukoki's critical eyes searched most carefully, his curiosity being
almost immediately satisfied by the discovery of a short, slant-wise cut
in one of the ribs.
"This un die here!" he explained. "Git um stuck knife in ribs. Bad way
die! Much hurt--no die quick, sometime. Ver' bad way git stuck!"
"Ugh!" shuddered Rod. "This cabin hasn't had any fresh air in it for a
century, I'll bet. Let's get out!"
Mukoki, in passing, picked up a skull from the heap of bones near the
chair.
"Dog!" he grunted. "Door lock'--window shut--men fight--both kill. Dog
starve!"
As the three retraced their steps to the spot where Wolf was guarding
the toboggan, Rod's imaginative mind quickly painted a picture of the
terrible tragedy that had occurred long ago in the old cabin. To Mukoki
and Wabigoon the discovery of the skeletons was simply an incident in a
long life of wilderness adventure--something of passing interest, but of
small importance. To Rod it was the most tragic event that had ever come
into his city-bound existence, with the exception of the thrilling
conflict at Wabinosh House. He reconstructed that deadly hour in the
cabin; saw the men in fierce altercation, saw them struggling, and
almost heard the fatal blows as they were struck--the blows that slew
one with the suddenness of a lightning bolt and sent the other,
triumphant but dying, to breathe his last moments with his back propped
against the wall. And the dog! What part had he taken? And after
that--long days of maddening loneliness, days of starvation and of
thirst, until he, too, doubled himself up on the floor and died. It was
a terrible, a thrilling picture that burned in Roderick's brain. But why
had they quarreled? What cause had there been for that sanguinary night
duel? Instinctively Rod accepted it as having occurred at night, for the
door had been locked, the window barred. Just then he would have given a
good deal to have had the mystery solved.
At the top of the hill Rod awoke to present realities. Wabi, who had
harnessed himself to the toboggan, was in high spirits.
"That cabin is a dandy!" he exclaimed as Rod joined him. "It would have
taken us at least two weeks to build as good a one. Isn't it luck?"
"We're going to live in it?" inquired his companion.
"Live in it! I should say we were. It is three times as big as the shack
we had planned to build. I can't understand why two men like those
fellows should have put up such a large cabin. What do you think,
Mukoki?"
Mukoki shook his head. Evidently the mystery of the whole thing, beyond
the fact that the tenants of the cabin had killed themselves in battle,
was beyond his comprehension.
The winter outfit was soon in a heap beside the cabin door.
"Now for cleaning up," announced Wabi cheerfully. "Muky, you lend me a
hand with the bones, will you? Rod can nose around and fetch out
anything he likes."
This assignment just suited Rod's curiosity. He was now worked up to a
feverish pitch of expectancy. Might he not discover some clue that would
lead to a solution of the mystery?
One question alone seemed to ring incessantly in his head. Why had they
fought? _Why had they fought?_
He even found himself repeating this under his breath as he began
rummaging about. He kicked over the old chair, which was made of
saplings nailed together, scrutinized a heap of rubbish that crumbled to
dust under his touch, and gave a little cry of exultation when he found
two guns leaning in a corner of the cabin. Their stocks were decaying;
their locks were encased with rust, their barrels, too, were thick with
the accumulated rust of years. Carefully, almost tenderly, he took one
of these relics of a past age in his hands. It was of ancient pattern,
almost as long as he was tall.
"Hudson Bay gun--the kind they had before my father was born!" said
Wabi.
With bated breath and eagerly beating heart Rod pursued his search. On
one of the walls he found the remains of what had once been
garments--part of a hat, that fell in a thousand pieces when he touched
it; the dust-rags of a coat and other things that he could not name. On
the table there were rusty pans, a tin pail, an iron kettle, and the
remains of old knives, forks and spoons. On one end of this table there
was an unusual-looking object, and he touched it. Unlike the other rags
it did not crumble, and when he lifted it he found that it was a small
bag, made of buckskin, tied at the end--and heavy! With trembling
fingers he tore away the rotted string and out upon the table there
rattled a handful of greenish-black, pebbly looking objects.
Rod gave a sharp quick cry for the others.
Wabi and Mukoki had just come through the door after bearing out one of
their gruesome loads, and the young Indian hurried to his side. He
weighed one of the pieces in the palm of his hand.
"It's lead, or--"
"Gold!" breathed Rod.
He could hear his own heart thumping as Wabi jumped back to the light of
the door, his sheath-knife in his hand. For an instant the keen blade
sank into the age-discolored object, and before Rod could see into the
crease that it made Wabi's voice rose in an excited cry.
"It's a gold nugget!"
"And _that's_ why they fought!" exclaimed Rod exultantly.
He had hoped--and he had discovered the reason. For a few moments this
was of more importance to him than the fact that he had found gold. Wabi
and Mukoki were now in a panic of excitement. The buckskin bag was
turned inside out; the table was cleared of every other object; every
nook and cranny was searched with new enthusiasm. The searchers hardly
spoke. Each was intent upon finding--finding--finding. Thus does
gold--virgin gold--stir up the sparks of that latent, feverish fire
which is in every man's soul. Again Rod joined in the search. Every rag,
every pile of dust, every bit of unrecognizable debris was torn, sifted
and scattered. At the end of an hour the three paused, hopelessly
baffled, even keenly disappointed for the time.
"I guess that's all there is," said Wabi.
It was the longest sentence that he had spoken for half an hour.
"There is only one thing to do, boys. We'll clean out everything there
is in the cabin, and to-morrow we'll tear up the floor. You can't tell
what there might be under it, and we've got to have a new floor anyway.
It is getting dusk, and if we have this place fit to sleep in to-night
we have got to hustle."
No time was lost in getting the debris of the cabin outside, and by the
time darkness had fallen a mass of balsam boughs had been spread upon
the log floor just inside the door, blankets were out, packs and
supplies stowed away in one corner, and everything "comfortable and
shipshape," as Rod expressed it. 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.
The three happy hunters ate of it as though they had not tasted food for
a week.
The day, though a hard one, had been fraught with too much excitement
for them to retire to their blankets immediately after this meal, as
they had usually done in other camps. They realized, too, that they had
reached the end of their journey and that their hardest work was over.
There was no long jaunt ahead of them to-morrow. Their new life--the
happiest life in the world to them--had already begun. Their camp was
established, they were ready for their winter's sport, and from this
moment on they felt that their evenings were their own to do with as
they pleased.
So for many hours that night Rod, Mukoki and Wabigoon sat up and talked
and kept the fire roaring before the door. Twenty times they went over
the tragedy of the old cabin; twenty times they weighed the half-pound
of precious little lumps in the palms of their hands, and bit by bit
they built up that life romance of the days of long ago, when all this
wilderness was still an unopened book to the white man. And that story
seemed very clear to them now. These men had been prospectors. They had
discovered gold. Afterward they had quarreled, probably over some
division of it--perhaps over the ownership of the very nuggets they had
found; and then, in the heat of their anger, had followed the knife
battle.
But where had they discovered the gold? That was the question of supreme
interest to the hunters, and they debated it until midnight. There were
no mining tools in the camp; no pick, shovel or pan. Then it occurred to
them that the builders of the cabin had been hunters, had discovered
gold by accident and had collected that in the buckskin bag without the
use of a pan.
There was little sleep in the camp that night, and with the first light
of day the three were at work again. Immediately after breakfast the
task of tearing up the old and decayed floor began. One by one the split
saplings were pried up and carried out for firewood, until the earth
floor lay bare. Every foot of it was now eagerly turned over with a
shovel which had been brought in the equipment; the base-logs were
undermined, and filled in again; the moss that had been packed in the
chinks between the cabin timbers was dug out, and by noon there was not
a square inch of the interior of the camp that had not been searched.
There was no more gold.
In a way this fact brought relief with it. Both Wabi and Rod gradually
recovered from their nervous excitement. The thought of gold gradually
faded from their minds; the joy and exhilaration of the "hunt life"
filled them more and more. Mukoki set to work cutting fresh cedars for
the floor; the two boys scoured every log with water from the lake and
afterward gathered several bushels of moss for refilling the chinks.
That evening supper was cooked on the sheet-iron "section stove" which
they had brought on the toboggan, and which was set up where the ancient
stove of flat stones had tumbled into ruin. By candle-light the work of
"rechinking" with moss progressed rapidly. Wabi was constantly bursting
into snatches of wild Indian song, Rod whistled until his throat was
sore and Mukoki chuckled and grunted and talked with constantly
increasing volubility. A score of times they congratulated one another
upon their good luck. Eight wolf-scalps, a fine lynx and nearly two
hundred dollars in gold--all within their first week! It was enough to
fill them with enthusiasm and they made little effort to repress their
joy.
During this evening Mukoki boiled up a large pot of caribou fat and
bones, and when Rod asked what kind of soup he was making he responded
by picking up a handful of steel traps and dropping them into the
mixture.
"Make traps smell good for fox--wolf--fisher, an' marten, too; heem
come--all come--like smell," he explained.
"If you don't dip the traps," added Wabi, "nine fur animals out of ten,
and wolves most of all, will fight shy of the bait. They can smell the
human odor you leave on the steel when you handle it. But the grease
'draws' them."
When the hunters wrapped themselves in their blankets that night their
wilderness home was complete. All that remained to be done was the
building of three bunks against the ends of the cabin, and this work it
was agreed could be accomplished at odd hours by any one who happened to
be in camp. In the morning, laden with traps, they would strike out
their first hunting-trails, keeping their eyes especially open for signs
of wolves; for Mukoki was the greatest wolf hunter in all the Hudson Bay
region.