For another moment MacDonald hesitated.  Then he said: 

“Do you see that break over there across the plain?  It’s the open to a gorge.  Johnny, it do seem unreasonable—­it do seem as though I must ha’ been dreamin’—­when I think that it took us twenty hours!  But the snow was to my waist in this plain, an’ it was slow work—­turrible slow work!  I think the cavern—­ain’t on’y a little way up that gorge.”

“You can make it before the sun is quite gone.”

“An’ I could hear you shout, or your gun.  I could ride back in five minutes—­an’ I wouldn’t be gone an hour.”

“There is no danger,” urged Aldous.

A deep breath came from old Donald’s breast.

“I guess—­I’ll go, Johnny, if you an’ Joanne don’t mind.”

He looked about him, and then he pointed toward the face of a great rock.

“Put the tepee up near that,” he said.  “Pile the saddles, an’ the blankets, an’ the panniers around it, so it’ll look like a real camp, Johnny.  But it won’t be a real camp.  It’ll be a dummy.  See them thick spruce an’ cedar over there?  Build Joanne a shelter of boughs in there, an’ take in some grub, an’ blankets, an’ the gold.  See the point, Johnny?  If anything should happen——­”

“They’d tackle the bogus camp!” cried Aldous with elation.  “It’s a splendid idea!”

He set at once about unpacking the horses, and Joanne followed close at his side to help him.  MacDonald mounted his horse and rode at a trot in the direction of the break in the mountain.

The sun had disappeared, but its reflection was still on the peaks; and after he had stripped and hobbled the horses Aldous took advantage of the last of day to scrutinize the plain and the mountain slopes through the telescope.  After that he found enough dry poles with which to set up the tepee, and about this he scattered the saddles and panniers, as MacDonald had suggested.  Then he cleared a space in the thick spruce, and brought to it what was required for their hidden camp.

It was almost dark when he completed the spruce and cedar lean-to for Joanne.  He knew that to-night they must build no fire, not even for tea; and when they had laid out the materials for their cold supper, which consisted of beans, canned beef and tongue, peach marmalade, bread bannock, and pickles and cheese, he went with Joanne for water to a small creek they had crossed a hundred yards away.  In both his hands, ready for instant action, he carried his rifle.  Joanne carried the pail.  Her eyes were big and bright and searching in that thick-growing dusk of night.  She walked very close to Aldous, and she said: 

“John, I know how careful you and Donald have been in this journey into the North.  I know what you have feared.  Culver Rann and Quade are after the gold, and they are near.  But why does Donald talk as though we are surely going to be attacked by them, or are surely going to attack them?  I don’t understand it, John.  If you don’t care for the gold so much, as you told me once, and if we find Jane to-morrow, or to-night, why do we remain to have trouble with Quade and Culver Rann?  Tell me, John.”