Rod fell behind in the path made by the sledge, and saved his breath.  His mind was working as never before in his life.  When they reached the camp in which the wounded Mukoki had lain after their escape from the Woongas, could he find the old trail where he had seen Minnetaki’s footprints?  He was quite sure of himself, and yet he was conscious of an indefinable something growing in him as he noticed more and more what the sun had done that day.  Was it nervousness, or fear?  Surely he could find the trail, even though it was almost obliterated!  But he wished that it had been Mukoki or Wabigoon who had discovered it, either of whom, with the woodcraft instinct born in them, would have gone to it as easily as a fox to the end of a strong trail hidden in autumn leaves.  If he did fail—­He shuddered, even as he ran, as he thought of the fate that awaited Minnetaki.  A few hours before he had been one of the happiest youths in the world.  Wabi’s lovely little sister, he had believed, was safe at Kenegami House; he had bade adieu to his friends at the Post; every minute after that had taken him nearer to that far city in the South, to his mother, 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.