Wabi’s efforts to dissuade him were futile, and a few minutes later Rod was again at the clearing.  What presentiment was it that caused his heart to beat faster and his breath to come in tense excitement as he stole through the bushes where they had found the silken tress of hair?  What something was it, away down in his soul, that kept urging him on and on, even after he had gone a mile, and then two miles, in fruitless search?  Rod could not have answered these questions had he stopped to ask them of himself.  He was not superstitious.  He did not believe in dreams.  And yet each moment, without apparent reason added to his conviction that Mukoki had made a mistake, and that Minnetaki was on the sledge ahead of him.

The country into which he was penetrating grew wilder.  Rocky ridges rose before him, split by rifts and gullies through which the water must have rushed in torrents in the spring.  He listened, and proceeded more cautiously; and through his mind there flashed a memory of his thrilling exploration of the mysterious chasm of a few weeks before, when, in his lonely night camp, he had dreamed of the skeletons.  He was thinking of this when he came around the end of a huge rock which lay as big as a house in his path.  Upon the snow, almost at his feet, was a sight that froze the blood in his veins.  For the second time that day he gazed upon the distorted features of a dead man.  Squarely across the trail, as the other had lain, was the body of an Indian, his arms outstretched, his twisted face turned straight up to the clear sky, the snow about his head glistening a sickening red in the sun.  For a full minute Rod gazed in silent horror on the scene.  There was no sign of a struggle, there were no footprints in the snow.  The man had been killed while upon the sledge, and the only mark he had made was when he had fallen off.

Who had killed him?

Had Minnetaki saved herself by taking her captor’s life?

For a moment Rod was almost convinced that this was so.  He examined the stains in the snow and found that they were still damp and unfrozen.  He was sure that the tragedy had occurred less than an hour before.  More cautiously, and yet swifter than before, he followed the trail of the sledge, his rifle held in readiness for a shot at any moment.  The path became wilder and in places it seemed almost inaccessible.  But between the tumbled mass of rock the sledge had found its way, its savage driver not once erring in his choice of the openings ahead.  Gradually the trail ascended until it came to the summit of a huge ridge.  Hardly had Rod reached the top when another trail cut across that of the sledge.

Deeply impressed in the softening snow were the footprints of a big bear!

The first warm sunshine, thought Rod, had aroused the beast from his winter sleep, and he was making a short excursion from his den.  From where the bear had crossed the trail the sledge turned abruptly in the direction from which the bear had come.