“I believe we know it now,” declared Rod.  “In the first place, we found it clutched by one of the skeletons, and we know from the knife wounds in those skeletons, and the weapons near them, that the two men fought and killed themselves.  They fought for this map, for the precious secret which each wished to possess alone.  Now—­”

He took the map from Wabi’s fingers and held it up between them and the fire.

“Isn’t the rest of it clear?”

For a few moments the three looked at it in silence.

From the faded outlines of the original it had been drawn with painstaking accuracy.

With a splinter Rod pointed to the top of the map, where were written the words, “Cabin and head of chasm.”

“Could anything be clearer?” he repeated.  “Here is the cabin in which the men killed themselves, and where we found their skeletons, and here they have marked the chasm in which I shot the silver fox, and down which we must go to find the gold.  According to this we must go until we come to the third waterfall, and there we will find another cabin—­and the gold.”

“It all seems very simple—­by the map,” agreed Wabi.

Under the crude diagram were a number of lines in writing.  They were: 

“We, John Ball, Henri Langlois, and Peter Plante, having discovered gold at this fall, do hereby agree to joint partnership in the same, and do pledge ourselves to forget our past differences and work in mutual good will and honesty, so help us God.  Signed,

“John ball, Henri Langlois, Peter Plante.”

Through the name of John Ball had been drawn a broad black line which had almost destroyed the letters, and at the end of this line, in brackets, was printed a word in French, which for the hundredth time Wabi translated aloud: 

“Dead!”

“From the handwriting of the original we know that Ball was a man of some education,” continued Rod.  “And there is no doubt but that the birch-bark sketch was made by him.  All of the writing was in one hand, with the exception of the signatures of Langlois and Plante, and you could hardly decipher the letters in those signatures if you did not already know their names.  From these lines it is quite certain that we were right at the cabin when we concluded that the two Frenchmen killed the Englishman to get him out of the partnership.  Isn’t that story clear enough?”

“Yes, as far as you have gone,” replied Wabi.  “These three men discovered gold, quarreled, signed this agreement, and then Ball was murdered.  The two Frenchmen, as Mukoki suggested at the cabin, came out a little later for supplies, and brought the buckskin bag full of gold with them.  They had come as far as the cabin at the head of the chasm when they quarreled over possession of the map and agreement, fought, and died.  From the old guns and other evidences we found near them we know that all this happened at least fifty years ago, and perhaps more.  But—­”