The gold was the same!

Wabi drew back, uttering something under his breath, his eyes gleaming darkly.  Rod’s face had suddenly turned a shade whiter, and Mukoki, not understanding the mysteries of mineralogy, stared at the youth in mute suspense.

“Somebody has found our gold!” cried Wabi, almost savagely.

“We are not sure,” interrupted Rod.  “We know only that the evidence is very suspicious.  The rock formation throughout this country is almost identically the same, deep trap on top, with slate beneath, and for that reason it is very possible that gold found right in this locality would be of exactly the same appearance as gold found two hundred miles from here.  Only—­it’s suspicious,” Rod concluded.

“Man probably dead,” consoled Mukoki.  “No lead—­hungry—­shoot bear an’ no git heem.  Mebby starve!”

“The poor devil!” exclaimed Wabigoon.  “We’ve been too selfish to give a thought to that, Rod.  Of course he was hungry, or he wouldn’t have used gold for bullets.  And he didn’t get this bear!  By George—­”

“I wish he’d got him,” said Rod simply.

Somehow Mukoki’s words sent a flush into his face.  There came to him, suddenly, a mental picture of that possible tragedy in the wilderness:  the starving man, his last hopeless molding of a golden bullet, the sight of the monster bear, the shot, and after that the despair and suffering and slow death of the man who had fired it.

“I wish he’d got it,” he repeated.  “We have plenty of grub.”

Mukoki was already at work skinning the bear, and Rod and Wabigoon unsheathed their knives and joined him.

“Wound ‘bout fi’, six month old,” said the Indian.  “Shot just before snow.”

“When there wasn’t a berry in the woods for a starving man to eat,” added Wabi.  “Well, here’s hoping he found something, Rod.”

An hour later the three gold seekers returned to their canoe laden with the choicest of the bear meat, and the animal’s skin, which was immediately stretched between two trees, high up out of the reach of depredating animals.  Rod gazed at it proudly.

“We’ll be sure and get it when we come back, won’t we?”

“Sure,” replied Wabi.

“It will be safe?”

“As safe as though it were at home.”

“Unless somebody comes along and steals it,” added Rod.

Wabi was busy unloading certain necessary articles from the canoe, but he ceased his work to look at Rod.

“Steal!” he cried in astonishment.

Mukoki, too, had heard Rod’s remark and was listening.

“Rod,” continued Wabigoon quietly, “that is one thing we don’t have up here.  Our great big glorious North doesn’t know the word thief, except when it is applied to a Woonga.  If a white hunter came along here to-morrow, and found that hide stretched so low that the animals were getting at it, he would nail it higher for us.  An Indian, if he camped here, would build his fire so that the sparks wouldn’t strike it.  Rod, up here, where we don’t know civilization, we’re honest!”