Mukoki uttered no sound as he guided the canoe ashore.  Still without word, the three picked up their rifles and Wabigoon led the way along the edge of the stream.  Soon it dashed a swift racing torrent between the rocks, and Rod and his companions knew that they were close upon the fall.  A hundred yards or more and they saw the white mist of it leaping up before their eyes.  Wabi began to run, his moccasined feet springing from stone to stone with the caution of a hunter approaching game, and Mukoki and Rod came close behind him.

They paused upon the edge of a great mass of rock with the spray of the plunging cataract rising in their faces.  Breathless they gazed down.  It was not a large fall.  Wabi silently measured it at forty feet.  But it added just that much more to the depth and the gloom of the chasm beyond, into which there seemed no way of descent.  The rock walls rose sheer and black, with clumps of cedar and stunted pine growing at their feet.  Farther on the space between the mountains became wider, and the river reached out on either side, frothing and beating itself into white fury in a chaos of slippery water-worn rocks.

Down there—­somewhere—­was the golden treasure they had come to seek, unless the map lied!  Was it among those rocks, where the water dashed and fumed?  Was it hidden in some gloomy cavern of the mountain sides, its trail concealed by the men who discovered it half an age ago?  Would they find it, after all—­would they find it?

A great gulp of excitement rose in Rod’s throat, and he looked at Wabigoon.

The Indian youth had stretched out an arm.  His eyes were blazing, his whole attitude was one of tense emotion.

“There’s the cabin,” he cried, “the cabin built by John Ball and the two Frenchmen!  See, over there among those cedars, almost hidden in that black shadow of the mountain!  Great Scott, Muky—­Rod—­can’t you see?  Can’t you see?”

CHAPTER XIV

THE PAPER IN THE OLD TIN BOX

Slowly out of that mysterious gloom there grew a shape before Rod’s eyes.  At first it was only a shadow, then it might have been a rock, and then the gulp in his throat leaped out in a shout when he saw that Wabigoon’s sharp eyes had in truth discovered the old cabin of the map.  For what else could it be?  What else but the wilderness home of the adventurers whose skeletons they had found, Peter Plante and Henri Langlois, and John Ball, the man whom these two had murdered?

Rod’s joyous voice was like the touch of fire to Wabi’s enthusiasm and in a moment the oppressive silence of their journey down the chasm was broken by the wild cheers which the young gold seekers sent echoing between the mountains.  Grimacing and chuckling in his own curious way, Mukoki was already slipping along the edge of the rock, seeking some break by which he might reach the lower chasm.  They were on the point of turning to the ascent of the mountain, along which they would have to go until they found such a break, when the old pathfinder directed the attention of his companions to the white top of a dead cedar stub projecting over the edge of the precipice.