He had been absent for three hours.  It had been snowing steadily and by the time he reached their old camp the trail left by Rod and Mukoki was already partly obliterated, showing that they had secured an early start up the river.

Bowing his head in the white clouds falling silently about him, Wabi started in swift pursuit.  He could not see ten rods ahead of him, so dense was the storm, and at times one side or the other of the river was lost to view.  Conditions could not have been better for their flight out of the Woonga country, thought the young hunter.  By nightfall they would be many miles up the river, and no sign would be left behind to reveal their former presence or to show in which direction they had gone.  For two hours he followed tirelessly over the trail, which became more and more distinct as he proceeded, showing that he was rapidly gaining on his comrades.  But even now, though the trail was fresher and deeper, so disguised had it become by falling snow that a passing hunter might have thought a moose or caribou had passed that way.

At the end of the third hour, by which time he figured that he had made at least ten miles, Wabi sat down to rest, and to refresh himself with the lunch which he had taken from the camp that morning.  He was surprised at Rod’s endurance.  That Mukoki and the white boy were still three or four miles ahead of him he did not doubt, unless they, too, had stopped for dinner.  This, on further thought, he believed was highly probable.

The wilderness about him was intensely still.  Not even the twitter of a snow-bird marred its silence.  For a long time Wabi sat as immovable as the log upon which he had seated himself, resting and listening.  Such a day as this held a peculiar and unusual fascination for him.  It was as if the whole world was shut out, and that even the wild things of the forest dared not go abroad in this supreme moment of Nature’s handiwork, when with lavish hand she spread the white mantle that was to stretch from the border to Hudson Bay.

As he listened there came to him suddenly a sound that forced from between his lips a half-articulate cry.  It was the clear, ringing report of a rifle!  And following it there came another, and another, until in quick succession he had counted five!

What did it mean?  He sprang to his feet, his heart thumping, every nerve in him prepared for action.  He would have sworn it was Mukoki’s rifle—­yet Mukoki would not have fired at game!  They had agreed upon that.

Had Rod and the old Indian been attacked?  In another instant Wabi was bounding over the trail with the speed of a deer.

CHAPTER V

MYSTERIOUS SHOTS IN THE WILDERNESS