There was little sleep in the camp that night, and with the first light of day the three were at work again.  Immediately after breakfast the task of tearing up the old and decayed floor began.  One by one the split saplings were pried up and carried out for firewood, until the earth floor lay bare.  Every foot of it was now eagerly turned over with a shovel which had been brought in the equipment; the base-logs were undermined, and filled in again; the moss that had been packed in the chinks between the cabin timbers was dug out, and by noon there was not a square inch of the interior of the camp that had not been searched.

There was no more gold.

In a way this fact brought relief with it.  Both Wabi and Rod gradually recovered from their nervous excitement.  The thought of gold gradually faded from their minds; the joy and exhilaration of the “hunt life” filled them more and more.  Mukoki set to work cutting fresh cedars for the floor; the two boys scoured every log with water from the lake and afterward gathered several bushels of moss for refilling the chinks.  That evening supper was cooked on the sheet-iron “section stove” which they had brought on the toboggan, and which was set up where the ancient stove of flat stones had tumbled into ruin.  By candle-light the work of “rechinking” with moss progressed rapidly.  Wabi was constantly bursting into snatches of wild Indian song, Rod whistled until his throat was sore and Mukoki chuckled and grunted and talked with constantly increasing volubility.  A score of times they congratulated one another upon their good luck.  Eight wolf-scalps, a fine lynx and nearly two hundred dollars in gold—­all within their first week!  It was enough to fill them with enthusiasm and they made little effort to repress their joy.

During this evening Mukoki boiled up a large pot of caribou fat and bones, and when Rod asked what kind of soup he was making he responded by picking up a handful of steel traps and dropping them into the mixture.

“Make traps smell good for fox—­wolf—­fisher, an’ marten, too; heem come—­all come—­like smell,” he explained.

“If you don’t dip the traps,” added Wabi, “nine fur animals out of ten, and wolves most of all, will fight shy of the bait.  They can smell the human odor you leave on the steel when you handle it.  But the grease ‘draws’ them.”

When the hunters wrapped themselves in their blankets that night their wilderness home was complete.  All that remained to be done was the building of three bunks against the ends of the cabin, and this work it was agreed could be accomplished at odd hours by any one who happened to be in camp.  In the morning, laden with traps, they would strike out their first hunting-trails, keeping their eyes especially open for signs of wolves; for Mukoki was the greatest wolf hunter in all the Hudson Bay region.

CHAPTER VIII