Narrower and narrower became the walls high over his head.  Not a ray of sunlight penetrated into the soundless gloom.  Not a leaf shivered in the still air.  The creek gurgled and spattered among its rocks, without the note of a bird or the chirp of a squirrel to interrupt its monotony.  Everything was dead.  Now and then Rod could hear the wind whispering over the top of the chasm.  But not a breath of it came down to him.  Under his feet was only sufficient snow to deaden his own footsteps, and he still carried his snow-shoes upon his back.

Suddenly, from the thick gloom that hung under one of the cragged walls, there came a thundering, unearthly sound that made him stop, his rifle swung half to shoulder.  He saw that he had disturbed a great owl, and passed on.  Now and then he paused beside the creek and took up handful after handful of its pebbles, his heart beating high with hope at every new gleam he caught among them, and never sinking to disappointment though he found no gold.  The gold was here—­somewhere.  He was as certain of that as he was of the fact that he was living, and searching for it.  Everything assured him of that; the towering masses of cleft rock, whole walls seeming about to crumble into ruin, the broad margins of pebbles along the creek—­everything, to the very stillness and mystery in the air, spoke this as the abode of the skeletons’ secret.

It was this inexplicable something—­this unseen, mysterious element hovering in the air that caused the white youth to advance step by step, silently, cautiously, as though the slightest sound under his feet might awaken the deadliest of enemies.  And it was because of this stealth in his progress that he came very close upon something that was living, and without startling it.  Less than fifty yards ahead of him he saw an object moving slowly among the rocks.  It was a fox.  Even before the animal had detected his presence he had aimed and fired.

Thunderous echoes rose up about him.  They rolled down the chasm, volume upon volume, until in the ghostly gloom between the mountain walls he stood and listened, a nervous shiver catching him once or twice.  Not until the last echo had died away did he approach where the fox lay upon the snow.  It was not red.  It was not black.  It was not—­

His heart gave a big excited thump.  The bleeding creature at his feet was the most beautiful animal he had ever seen—­and the tip of its thick black fur was silver gray.

Then, in that lonely chasm, there went up a great human whoop of joy.

“A silver fox!”

Rod spoke the words aloud.  For five minutes he stood and looked upon his prize.  He held it up and stroked it, and from what Wabi and Mukoki had told him he knew that the silken pelt of this creature was worth more to them than all the furs at the camp together.

He made no effort to skin it, but put the animal in his pack and resumed his slow, noiseless exploration of the gulch.