“You don’t mean that you found—­”

“No, I didn’t find gold,” anticipated Rod.  “But the gold is there!  I know it.  And I think I have found a clue.  You remember that when you and I examined the skeleton against the wall we saw that it clutched something that looked like birch-bark in its hand?  Well, I believe that birch-bark holds the key to the lost mine!”

Mukoki had come beside them and stood listening to Rod, his face alive with keen interest.  In Wabi’s eyes there was a look half of doubt, half of belief.

“It might,” he said slowly.  “It wouldn’t do any harm to see.”

He stepped to the stove and took off the partly cooked steak.  Rod slipped on his coat and hat and Mukoki seized his belt-ax and the shovel.  No words were spoken, but there was a mutual understanding that the investigation was to precede dinner.  Wabi was silent and thoughtful and Rod could see that his suggestion had at least made a deep impression upon him.  Mukoki’s eyes began to gleam again with the old fire with which he had searched the cabin for gold.

The skeletons were buried only a few inches deep in the frozen earth in the edge of the cedar forest, and Mukoki soon exposed them to view.  Almost the first object that met their eyes was the skeleton hand clutching its roll of birch-bark.  It was Rod who dropped upon his knees to the gruesome task.

With a shudder at the touch of the cold bones he broke the fingers back.  One of them snapped with a sharp sound, and as he rose with the bark in his hand his face was bloodlessly white.  The bones were covered again and the three returned to the cabin.

Still silent, they gathered about the table.  With age the bark of the birch hardens and rolls itself tightly, and the piece Rod held was almost like thin steel.  Inch by inch it was spread out, cracking and snapping in brittle protest.  The hunters could see that the bark was in a single unbroken strip about ten inches long by six in width.  Two inches, three, four were unrolled—­and still the smooth surface was blank.  Another half-inch, and the bark refused to unroll farther.

“Careful!” whispered Wabi.

With the point of his knife he loosened the cohesion.

“I guess—­there’s—­nothing—­” began Rod.

Even as he spoke he caught his breath.  A mark had appeared on the bark, a black, meaningless mark with a line running down from it into the scroll.

Another fraction of an inch and the line was joined by a second, and then with an unexpectedness that was startling the remainder of the roll released itself like a spring—­and to the eyes of the three wolf hunters was revealed the secret of the skeleton hand.

Spread out before them was a map, or at least what they at once accepted as a map, though in reality it was more of a crude diagram of straight and crooked lines, with here and there a partly obliterated word to give it meaning.  In several places there were mere evidences of words, now entirely illegible.  But what first held the attention of Rod and his companions were several lines in writing under the rough sketch on the bark, still quite plain, which formed the names of three men.  Roderick read them aloud.