“It’s a trap,” Shorty said.  “The whole look of it is rotten.  It’s a hole in the ground.  It’s the stampin’-ground of trouble.”

Smoke made no reply, and for half an hour they toiled on in silence—­a silence that was again broken by Shorty.

“She’s a-workin’,” he grumbled.  “She’s sure a-workin’, an’ I’ll tell you if you’re minded to hear an’ listen.”

“Go on,” Smoke answered.

“Well, she tells me, plain an’ simple, that we ain’t never goin’ to get out of this hole in the ground in days an’ days.  We’re goin’ to find trouble an’ be stuck in here a long time an’ then some.”

“Does she say anything about grub?” Smoke queried unsympathetically.  “For we haven’t grub for days and days and days and then some.”

“Nope.  Nary whisper about grub.  I guess we’ll manage to make out.  But I tell you one thing, Smoke, straight an’ flat.  I’ll eat any dog in the team exceptin’ Bright.  I got to draw the line on Bright.  I just couldn’t scoff him.”

“Cheer up,” Smoke girded.  “My hunch is working overtime.  She tells me there’ll be no dogs eaten, and, whether it’s moose or caribou or quail on toast, we’ll all fatten up.”

Shorty snorted his unutterable disgust, and silence obtained for another quarter of an hour.

“There’s the beginning of your trouble,” Smoke said, halting on his snow-shoes and staring at an object that lay on one side of the old trail.

Shorty left the gee-pole and joined him, and together they gazed down on the body of a man beside the trail.

“Well fed,” said Smoke.

“Look at them lips,” said Shorty.

“Stiff as a poker,” said Smoke, lifting an arm, that, without moving, moved the whole body.

“Pick ‘m up an’ drop ’m and he’d break to pieces,” was Shorty’s comment.

The man lay on his side, solidly frozen.  From the fact that no snow powdered him, it was patent that he had lain there but a short time.

“There was a general fall of snow three days back,” said Shorty.

Smoke nodded, bending over the corpse, twisting it half up to face them, and pointing to a bullet wound in the temple.  He glanced to the side and tilted his head at a revolver that lay on top of the snow.

A hundred yards farther on they came upon a second body that lay face downward in the trail.  “Two things are pretty clear,” Smoke said.  “They’re fat.  That means no famine.  They’ve not struck it rich, else they wouldn’t have committed suicide.”

“If they did,” Shorty objected.

“They certainly did.  There are no tracks besides their own, and each is powder-burned.”  Smoke dragged the corpse to one side and with the toe of his moccasin nosed a revolver out of the snow into which it had been pressed by the body.  “That’s what did the work.  I told you we’d find something.”

“From the looks of it we ain’t started yet.  Now what’d two fat geezers want to kill theirselves for?”