“No gun,” joined Fox-Foot, slyly.  “You leave the man to me.  I fix him.”

“I guess that’s right,” answered Larry.  “Foxy’s the boy to trip up Mr. Mackinaw in his nice little race for what does not belong to him.  Now, boys, for supper, but we’ll tuck away these pretty little playthings first.”

The nuggets were divided into two stout canvas sacks, which were never to leave the lynx eyes of these three adventurers.  They were to eat off those sacks, sleep on them, sit on them, think of them, dream of them, work for them, swim for them, fight for them.  That was the vow that these three sturdy souls and manly hearts made one to another, before they sat down to bacon and beans, in the vast wilderness of the North, that glorious summer night.

“Downy pillow, this!” growled Larry, as he folded his sweater over a gold sack to get at least a semblance of softness for his ear to burrow into.

“Never mind, Larry, you can swap it for a good slice of ‘down’ when we get to the front,” said Jack from the depths of his blankets.  “It strikes me that it will be the cause of your sleeping on ‘down’ for the rest of your life.”

“I shall never sleep or rest for long, son, nor do I want a downy life, but there is a difference between rose leaves and these bulky nuggets prodding a fellow in the neck.”

“You sleep on blankets, I sleep on the wampum,” said Fox-Foot, extracting with his slim brown fingers the “pillow” from beneath Larry’s tired head.

“All right, Foxy,” murmured the man, sleepily.  “The gold only goes to itself when it goes to you.  You’re gold right through and through.  Good-night.”

“Good-night,” came Jack’s voice.

“How,” answered the Chippewa, after the quaint custom of his tribe.

IV

And all night long they slept the hours peacefully away, the strong, athletic, well-knit, muscular white boy, the slender, agile, adroit Indian side by side, their firm young cheeks pillowed on thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of yellow gold.

With the first hint of dawn, Fox-Foot was astir.  Before he left the tent, however, he cautiously placed his sack under Larry’s blanket, and within the turn of that gentleman’s elbow.  Once more good luck attended his efforts with rod and line, and he got a dozen trout in almost as many minutes.  Larry’s nose usually awakened him when it sniffed early cooking, so now he rolled over to pummel Jack, then up to sing and whistle through his morning toilet like a schoolboy.  Breakfast over, they struck camp, Fox-Foot taking command in packing the canoe, giving most rigid instructions as to saving the sacks should there be an upset.  Larry took one long, last look at the wild surroundings.  The dense pine forest, the forbidding rocks, the silver upper reaches of the river where his fought-for treasure had lain hidden for two years from all human eyes, unknown to any living man save himself.  Then the canoe swung into midstream for the return voyage, its narrow little bow facing the south at last.