For many days the taut little craft danced merrily, homeward bound.  For many nights the three voyageurs camped, slept, and dreamed, with only the laughing loons, the calling herons, the plaintive owls, and distant fox bark to sweep across their slumbers.  But as the days went on, the Indian boy grew more wary; his glance seemed keener, his ears forever on the alert; he appeared like a lithe, silent watchdog, holding itself ready to spring, and snap, and bury its fine white teeth in the throat of an enemy to its household.  His paddle dipped noiselessly, his head turned rapidly, his eye narrowed dangerously.  Larry and Jack saw it all, but they said nothing, only relieved the Chippewa of all the work they possibly could, so that, should necessity demand that Fox-Foot must lose rest and food, he would be well fortified for every tax placed upon him.  Jack took to cooking the meals, as a wild duck takes to the water, insisting that Fox-Foot rest after paddling, and the Indian accepting it all without comment, and sleeping at a moment’s notice—­seemingly storing it up against future needs.  But the evening came when the laughing river gurgled into Lake Nameless, and that night they camped below its frowning shores on a narrow strip of beach, where the driftwood of many years and many storms had stranded, seemingly forever.  All three had rolled into blankets, with sleep hovering above and about them, when, noiselessly as the dawn, Fox-Foot slipped from his bed like an eel, dipped under the tent, and was gone.

“Larry,” whispered Jack, fearfully.

“Yes, boy?” came the reply.

“Did you see that?”

“Yes, boy.”

“But—­Larry, oh, it’s horrible!  I hate myself for saying it—­but, oh, Larry, he’s taken a sack with him.  I saw it.”

“Yes, boy.”

“Listen!  Oh, Larry, s-s-h—­”

Matt Larson turned on his back, every nerve strung to snapping pitch.  Two whispering voices assailed his ears.  The horror of them seemed to grip his heart and stop its very beating.  Fox-Foot was speaking.

“You’s not a good man.  I hate you.  You’s bad all over, but I have to trust you.  You got me cornered.  Here’s the gold, same’s I promised.  You take half.  I take half. You hide it.  Bime-by when I get them out of this, I come back, then we divide.  But you sure hide it now, hide it.  Good.  GOOD.”

Then came the reply in English, good English.  There was only one voice in all the world that had that hissing, snaky sound, and Larry knew it to his cost.  It was the voice of the man in the mackinaw, and it was hissing: 

“Bet your life I’ll hide it, Fox-Foot, and you’re a good, decent Indian boy.  You shall have half, sure, but get both of those dogs out of here.  Get ’em away, right off.”

“I scairt,” replied the Indian, “I clean scairt.  When he finds out, maybe he kill me.  I got no knife, no gun—­nothing.  I scairt.”