"Then that's his trail to the diggings from the river. But what does he want at the river so often? That licks me."
As Ned had no explanation to offer, the two stood silent for a moment, until the old man's eyes fell upon the tracks which he and Ned had made across the canyon.
"If we don't hide those we shall scare our game," he muttered. "Lend a hand, Ned, to cover some of them up."
"I guess that'll do," he admitted, after half an hour's hard work. "Looks as if a bar had come across until he smelled them tracks of his and then turned back agen. Cruickshank 'll never notice, anyway, so we may as well foller this trail to the river. Step careful into his tracks, Ned. I'd like to see what he has been at on the river."
These were the last words spoken by either Corbett or Rampike for quite half an hour, during which they followed one another in Indian file, stepping carefully into the same footprints, so that to anyone but a skilled tracker, it would appear at first sight that only one man had used the trail.
At the end of half an hour they paused. The roaring of a great river was in their ears, and the grinding of a drift ice.
"That's the Chilcotin," whispered Corbett.
"The Frazer, more like," replied Rampike. "Yes, I thought as much," he added a moment later as he came round a corner of the bluff round which the trail ran. "We've struck the junction of them two rivers. This creek runs in pretty nigh the mouth of the Chilcotin."
Almost whilst he was yet speaking, Corbett caught the speaker by the belt and dragged him down in the snow at his side.
In spite of the suddenness and roughness of such treatment the old man uttered no protest. The question he wanted to ask was in his eyes as he turned his head cautiously and looked into his comrade's face, but with his lips he made no sound.