Usually both fell asleep as soon as they were rolled in their blankets. That night, on the low sand-bar, the mosquitoes came in clouds to the attack, but it was not the annoying insects that kept the boys awake. They wanted to talk over their situation.
“It seems,” Hugh said despondently, “that we have failed. That wrecked boat must have been battered to pieces and washed out into the lake. Our only chance of discovering the cache was to find the boat, and that chance seems to be gone.”
“There is still one other chance, my brother,” Blaise replied quietly. “Have you forgotten what we found at the River of Devil Tracks? We must go back there and make search again.”
“You are right,” was Hugh’s quick rejoinder. “We didn’t find any sign of the boat, yet it may once have been there or near by.”
Blaise nodded. “The bateau was perhaps driven on the bar at the river mouth and afterwards washed out into the lake. We must make speed back there. But, Hugh, if it was Ohrante who killed our father, he may also have found the furs.”
“And carried them away.” Hugh slapped savagely at a mosquito. “I have thought of that. I believe in my heart that Ohrante killed father. Yet the murderer may not have taken the furs. Father told you he was wrecked in a storm, and, unable to carry the furs with him, he hid them. That much you say he made clear. When and where he was attacked we do not know, but I believe it must have been after he cached the furs. When he told of the wreck and the hiding of the pelts, he said nothing of his wound?”
“Nothing then or afterwards of the wound or how he got it. He bade me seek you out and find the furs and the packet. When I asked him how he came by the hurt, he was beyond replying.”
Both boys were silent a moment listening to the howling of a lonely wolf far off in the high hills to the north.
Then Hugh said emphatically, “We must go back and search every inch of ground about that river. We will not give up while a chance remains of finding the cache,” he added with stubborn determination.