There was so grim an air of desolation about the hut that the boys stopped short with a sense of dread.
"Can this really be it?" Maurice muttered.
The hut and its surroundings were exactly as the Indian had described them. They ventured forward hesitatingly, reconnoitered, and approached the door. It stood ajar two or three inches; a heavy drift of snow lay against it. Clearly no living man was in the cabin.
"We've come too late, boys," said Macgregor. "However, let's have a look."
Using one of his snowshoes as a shovel, he began to clear the doorway. Fred helped him. They scraped away the snow, and forced the door open.
For fear of infection, they contented themselves with peeping in from the entrance; a glance showed them that no man was in that dim interior, dead or alive.
The cabin was a mere hut, built of small logs, chinked with moss and mud, and was less than five feet high at the eaves. The floor was of clay; the roof appeared to be of bark and moss thatch, supported on poles. A small window of some skin or membrane let in a faint light, and the rough fireplace was full of snow that had blown down the chimney.
No one was there, but some one had left in haste. The whole interior was in the wildest confusion, littered with all sorts of articles of forest housekeeping flung about pell-mell—cooking-utensils, scraps of clothing, blankets, furs, traps; they could not make out all the articles that encumbered the floor.
"The fellow must have simply got well and gone away with the other half-breed," said Macgregor, after they had surveyed the place in silence. "Well, that ends our hope of being millionaires next year. We've come on a fool's errand."
"Nothing for it now but to go home again, is there?" said Fred, in disgust.