"I guess so," answered Mr. Baxter. "We'll have to trust to him, anyhow."
It was the worst weather they had yet met with, and it was all the Indian could do to induce the dogs to continue. It needed the spur of his long whip, and his angry voice, calling to them in strange words, to keep them on the trot.
At last even the hardened Indian had to give it up. It was almost certain death to face that blast from the north any longer.
"Got to camp!" shouted Holfax, above the roar of the gale, and he began to unharness the dogs.
It was desperate work to get the tent up, but they managed to do it, and also to build a roaring fire of logs which the Indian dug out from under the snow with one of the shovels that had been brought along. Then, in the combined shelter of the tent and the upturned sleds, with a big pot of hot tea and some sizzling bacon, the gold hunters tried to forget their hardships.
But it was not easy to do, and there were grave apprehensions that night whether they would not be frost-bitten before morning. The storm continued all the next day, and it was impossible to proceed. The dogs were buried from sight in big snowdrifts, and Holfax had one hand slightly frozen in digging them out to give them a feed of fish.
But troubles cannot last so very long at a time, and on the morning of the third day the sun came out once more.
"Forward!" cried Mr. Baxter. "We are nearing the place, Fred. In a couple of days we ought to be able to tell whether we are on a wild-goose chase or not."
They crossed the big plain by the next night, and camped at the foot of the mountain range where the gold was supposed to be buried. Mr. Baxter consulted the map, and thought they had come very close to the trail down which Stults had made his way to the settlement, where he had related his strange story.
By daylight Mr. Baxter's views were confirmed by Holfax, who closely examined the map. There was to be seen a tracing of a vast ravine, near which the party had made camp, and this ravine was one of the landmarks by which the place was known. Several expeditions, seeking the gold, had gotten thus far, but when they penetrated the mountains they lost all traces. Either the map was wrong, or they did not properly follow the directions. Would these fortune hunters have any better luck?