It is impossible to describe the quiver and anxiety of this man when he first plunged his knife into the ground. He then carefully removed all the turf that seemed to him to form the outline of the cache. This first task ended, he rested for a moment to take breath, and at the same time to indulge in that emotion so full of pleasure and pain felt on accomplishing an act from which life or death depends.
After a quarter of an hour, he passed his hand over his dank forehead, and set to work resolutely, digging up the ground with his knife, and removing it with his hands to the blanket. It was really a rude task, especially for a man exhausted by fatigue and weakened by privations. Several times he was compelled to stop through the exhaustion of his strength: the work advanced slowly, and no sign as yet corroborated the squatter's belief.
Several times he was on the point of abandoning this vain search, but it was his only chance of safety; there alone, if he succeeded, would he find the means to become once more a wood ranger: hence he clung to this last plank of safety which chance offered him, with all the energy of despair, that Archimedean lever, which finds nothing impossible.
Still, the unhappy wretch had been digging for a long time; a large hole was gaping before him, but nothing offered him a prospect of success; hence, in spite of the invincible energy of his character, he felt despair invading his mind once again. A tear of impotent rage brooded in his fever-inflamed eyelids, and he hurled his knife into the hole, uttering an oath, and giving heaven a bitter look of defiance.
The knife sprung back with a metallic sound; the squatter seized it and examined it closely—the point was broken clean off.
He began digging again frenziedly with his nails, like a wild beast, disdaining the use of his knife any longer, and he soon laid bare a buffalo hide. Instead of lifting this skin at once, which doubtless covered all the treasures whose possession he coveted, he began gazing at it with terrible anxiety.
Red Cedar had not deceived himself: he had really discovered a cache. But what did it contain? Perhaps it had already been ransacked, and was empty. When he had only one movement to make, in order to assure himself, he hesitated—he was afraid!
During the three hours he had been toiling to reach this point, he had formed so many chimeras, that he instinctively feared to see them vanish suddenly, and fall back rudely into the frightful reality which held him in its iron claws.
For a long time he hesitated in this way; at length suddenly forming a resolve, with hands trembling with emotion, palpitating heart and bloodshot eye, he tore away the buffalo skin, with a movement rapid as thought. He felt dazzled, and uttered a roar like a wild beast—he had hit upon a thorough hunter's cache!
It contained iron traps of every description, rifles, double and single pistols, powder horns, bags filled with bullets, knives, and the thousand objects suitable for wood rangers.