"He didn't need to go to so much trouble with his cache. There is nothing here to bother it."
"How about the foxes—an' wolves, too? Wheah theah's caribou theah's wolves. An' how about his dawgs?"
"That's so!" exclaimed Connie. "I wonder what became of the dogs? And where is his sled?"
"Sled's undeh the snow, somewheahs—dawgs, too, me'be—'less they pulled out. It's owin' to what kind they was. Malamutes would of tu'ned wolf, an' when they found they couldn't bust the cache, they'd of hit out fo' the caribou heahd. Hudson Bays an' Mackenzie Riveh dawgs w'd done sim'lah, only they'd stahved to death tryin' it. An' mongrels, they'd of jest humped up an' died wheah they happen' to be standin'."
In addition to several saddles of caribou venison, the cache contained coffee, flour, salt, a small bottle of saccharin, and three bags of fish for the dogs. Bound securely to the coffee bag was a rough map of the trail to the preceding cache, which Carlson had numbered 2, and they lost no time in comparing it with the notebook which Connie produced from his pocket.
"He wasn't plumb loco, anyhow," remarked Waseche, with a deep breath of relief. "His maps checks up all right, an' a crazy man couldn't make two maps hit out the same to save him, I don't reckon. Anyhow, I'm glad we found this otheh one. Neah's I c'n make out, it's three days to the next cache, an' me'be the'll be anotheh map to check up with."
The remainder of the forenoon was spent in packing the supplies to the camp, and at noon the two made a prodigious dinner of fresh caribou venison, thawed out and broiled over the smokeless larch coals.
"The dawgs is ga'nted up some consid'ble, s'pose we jest feed twict today. They be'n on half ration since we-all left the canyon. 'Tain't good policy to feed malamutes twict, an' if we don't hit it out right to the next cache, we'll wisht we hadn't, but, somehow, findin' that last map kind of clinched it with me. Whad'yo say, pahdneh?"
Connie glanced at the brutes lying about in the snow apparently uninterested in the saddles of venison and bags of fish piled near the camp fire. Only Mutt, the huge mongrel "wheel dog" of Connie's own team, whimpered and sniffed at the newly found food, for Mutt lacked the stoicism of the native dogs of the North, who knew that feed time was hours away. The boy regarded them with judicious eye and pondered his partner's proposition gravely.
"Well, we might try it, just this once. They do look a little gaunt and ribby," and the boy smiled broadly as he broke out a bag of fish; for the same thought had been in his own mind for an hour and he had been just on the point of broaching it to Waseche, at the risk of being thought a chicken-hearted chechako.