Down on the river, Waseche Bill was in the act of swinging his dogs for a dash over the back trail when the long ten-team rushed out onto the rime-carpeted ice. All danger from pursuit was past, and they jogged the teams slowly northward, while all about them fell the frost spicules in a feathery shimmer of tinsel. Ten minutes later O'Brien pointed out the trail which passed between two enormous rocks and entered the valley of the Ignatook, the creek of the stinking steam, into which the Indians dared not venture. And it was with a grateful sense of security and relief that they headed the dogs for the spot where they were to camp, in the old tunnel of the lost mine of the Ignatook—at the end of the dead man's lonely trail.
CHAPTER XV
O'BRIEN'S CANS OF GOLD
When Connie Morgan and Waseche Bill awoke, the morning after their midnight escape from the village of the strange Indians, they found O'Brien busily engaged in the preparation of breakfast.
The tunnel of the ancient mine, that had been the abode of Carlson and Pete Mateese, was merely a rude entry which followed the slant of an outcropping mass of native copper. The entry was approximately five feet high and six feet wide, and led obliquely into the face of a rock-cliff for a distance of a hundred feet where it widened into a chamber, or room, perhaps twenty feet in diameter and seven or eight feet in height. Three walls of the room were formed by the copper ore which showed plainly the marks of the primitive tools of the forgotten miners. The fourth wall was of solid rock—the wall of the fissure that contained the vein of ore. At the angle formed by the roof and the rock wall, a wide crack, or cleavage cleft, slanted sharply upward and outward to a point on the face of the rock-cliff high above the mouth of the tunnel, and thus formed a natural chimney for the rude fireplace that had been built directly beneath it.
The odour of boiling coffee was in the air and by the fireplace squatted O'Brien, prodding tentatively at the caribou steaks that sizzled noisily in the long-handled frying pan. Upon a flat stone that had evidently served for a table, an ancient lamp which consisted of a rudely hammered copper pan containing blubber grease and a bit of moss wicking, flared its smoky illumination.
"Good marnin' to yez," greeted the Irishman, as the two partners slipped from their sleeping bags and drew up close to the fire. "Sure, bhreakfasht'll be riddy in wan minit—an' a good job ut is, to be settin' wanst mor-re amongst Christians, an' aytin' whoite man's grub, inshtead av suckin' a shtrip av blubber, along av th' flat-faced Injuns, yondher."
Connie laughed:
"Yes, but you nearly spilled the beans when you tumbled off the sled."