"But, if we don't make it—and have to die out there in the White Country—when they find us, they'll know men died! We'll be, anyway, one day's mushing ahead of our last camp fire!"
Waseche leaped to the boy's side and grasped the small, doubled fist.
"They sho' will, kid!" he cried. "They sho' will! But they ain't a goin' to find us bushed! I wisht yo' daddy c'd of heahd yo' then—He was some man, Sam Mo'gan was, an' he'd sho' be proudful of his boy!
"I'm plumb 'shamed, pahdneh, fo' to gloomed up on yo' that-a-way—ain't we, O'Brien?"
"We ar-re, that!" shouted the Irishman, with a new light in his eyes. "Ye're a gr-rand lad, wid a hear-rt, in ye're ribs, that's th' heart av a foightin' man. F'r all ye're small soize, ye're th' gamest wan av th' three av us. An' uts Pathrick O'Brien'll folly ye to th' top av' th' narth pole, av ye say th' wor-rd."
A week was spent in exploring the valley of the Ignatook and in prospect panning at different points along the mysterious boiling creek whose hot, black gravel showed an unbelievably rich pay streak.
O'Brien improved rapidly from day to day. The despairing, furtive look faded from his eyes, which glowed with a new hope and a new-born determination to do a man's part in the accomplishment of a purpose. His wild dash for the river showed the utter futility of attempting to recover Carlson's map, for the loss of which he blamed himself bitterly. Nevertheless, the words of the boy put new heart into the lonely man, who ceased mumbling and muttering of Florida, and threw himself with a will into the work in hand.
The high rock-cliffs that flanked the valley of the Ignatook curved toward the west in two solid walls, unbroken except at a point two miles above the old mine, where a narrow ravine led in a long, winding slope to the level of the surrounding plateau.
It was by way of this ravine, O'Brien assured them, Carlson had taken his departure; and that this fact was known to the White Indians was clearly demonstrated when, each day they saw silent fur-clad figures silhouetted against the clearcut skyline. There was something ominous and forbidding in the attitude of the silent sentinels of the frozen wastes who thus guarded the exits from the valley of the creek-of-the-steam. Time and again Connie glanced from the immutable watchers to the blackened bones upon the gravel at his feet. These were men, once; had they really drunk the poison water? Or, had they been held prisoners until they starved, by the human vultures that gloated in their lonely perches high among the rim-rocks?