"I knew this was a good lake for foxes," smiled the boy. 'Merican Joe nodded, sombrely. "Som't'ing wrong. Dat lak' she too mooch good for fox. Som' t'ing wrong."
The twelfth trap yielded another black fox, and another ermine collar, and as the boy removed it from the animal's neck he gave way to an expression of anger. "What in thunder is the meaning of this? Who is out here in the hills tying ermine collars on black foxes—and why? The most valuable skin in the North—and some fool catches them and ties a collar on them, and turns them loose! And how does he catch them? They've never been trapped before! And how does it come there are so many of them and they are so easy to trap?" He gave it up, and returned to the sled, to show the astounded 'Merican Joe the third black fox. But the Indian took no joy in the catch, and all the time they were setting up the tent in the shelter of a thicket at the foot of the high hill, he maintained a brooding silence.
"While you skin the foxes, I guess I'll slip over and have another look at that cache," said the boy, when they had eaten their luncheon.
"You sure git back, pret' queek?" asked the Indian, "I ain' want to be here 'lone w'en de sun go down. I ain' want to hear dat yell."
"Oh, I'll be back long before sundown," assured Connie. "That yell is just what I do want to hear."
At the cache he raised the rotting blanket and peered beneath it and there, as Pierre Bonnet Rouge had told him, was a black fox skin, and its ermine collar. The boy examined the collar. It was an exact counterpart of the three he had in his pocket. He replaced the blanket and walked slowly back to camp, pondering deeply the mystery of the collars, but the more he thought, the more mysterious it seemed.