"Made yesterday," opined Connie, as he examined the trail closely. "Travelling slow, and following his own back trail."
Saginaw nodded approval. "Yup," he agreed. "An', bein' as he was travellin' slow, he must of went quite a little piece. He wasn't carryin' no pack."
"Travelling light," corroborated the boy. "And he went up and came back the same day."
"Bein' as he headed north and come back from there, it ain't goin' to do us no hurt to kind of find out if he's hangin' 'round clost by. They ain't nothing north of us, in a day's walk an' back, except the Syndicate's Willer River camp. An', spite of yer stickin' up fer him, I don't trust that there Mike Gillum, nor no one else that would claim Hurley throw'd in with the Syndicate." The man struck into the trail, and Connie followed. They had covered scarcely half a mile when Saginaw once more halted in surprise.
"Well, I'll be doggoned if there ain't a dugout! An' onless I'm quite a bit off my reckonin', it's inside our line." For several moments the two scrutinized the structure, which was half cabin, half dugout. From the side of a steep bank the log front of the little building protruded into the ravine. Smoke curled lazily from a stovepipe that stuck up through the snow-covered roof. The single window was heavily frosted, and a deep path had been shovelled through a huge drift that reached nearly to the top of the door. The trail the two had been following began and ended at that door, and without hesitation they approached and knocked loudly. The door opened, and in the dark oblong of the interior stood the grotesque figure of a little old man. A pair of bright, watery eyes regarded them from above a tangle of grey beard, and long grey hair curled from beneath a cap of muskrat skin from which the fur was worn in irregular patches. "Phwat d'yez want?" he whined, in a voice cracked and thin. "Is ut about me money?"
"PHWAT D'YEZ WANT?" HE WHINED.
"Yer money?" asked Saginaw. "We don't know nothin' about no money. We're from the log camps over on Dogfish. What we want to know is what ye're doin' here?"