"You're mad—or trying to pull off a poor brand of joke!" he exclaimed. "If you're dreaming, come out of it. Look here, Phil," he cried, a little heatedly, "I've been having a hell of a time since you left the camp, and I want to talk seriously."
It was Philip who stared now. He fairly thrust himself upon the engineer.
"Do you mean to say you didn't get my letter telling you to put the camps in fighting shape?"
"No, I didn't get it," said MacDougall. "But I got the other."
"There was no other!"
MacDougall jumped to his feet, darted to his bunk, and came back a moment later with a letter. He thrust it almost fiercely into Philip's hands. A sweat broke out upon his face as he saw its effect upon his companion. Philip's face was deadly pale when he looked up from the letter.
"My God! you haven't done this?" he gasped.
"What else could I do?" demanded MacDougall. "It's down there in black and white, isn't it? It charges me to outfit six prospecting parties of ten men each, arm every man with a rifle and revolver, victual them for two months, and send them to the points named there. That letter came ten days ago, and the last party, under Tom Billinger, has been gone a week. You told me to send your very best men, and I have. It has fairly stripped the camp of the men we depended upon, and there are hardly enough guns left to kill meat with."
"I didn't write this letter," said Philip, looking hard at MacDougall. "The signature is a fraud. The letter which I sent to you, revealing my discoveries at Churchill, has been intercepted and replaced by this. Do you know what it means?"
MacDougall was speechless. His square jaw was set like an iron clamp, his heavy hands doubled into knots on his knees.