“I’ll want you and Sandy to accompany me. We’ll get an early supper and leave here around seven o’clock. I think I know where Frazer’s cabin is. I propose to swing completely around it and come in from the opposite side. That will mean about six miles of steady tramping.”
“Why not go straight there?” asked Sandy.
“Because they may be on the lookout for us. They may be watching the road leading from the post. I want to surprise them.”
The corporal sat down in a chair while the three boys crowded around him.
“We’re all mighty glad you got back,” Sandy broke forth eagerly. “You certainly came at an opportune time. How did you manage to get here so quickly?”
“Because I didn’t go as far as I expected to,” Rand smiled. “It’s rather a long story, Sandy, and I don’t intend to burden you with it now. My destination, as you may remember, was Caribou Lake. However, I got no further than the lower waters of the Half Way River. I was drifting along one day, half asleep, when I saw a canoe approaching. The occupant of the little craft proved to be Jim Maynard, an old friend of mine. Jim is a trapper and prospector and has been working all winter up in the region of Caribou Lake. When I told him I was going up to Miller’s cabin, he seemed surprised. ‘You won’t find him there,’ he told me. He explained to me that he had visited at Miller’s cabin just two days before the latter left by dog team for the south. I asked if Miller had told him his destination. He replied that he had, Miller, it appeared, was going out to Fort Laird.”
“But he never got there,” Sandy interrupted.
“No, he never got there. Something happened to him en route. He might have lost his way in a storm and both he and his dogs perished.”
“So the mystery is still a mystery.”
The policeman nodded. “Time probably will solve it. Some day, I expect, a lone traveller wandering through the vast wilderness space south of Caribou Lake will run across his bleached skeleton. The north has many secrets,” he went on, half to himself, “many of which will never be solved.”