“We must follow,” said the girl. Her voice was husky.
“Yes, we must follow, not for the green gold, but for him,” said Gordon Duncan.
“I have learned since,” said the old man, after a long silence, “that those strange implements, dishes and ornaments, coming as they do from the long lost past, are worth many times their weight in yellow gold.
“It is this that I would tell him, and that it is not good for him to live alone; that in the end disaster must befall him here, just as it did to the lone moose back there in our native forest.”
Faye found herself greatly impressed by her grandfather’s story. She was as puzzled as he by the actions of the recluse, and as eager to follow his trail. Only one thought dampened her ardor. Every mile that led away from this mountain seemed to lessen their hopes of ever seeing Johnny Longbow again. Yet fate is often very strange.
She slept well that night, and woke early, to find herself on tiptoe, filled with a desire to be away. To their great joy they found their new found Indian friends eager to join them.
“Their dogs will be of great service in following the trail,” said Gordon Duncan as he hurried through final preparations for what, they both felt, was to be a long and dangerous march.
Dangerous indeed it proved in the end.
Dawn found Gordon Duncan and his granddaughter with two of the Indian men and their best dog team on the up-bound trail. The Indian women and children remained behind. They had a supply of food. Caribou would soon be trekking northward. The air would be full of wild fowl, geese, ducks, swans, cranes. Spring was on the way. They would not want.
For the first hour and a half of the journey the native dog-team lagged. They must be urged forward. But, of a sudden, as they reached a higher level, they put their noses to the earth, sniffed two or three times, then went straight away at a brisk trot.