"Hurrah! So can I!" shouted Phil, after a moment of intent listening at another tree. "First time, though, I ever knew that the public telephone service was extended to this country. The sound I heard might be a train of cars twenty miles away or a woodpecker somewhere within sight. No matter. If Chitsah says it's chopping, it must be, for he ought to know, seeing that he first heard it with the aid of the tree-telephone. So let's go for it. We can afford to travel an hour or two in the dark for the sake of meeting the white man who is swinging that axe."
"Of course we can," replied Serge.
"Ay, ay, sir!" answered Jalap Coombs.
"Mebbe catch um. Yaas," added Kurilla, sharing the general enthusiasm.
An hour later, as they rounded a projecting point, Phil uttered an exulting shout. A cluster of twinkling lights shone dead ahead, and our travellers' goal was won.
"Let's give them a volley," suggested Serge. "It's the custom of the country, you know."
So the guns were taken from their deer-skin coverings, and at Phil's word of command a roar from double-barrel, flintlock, and Winchester woke glad echoes from both sides of the broad valley, and from the rugged Yukon cliffs beyond. Then with cheers and frantic yelpings of dogs, the sledge brigade dashed on toward the welcoming lights.
"Hello the camp!" yelled Phil, as they approached the dark cluster of cabins.
"On deck!" roared Jalap Coombs, as though he were hailing a ship at sea.
"Hello yourself!" answered a gruff voice—the first hail in their own tongue that the boys had heard in many a week. "Who are you? Where do you come from? And what's all this racket about?"