The Wolf Hunters & The Sequel - The Gold Hunters (Illustrated Edition). James Oliver Curwood

CHAPTER VII

      RODERICK DISCOVERS THE BUCKSKIN BAG

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      For one long breath Rod and Wabi stared at their companion, only half believing, yet startled by the strange look in the old warrior's face.

      "Twent' t'ousand dead men!" he repeated. As he raised his hand, partly to give emphasis and partly to brush the cobwebs from his face, the boys saw it trembling in a way that even Wabi had never witnessed before.

      "Ugh!"

      In another instant Wabi was at the window, head and shoulders in, as Mukoki had been before him. After a little he pulled himself back and as he glanced at Rod he laughed in an odd thrilling way, as though he had been startled, but not so much so as Mukoki, who had prepared him for the sight which had struck his own vision with the unexpectedness of a shot in the back.

      "Take a look, Rod!"

      With his breath coming in little uneasy jerks Rod approached the black aperture. A queer sensation seized upon him—a palpitation, not of fear, but of something; a very unpleasant feeling that seemed to choke his breath, and made him wish that he had not been asked to peer into that mysterious darkness. Slowly he thrust his head through the hole. It was as black as night inside. But gradually the darkness seemed to be dispelled. He saw, in a little while, the opposite wall of the cabin. A table outlined itself in deep shadows, and near the table there was a pile of something that he could not name; and tumbled over that was a chair, with an object that might have been an old rag half covering it.

      His eyes traveled nearer. Outside Wabi and Mukoki heard a startled, partly suppressed cry. The boy's hands gripped the sides of the window. Fascinated, he stared down upon an object almost within arm's reach of him.

      There, leaning against the cabin wall, was what half a century or more ago had been a living man! Now it was a mere skeleton, a grotesque, terrible-looking object, its empty eye-sockets gleaming dully with the light from the window, its grinning mouth, distorted into ghostly life by the pallid mixture of light and gloom, turned full up at him!

      Rod fell back, trembling and white.

      "I only saw one," he gasped, remembering Mukoki's excited estimate.

      Wabi, who had regained his composure, laughed as he struck him two or three playful blows on the back. Mukoki only grunted.

      "You didn't look long enough, Rod!" he cried banteringly. "He got on your nerves too quick. I don't blame you, though. By George, I'll bet the shivers went up Muky's back when he first saw 'em! I'm going in to open the door."

      Without trepidation the young Indian crawled through the window. Rod, whose nervousness was quickly dispelled, made haste to follow him, while Mukoki again threw his weight against the door. A few blows of Wabi's belt-ax and the door shot inward so suddenly that the old Indian went sprawling after it upon all fours.

      A flood of light filled the interior of the cabin. Instinctively Rod's eyes sought the skeleton against the wall. It was leaning as if, many years before, a man had died there in a posture of sleep. Quite near this ghastly tenant of the cabin, stretched at full length upon the log floor, was a second skeleton, and near the overturned chair was a small cluttered heap of bones which were evidently those of some animal. Rod and Wabi drew nearer the skeleton against the wall and were bent upon making a closer examination when an exclamation from Mukoki attracted their attention to the old pathfinder. He was upon his knees beside the second skeleton, and as the boys approached he lifted eyes to them that were filled with unbounded amazement, at the same time pointing a long forefinger to come object among the bones.

      "Knife—fight—heem killed!"

      Plunged to the hilt in what had once been the breast of a living being, the boys saw a long, heavy-bladed knife, its handle rotting with age, its edges eaten by rust—but still erect, held there by the murderous road its owner had cleft for it through the flesh and bone of his victim.

      Rod, who had fallen upon his knees, gazed up blankly; his jaw dropped, and he asked the first question that popped into his head.

      "Who—did it?"

      Mukoki chuckled, almost gleefully, and nodded toward the gruesome thing reclining against the wall.

      "Heem!"

      Moved by a common instinct the three drew near the other skeleton. One of its long arms was resting across what had once been a pail, but which, long since, had sunk into total collapse between its hoops. The finger-bones of this arm were still tightly shut, clutching between them a roll of something that looked like birch-bark. The remaining arm had fallen close to the skeleton's side, and it was on this side that Mukoki's critical eyes searched most carefully, his curiosity being almost immediately satisfied by the discovery of a short, slant-wise cut in one of the ribs.

      "This un die here!" he explained. "Git um stuck knife in ribs. Bad way die! Much hurt—no die quick, sometime. Ver' bad way git stuck!"

      "Ugh!" shuddered Rod. "This cabin hasn't had any fresh air in it for a century, I'll bet. Let's get out!"

      Mukoki, in passing, picked up a skull from the heap of bones near the chair.

      "Dog!" he grunted. "Door lock'—window shut—men fight—both kill. Dog starve!"

      As the three retraced their steps to the spot where Wolf was guarding the toboggan, Rod's imaginative mind quickly painted a picture of the terrible tragedy that had occurred long ago in the old cabin. To Mukoki and Wabigoon the discovery of the skeletons was simply an incident in a long life of wilderness adventure—something of passing interest, but of small importance. To Rod it was the most tragic event that had ever come into his city-bound existence, with the exception of the thrilling conflict at Wabinosh House. He reconstructed that deadly hour in the cabin; saw the men in fierce altercation, saw them struggling, and almost heard the fatal blows as they were struck—the blows that slew one with the suddenness of a lightning bolt and sent the other, triumphant but dying, to breathe his last moments with his back propped against the wall. And the dog! What part had he taken? And after that—long days of maddening loneliness, days of starvation and of thirst, until he, too, doubled himself up on the floor and died. It was a terrible, a thrilling picture that burned in Roderick's brain. But why had they quarreled? What cause had there been for that sanguinary night duel? Instinctively Rod accepted it as having occurred at night, for the door had been locked, the window barred. Just then he would have given a good deal to have had the mystery solved.

      At the top of the hill Rod awoke to present realities. Wabi, who had harnessed himself to the toboggan, was in high spirits.

      "That cabin is a dandy!" he exclaimed as Rod joined him. "It would have taken us at least two weeks to build as good a one. Isn't it luck?"

      "We're going to live in it?" inquired his companion.

      "Live in it! I should say we were. It is three times as big as the shack we had planned to build. I can't understand why two men like those fellows should have put up such a large cabin. What do you think, Mukoki?"

      Mukoki shook his head. Evidently the mystery of the whole thing, beyond the fact that the tenants of the cabin had killed themselves in battle, was beyond his comprehension.

      The winter outfit was soon in a heap beside the cabin door.

      "Now for cleaning up," announced Wabi cheerfully. "Muky, you lend me a hand with the bones, will you? Rod can nose around and fetch out anything he likes."

      This assignment just suited Rod's curiosity. He was now worked up to a feverish pitch of expectancy. Might he not discover some clue that would lead to a solution of the mystery?

      One question alone seemed to ring incessantly in his head. Why had they fought? Why had they fought?

      He even found himself repeating this under his breath as he began rummaging about. He kicked over the old chair, which was made of saplings nailed together, scrutinized a heap of