hey reached
the forks of the stream--one flowed towards them from the north, the
other from the west.

"Which way?" asked Larson, rousing the Chippewa. The boy got up
immediately and took the stern paddle, steering the western course. They
had paddled something over two miles up that arm when Fox-Foot beached
the canoe, built a fire, spilled out the remainder of the pork and
beans, threw the tin can on the bank, then marshalled his crew aboard
again, and deliberately steered over the course they had already come.

"We lose two miles good work," he explained. "We build decoy fire, we
leave tin can, he come; he think we go that way, but we go north." Back
to the forks and up the northern branch they pulled, both Larry and Jack
not only willing to have done four miles of seemingly unnecessary
paddling, but loud in their praise and appreciation of the Indian's
shrewd tactics. At supper time Fox-Foot would allow no fire to be built,
no landing to be made, no trace of their passing to be left. They ate
canned meat and marmalade, drank again of the stream and pushed on,
until just at dusk they reached the edge of a long, still lake, with
shores of granite and dense fir forest. "Larry and Jack, you sleep in
canoe to-night; no camp. Lake ten miles long; no current; I paddle--me,"
said the Indian, and nothing that Larry could urge would alter the boy's
edict.

"Jack, you must wonder what all these precautions are for, yet you never
ask," said Larry.

"Because I know," returned the boy. "We are trying to escape the man in
the mackinaw. He is following you. He is your enemy."

"Yes, boy, and to-night you shall know why," replied Larry. "You have
taken so much for granted, you have never asked a single question; now
you shall know what Foxy and I are after."

"You said you were after furs," Jack smiled.

"Yes, but not furs _alone_, my son," said the man. Then leaning
meaningly towards the boy he half whispered, "I am after the king's
coin--_gold_! My boy, nuggets and nuggets of _gold_, that I prospected
for myself up in these wilds two years ago, found _pockets_ of it in the
rocks, cached it, away, as I thought, from all human eyes, awaiting the
time I could safely bring it to 'the front.' I knew of but one being in
all the North that I could trust with my secret. That being is Fox-Foot.
One night I confided it to him, showing him the map I had made of the
lakes and streams of the north country, and the spot where the gold w