. There was a curious thrill in his voice,
and he paused, as if scarce daring to venture the rest of what he had
meant to say. "Do you suppose--somebody has found--our gold?"

Mukoki and Wabigoon stared at him as if he had suddenly exploded a
mine. Then Wabi turned and looked silently at the old Indian. Not
a word was spoken. Silently Rod drew something from his pocket,
carefully wrapped in a bit of cloth.

"You remember I kept this little nugget from my share in the buckskin
bag, intending to have a scarf-pin made of it," he explained. "When I
took my course in geology and mineralogy I learned that, if one had
half a dozen specimens of gold, each from a different mine, the
chances were about ten to one that no two of them would be exactly
alike in coloring. Now--"

He exposed the nugget, and made a fresh cut in it with his knife, as
Mukoki had done with the yellow bullet. Then the two gleaming surfaces
were compared.

One glance was sufficient.

The gold was the same!

Wabi drew back, uttering something under his breath, his eyes gleaming
darkly. Rod's face had suddenly turned a shade whiter, and Mukoki, not
understanding the mysteries of mineralogy, stared at the youth in mute
suspense.

"Somebody has found our gold!" cried Wabi, almost savagely.

"We are not sure," interrupted Rod. "We know only that the evidence is
very suspicious. The rock formation throughout this country is almost
identically the same, deep trap on top, with slate beneath, and for
that reason it is very possible that gold found right in this locality
would be of exactly the same appearance as gold found two hundred
miles from here. Only--it's suspicious," Rod concluded.

"Man probably dead," consoled Mukoki. "No lead--hungry--shoot bear an'
no git heem. Mebby starve!"

"The poor devil!" exclaimed Wabigoon. "We've been too selfish to give
a thought to that, Rod. Of course he was hungry, or he wouldn't have
used gold for bullets. And he didn't get this bear! By George--"

"I wish he'd got him," said Rod simply.

Somehow Mukoki's words sent a flush into his face. There came to him,
suddenly, a mental picture of that possible tragedy in the wilderness:
the starving man, his last hopeless molding of a golden bullet, the
sight of the monster bear, the shot, and after that the despair and
suffering and slow death of the man who had fired it.

"I wish he'd got it," he repeated. "We have plenty of grub."

Mukoki was already at work skinn