back while Mukoki, the most famous pathfinder in all those regions, led them slowly on.  The last of the stars went out.  For a time the blackness of the night grew deeper; then, in the southeast, came the first faint streak of dawn.  Day is born as suddenly as it dies in these regions, and it was soon light enough for Mukoki to resume his trail at a trot.  A few minutes more and a clump of balsam and spruce loomed up out of the plain ahead of them.  Neither Rod nor Wahigoon recognized it until the old warrior halted the dogs close in its shadows and they saw the look of triumph in his face.

“The camp!” breathed Wabi.

“The camp!”

Trembling, his voice quivering with suppressed excitement, the Indian youth turned to Roderick Drew.

“Rod—­it’s all up to you!”

Mukoki, too, had come close to his side.

“There—­camp!” he whispered.  “Now—­where Minnetaki’s trail?”

The old warrior’s eyes were blazing.

“Where?”

A dozen paces away was the balsam shelter they had built.  But that was all.  Not a track was left in the snow.  The warm sun had obliterated every sign of their presence of a short time before!

If their own trail was gone what could he hope to find of Minnetaki’s dainty foot-prints?

Deep down in his heart Rod prayed for guidance in this moment of terrible doubt.

CHAPTER IV

ROD FOLLOWS THE MAN-FOOTED BEAR

“I must wait until it is lighter,” he said.  He tried to control himself, to fortify himself with the assurance which he no longer felt.

“We will have breakfast,” suggested Wabi.  “We have cold meat and there will be no need of a fire.”

Finishing before the others, Rod grasped his rifle and walked out from among the trees.  Wabi made a movement as if to follow, but Mukoki held him back.  There was a shrewd light in his eyes.

“He do better—­alone,” he warned.

The red glow of the sun was rising above the forest and Rod could now see far about him.  He had come out from the cedars, like this, on the afternoon that he had gone to hunt and had found Minnetaki’s trail.  A mile away he saw the snow-covered ridge where he had hunted for moose.  That ridge was his first guide, and he hurried toward it while Mukoki and Wabigoon followed far behind him with the dogs and the sledge.  He was breathless when he reached the top.  Eagerly he gazed into the North.  It was in that direction he had gone on the afternoon of his discovery of the strange trail.  But nothing that he recognized met his eyes now, no familiar landmark or tree to guide him again over his wandering footsteps of that day.  Vainly he sought along the ridge for some slight sign of his former presence there.  But everything was gone.  The sun had destroyed his last hope.

He was glad that Mukoki and Wabigoon were at the foot of the ridge, for he knew that his despair almost brought tears to his eyes, Minnetaki’s fate was in his hands—­and he had failed.  He dreaded to tell his companions, to let them see his face.  For once in his life, though he was as courageous a youth as ever lived, Roderick Drew almost wished that he was dead.