Most of this day Aldous headed the outfit up the valley.  On the pretext of searching for game MacDonald rode so far in advance that only twice during the forenoon was he in sight.  When they stopped to camp for the night his horse was almost exhausted, and MacDonald himself showed signs of tremendous physical effort.  Aldous could not question him before Joanne.  He waited.  And MacDonald was strangely silent.

The proof of MacDonald’s prediction concerning Joanne was in evidence this second night.  Every bone in her body ached, and she was so tired that she made no objection to going to her bed as soon as it was dark.

“It always happens like this,” consoled old Donald, as she bade him good-night.  “To-morrow you’ll begin gettin’ broke in, an’ the next day you won’t have any lameness at all.”

She limped to the tepee with John’s arm snugly about her slim waist.  MacDonald waited patiently until he returned.  He motioned Aldous to seat himself close at his side.  Both men lighted their pipes before the mountaineer spoke.

“We can’t both sleep at once to-night, Johnny,” he said.  “We’ve got to take turns keeping watch.”

“You’ve discovered something to-day?”

“No.  It’s what I haven’t discovered that counts.  There weren’t no tracks in this valley, Johnny, from mount’in to mount’in.  They haven’t travelled through this range, an’ that leaves just two things for us to figger on.  They’re behind us—­or DeBar is hitting another trail into the north.  There isn’t no danger ahead right now, because we’re gettin’ into the biggest ranges between here an’ the Yukon.  If Quade and Rann are in the next valley they can’t get over the mount’ins to get at us.  Quade, with all his flesh, couldn’t climb over that range to the west of us inside o’ three days, if he could get over it at all.  They’re hikin’ straight for the gold over another trail, or they’re behind us, an’ mebby both.”

“How—­both?” asked Aldous.

“Two parties,” explained MacDonald, puffing hard at his pipe.  “If there’s an outfit behind us they were hid in the timber on the other side of the snow-ridge, and they’re pretty close this minute.  Culver Rann—­or FitzHugh, as you call him—­is hustling straight on with DeBar.  Mebby Quade is with him, an’ mebby he ain’t.  Anyway, there’s a big chance of a bunch behind us with special instructions from Quade to cut our throats and keep Joanne.”

That day Aldous had been turning a question over in his own mind.  He asked it now.

“Mac, are you sure you can go to the valley of gold without DeBar?”

For a long half minute MacDonald looked at him, and then his voice rumbled in a low, exultant laugh in his beard.

“Johnny,” he said, with a strange quiver in his voice, “I can go to it now straighter an’ quicker than DeBar!  I know why I never found it.  DeBar helped me that much.  The trail is mapped right out in my brain now, Johnny.  Five years ago I was within ten miles of the cavern—­an’ didn’t know it!”