CHAPTER XXITHE MYSTERYAlex and Ike had to be told of the loss of food and also that Bill and Jud were likely lurking in the neighborhood. No mention was made to them, however, of the discoveries Case had made.It was a gloomy little group after Clay had finished his tale. A winter in the Arctic was to be dreaded at its best, but with little food on hand and no potatoes, it was a horrible thing to meet. It was Clay who tried to enthuse a little cheerfulness into the grim situation. “We’ve got to face it, boys,” he said, “and it’s going to be hard to do, but we are going to make bad matters worse if we just sit and brood on it. I believe that we are going to come out of this all right. The main thing to do is to keep cheerful and keep busy. Let’s go on with our trading just as if nothing had happened, except that we will not only buy furs, but also meat whenever we get the chance. Perhaps we may be able to get a few potatoes at the Catholic Mission. They may have laid enough in to spare us a few. Alex, you and Ike had better, in the morning, overhaul all the stores and see just what we have left and how best to portion it off so as to make it last. Case and I have a little job on of our own to attend to. We will tell you about it later on. Now let’s turn in and go to sleep, each one determining that he is never going to worry over anything until it actually happens to him. Half the time the things we fear never happen. Long brooding over fears makes a coward and I believe even the Lord himself despises a coward. Good night, you fellows. I’m going to sleep.”He and Case were early astir in the morning and stole out of the cabin softly so as not to awaken the sleepers. It was still dark, but the stars were shining like glimmering lanterns hung far above their heads and the black mass of the towering mountain rose dimly from its white carpeted base to serve them as a mighty guide post pointing out their way. By the time the two boys rounded the mountain’s base and entered the cove beyond, the dim twilight had driven the darkness to flight and they easily found the little cabin nestling up against the mountain side. Theirs was a gruesome task and they went to work at it with reluctant hands. The ground was too firmly frozen to dig a grave so they did the best they could. They carried the gruesome object up to the foot of a big wide-spread spruce and laid it down. Then they covered it with a thick layer of fragrant spruce boughs; upon this mound they leaned up some loose planks and around the whole built up a mound of stones to protect the one beneath from hunger-maddened wolves. This task done they skirted the edge of the cove, looking for any trace of other human habitation along its shore. Both had felt that their enemies might be camped in this very cove but their search pretty well convinced them that this was not so likely. “There’s no telling where they may be now,” Case said. “To look for them in this great, desolate frozen country would be like looking for a needle in a hay stack. They may be camped within a mile of us, or, again, they may be hundreds of miles away by now. Our trouble is that we do not know just when the stuff was taken and we can find no tracks that tell which way the thieves went. Better give it up. We have got a lot to do before the real winter sets in. We ought to start in tomorrow and begin our trading in earnest. We want a lot more furs and most of all we need meat, all we can get of it. It will keep all winter. We may not be fit to work later on,” he concluded significantly.“You’re right,” Clay agreed reluctantly. “We will start out tomorrow for the next village. But all the same,” he added, “I have a feeling that those fellows are near us now just waiting for a good chance to get at Ike. One of us two must always stay behind. Two are enough to go with the team anyway. The other two, with Captain Joe on watch, had ought to take care of themselves and the boat all right. Well, we can do nothing more here. We had better get back to theRamblerbefore the boys get too curious and come hunting us up.”They found a hot breakfast awaiting them and the boys finished the computing of theRambler’sstores, a process which Ike with pencil and paper in hand, was enjoying hugely.“This committee finds,” he announced, “that if we all eats like Alex here there is plenty of food for two months yet. If we eats only enough to live on there be food for four months, maybe. If we feed the dogs Indian fashion, just a little at a time, you understand, there will be quite a lot of salmon left for us. That is all, I think, gentlemen, except the dogs. But Alex here says he will shoot any one who touches Buck and I do the same for Captain Joe, for he helps save my life one time, you understand.”Clay laughed. “Why, we are not near so bad off as I expected,” he said, brightly. “Almost anything can happen in two months. I’ve got a hunch boys, that everything is going to turn out all right. Let’s keep on full rations for two weeks more, then we can cut down gradually if we see we need to. We had better give the dogs their double rations while they are working and cut it down to the usual feed when they are idle. Now let’s put the stores back where they belong and wash up the dishes and then go out and cut up firewood. This fine weather is not going to last forever. There are going to be days when no one will hanker to go out in the cold and chop wood. Better get up a good pile now when we have the time.” The boys knocked off work at sunset, and after they had finished their evening meal, Clay brought out from his locker a pack of cards, a checker board, and a chess board with its queens and pawns. “Lucky I thought to bring these,” he said. “They will help to pass the time. Let’s have a game and then turn in, for Case and Ike will have to get an early start in the morning.” The boys made merry over the game that followed, but deep down in each young heart was the creeping dread of that scourge of the Northland, scurvy. Clay expressed it when he said, thoughtlessly, “We had ought to save those few potatoes for Christmas. We want to have a special feast Christmas day.”Case and Ike were gone for three days, but they came back with a pack of fine furs and over a half of a frozen moose.The next trip, made by Clay and Alex, was more daring. They were gone ten days and brought back all the meat the sled could carry. But their faces were grave. At Holy Cross there was not a potato—which had been their real object in making the trip. Forty were helpless with the disease and more coming down every day with it. Indians who had come down from Dawson lately, reported that their weight in gold dust was being offered for potatoes with no takers. From St. Michael’s came like reports. At Nome there were plenty, but no one could cross the heaving seas of ice floes that separate it from St. Michael’s.That was the team’s last trip. For news of the boy traders, who paid so liberally for what they bought, spread from village to village and they did not have to seek trade. It came to them. Hardly a day passed without seeing at theRambler’sdoor a sled load of meat or furs. The boys erected a scaffolding near theRamblerup above the reach of the dogs and it was soon full of frozen meat, while the packs of furs in theRamblerwere fast filling up the cabin to the point of inconvenience. All the traders brought stories of the ravages of the scurvy in the villages they had come from the secret dread in the boys’ hearts grew.One morning, after two days of steady snow, they awoke to find the earth deeply covered with white. Their thermometer hung outside, registering sixty degrees below zero, while over river and land was the quietness of death.The Great White Silence, about which they had heard so much, had come. It seemed almost evil to speak aloud in the breathlessness of this death-like quietness. As the days passed, it bore down on the lads’ souls until they sat silent for hours at a time. But deeper than the fear of the White Silence was that deeper menace hanging over them and daily growing closer.“What’s the use of our trying to hide it?” Case demanded one morning. “We have all got it, I guess, and each one is trying to keep it from the others. Open up your mouth, Clay,” Clay silently obeyed. His gums, palate, and tongue were black and swollen. “Humph,” got it hard,” Case grunted. “Abe, you next.” The lad obeyed, and showed a mouth pink and clean as a baby’s. “You’re all right,” Case announced. “Now for you, Alex.” “Worse than Clay’s,” Case said, frankly. “Ike, step up and let me see your tongue. Why, you have only got the first symptoms,” he said, “just a touch of white on your gums and palate.” His own condition he did not need to state. His blackened, swollen lips told the tale. By some whim of nature, the disease had chosen the strongest for its first victims, and, having chosen, it proceeded with hideous rapidity. Within a week Clay, Alex and Case were helpless in their bunks. Ike was also breaking down, not from the disease, which seemed to take but slight hold of him, but from the groans and sufferings of his chums which he was powerless to relieve. Weary and sick at heart, one morning he left Abe in charge of the sufferers and skirting the edge of the ice with aimless steps, rounded the base of the mountain. Here he stopped with a look of interest. A curl of smoke was filtering up from a thick clump of cottonwoods. He stared at it thoughtfully for a minute, then wheeling suddenly, hastened back to the boat from which, presently, emerged Abe clothed in parka and snow shoes and bearing something white, tightly clenched in one small hand, as he skimmed over the crusted snow.Black night had fallen when the Yukon Kid caught sight of theRambler’slights glimmering in the cove. They meant warmth, light, food and a bed for the night for him, and he spurred his weary dogs on to a fresh burst of speed which soon landed them in the lee of theRambler. Hastily unhitching, he flung a fish from his pack to each of the hungry animals. Then clambering aboard, he flung open the cabin door with boisterous words of greeting on his lips, but they died unspoken as his keen eyes swept the little room, taking in everything in one glance, the three muttering boys in their bunks, and the little Esquimau busy making up raw potatoes into juicy pulp. The lad’s face was marked by tears as he looked at the Kid.“Plenty sick?” asked the Kid, pointing to the muttering lads.“Yes. Heap scurvy.”The Kid glanced at the vacant bunk.“Fadder dead?”“No dead,” said the boy. “Get potatoes this afternoon. Big men come. He and fadder trade. Fadder gets potatoes. Big man get fadder. All in paper there,” pointing to a folded note beside the heap of potatoes.The Kid grabbed it up and opening it with ruthless hands, read:“Dear boys:—I hope these potatoes help you all to get well quick. I gets them off them two loafers, Jud and Bill. I sent Abe as messenger to them this morning and Bill he comes over and talks it over with me, and we trade. A bushel of potatoes for me. I think he’s a robber, you understand. I don’t think he brings more than three pecks of the potatoes. I goes back with him. I expect I no see you any more, so good-bye boys. I’m sorry I make you so much trouble. With love, Ike.”“I wants my share of the furs to go to Rebecca, you understand. Abe, he shall have the news stand. Tell him lots of love from fadder. Ike.”“If you don’t let them dealers in Seattle rob you, you should get $10,000 at least for them furs. Ike.”The Kid’s eyes raced over this farewell will and testament.“You know where they take fadder?” he demanded of the mourning lad.Abe nodded.“Then get on your snow shoes and come with me,” the Kid commanded.In a minute they were on the trail, the little Esquimau lad leading. A scant half mile of rapid traveling carried them into the cove and in sight of the gleaming light of the fire amongst the cottonwoods. Now they advanced more cautiously, trying to stop the creak of their snow shoes on the sugar-like snow. Luckily those around the campfire were too busy with their own affairs to notice the stealthy approach. Close to the fire lay Ike tightly bound while beside him knelt the evil-faced Bill applying a smoking iron to the lad’s bare feet. A sickening odor of burnt skin was filling the air, while the torturer was snarling: “Tell, you brat, or I’ll burn you to the bone.”The Yukon Kid raised his heavy revolver and took steady aim, but something was quicker than he. A giant form leaped out from the cottonwoods upon the kneeling man. He was lifted up like a feather and dashed with the snap of breaking bones against a near-by tree.“The b’ar. He’s killed Bill,” roared Jud’s mighty voice, as he leaped forward with drawn knife. The bear met him half-way with extended arms. Once the upraised knife was buried in the bear’s white side, then man and beast, locked in a mighty struggling embrace. The Kid watched them, fascinated, as they struggled back and forth. Only a minute the struggle lasted, then something in the man snapped sickeningly and he hung limply in the bear’s embrace, then swaying from side to side, the bear let go his burden to the ground and slipped slowly down beside it, his paws plucking feebly at the knife sticking in his side. When the Kid reached the two, both bear and man were dead.Bill lay where he had been flung, his evil heart stilled forever. Ike, still lying by the fire, was in a dead faint.Silently the Kid picked up the lad and turned back for theRambler.CHAPTER XXIISOLVING THE MYSTERYThe Kid sat up all night with the sufferers at short intervals administering to each a small portion of potato juice. Ike had recovered consciousness before they reached the cabin. He was but little injured. One foot had been burned a little, that was all. It had been the long strain and the sudden startling appearance of the bear that had caused the plucky lad to faint. A couple of cups of hot coffee put him into fair shape, but his astonishment at finding himself safe and in the warm cabin was great and his surprise at seeing the Kid greater. “Have I been dreaming and just woke up, Mr. Kid?” he demanded.The Kid told him of what had happened, softening the horrible details as much as possible.“It was Teddy Bear,” Ike declared. “I got one look a him before everything goes black.”“Maybe, the Kid admitted. “I thought there was something familiar about him, but it was too dark to tell much.”“Those fellows tell me this place where the mountain is, is Rainbow Bend.”“It is, I bet,” exclaimed the Kid. “I’ve been wondering for a month what it was the name suggested to me. I was sure there was no place along the river named that, but still, it suggested something familiar to me, and now it’s all come back to me. I’ve passed it a couple of times when the sun hit it just right and made the mountain appear like a great big rainbow. It’s a wonder I didn’t guess the place when you asked me before. A bend in the river with a rainbow mountain on the point of the bend. Why, no other name could just describe it so well as Rainbow Bend.”“Then that settles it,” said the little Jew, with tears in his eyes. “Them fellows, I guess, wasn’t lying all the time. They said it was Rainbow Bend and that uncle used to live there in a little log cabin against the side of the mountain. They told me uncle was dead now and they took me to the cabin to see his bones, but they were not there. They looked so frightened when they found them gone that I felt sure uncle had died there and someone had found his body and carried it away or buried it. Maybe it was the boys and they keep quiet so as not to let me worry too much. I think maybe that be it. I feel so bad over uncle, you understand, that I do not care much what them fellows do to me.”“Lay down boy, and get a bit of sleep if you can,” interrupted the Kid, kindly. “Save your yarn till the boys are able to hear it. It will save a second telling of it. Just try to go to sleep now. You’ll have to take my place tomorrow.”“Do you think the boys will get well?” Ike asked, anxiously.“Sure,” replied the Kid, cheerfully. “They will be up and around in a few days, but it’s going to take some time for all marks of the disease to disappear.”Ike rolled over in his bunk and with a sigh of relief closed his eyes and was soon sound asleep, forgetting his troubles and sorrows and the short, anxious days and long, weary nights he had spent waiting on his stricken companions.The Kid stood for a moment looking tenderly down on the pinched, tired, little face. “You poor, tuckered-out, little devil,” he muttered. “Hanged if I don’t believe you are the pluckiest one of the bunch, and that’s saying a whole lot.”At the first hint of dawn, the Kid awoke Abe and set him to cooking breakfast. Ike he let sleep on until the meal was ready. As soon as it was finished, he gave instructions about administering the potato juice, and hitching up the boys’ team, as his own was sadly in need of rest, he skirted the mountain’s base and rounded into the cove beyond. His errand was much the same as that undertaken by Clay and Case upon another occasion. Common humanity demanded that the two men, bad though they were, should not lie exposed to the wolves. He soon reached the scene of the previous night’s encounter, where the three bodies lay as he had left them. He buried the two men in much the same way as Clay and Case had buried the murdered miner. This done, he turned his attention to the bear. It was Teddy alright, but not such a Teddy as had run away from his masters. This Teddy was thin and gaunt and it was evident from the ferociousness of his face that he had completely lapsed back again into the savagery of his brutal ancestors.“Hum,” mused the Kid as he looked down at the savage face. “Just mad, hungry, and desperate enough to want to kill anything you met up against, wasn’t you, Teddy? You were just running amuck ready to kill anything and these two chaps happened to be the first you stumbled upon. Well, I reckon those boys on theRamblerwill want to think of you as a hero rushing to the rescue at the last moment, and I reckon that it would be sorter mean to rob them of their faith and pride in you. But that look on your face would give you dead away, so I guess I’ll cover you up a bit. Anyway, you’re better deserving of a grave than that fellow Bill was, so here goes.”Teddy Bear at last buried like a Christian, the Kid explored the clump of cottonwood, and as he had expected, came upon a snug log cabin with a big stone fire place. In one corner of it he came upon the stores stolen from theRambler. These he loaded on the sled and turned his dogs back for the boat.He was delighted with the improved appearance of his patients, who already were beginning to show signs of a speedy recovery. As soon as he ate the hearty dinner Ike had kept warm for him, he spread out his roll of blankets near the stove and stretched out. “Call me at dark if I don’t wake up before,” he directed Ike. “I am pretty well tuckered out. I’ve been thirty-six hours on my feet and my legs are beginning to get toothache.”Dark came, but the Kid was sleeping so soundly that Ike would not awaken him until he had prepared the evening meal, fed the dogs, and brought in the night’s supply of wood for the Yukon stove. Even then it was difficult to awaken him from his slumbers.“Gee,” he exclaimed, as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “I thought I had only just got asleep, and here it is after dark. How are the sick boys coming on?”“Fine,” said Ike, happily. “Clay and Alex are not crazy in the head any more, and they try to talk some. Case, he’s much better too.”“Good,” said the Kid. “Now I’ll take a wash in the snow outside and by the time I’ve tucked away some of that good supper I smell, I’ll be fit as a fiddle.”As soon as supper was over and things cleaned up, the Kid ordered Ike and Abe to bed and took upon himself again the duties of nurse for the night. They were the same as the night before, excepting that the boys often awoke and tried to ply him with questions as to what had happened. But on such occasions the Kid forced upon them bowls of hot milk and firm commands to keep still, and they soon dropped off again into sound slumber unbroken by tossing or mutterings.When Ike awoke, he found the boys all sleeping soundly and the Kid nodding in a chair beside the fire. “They’ll be in pretty fair shape when they wake up,” the Kid declared. “Of course they’ll be too weak to get out of their beds for a couple of days, but you can let them talk all they want to. Let them sleep as long as they will, though. I am going to catch a cat nap now, but you can call me for breakfast, for I’m hungry as a wolf.”It was not until the Kid had been aroused and breakfast had been eaten, that Alex awoke and his clattering tongue soon aroused the other two.It was a joyful morning in theRambler’scozy cabin and many were the exclamations of wonder over Ike’s story of the things that happened during their long illness. “Did any of you boys take my uncle out of the cabin and bury him?” he demanded as he ended his tale.Clay and Case glanced at each other. “We did,” Clay confessed. “We hated to tell you then for we thought it was no use making things harder for you during the long, gloomy winter ahead.”“Thank you, boys,” said the little Jew simply, his eyes filling slowly with tears. “Well, uncle is dead and I am free to tell about that letter now. It ain’t much to tell but what I told you already, Clay, and I guess you told the other boys. My uncle tells me in it that he has found a great treasure, enough to make us rich like princes and able to do a great deal for the poor. He wants me, he says in the letter, to come and bring all the cash I got, and tells me to be sure and not tell anyone about it till we gets together, you understand. He says I’ll find him at Rainbow Bend. The rest of the letter was torn off by that Jud or Bill, but I think maybe it tells how to find this Rainbow Bend, I don’t know. Well, boys, uncle is dead, and that wicked Bill and his poor brother dead too, so I guess we never find out about the treasure.”The Kid, who had been an interested listener to Ike’s story, fumbled in his pocket and produced a small match safe snugly done up in oiled silk.“I found this when I was looking through Bill’s pockets, hunting for the name of his folks or someone else to notify of his and Jud’s death,” he remarked. “I looked at it but couldn’t make head or tail of it. It looks like a piece off a letter, but I reckon it’s a kind of cipher from the queer marks scattered over it. Maybe it might be the piece tom off your letter, Ike?”“Hold on a minute,” said Clay, as Ike took the torn scrap of paper. “If those men opened and read your uncle’s letter, they had no need to go clear to Chicago to try to make you tell them what was in it, and then follow you clear up here again on the same errand when they already knew all you knew of the letter’s contents—more, in fact, for they had the piece they had torn off which you had never seen.”“Put like a lawyer’s question,” exclaimed the Kid, admiringly.“Very cute question, Clay,” agreed Ike, “but easy to answer. My uncle does not live in America long enough to learn to read and write English. He writes to me in Hebrew. Them fellows think the same as Mr. Kid, that the letter’s a kind of cipher and that I’ve got the key to it. That’s why they keep after me all the time and try to make so much trouble. This piece, Mr. Kid finds, just tells how to find Rainbow Bend. Well, boys, that’s all I know, and now I think I go out for a little walk and get some fresh air.”“That clears up some of the mystery,” said Clay, thoughtfully, “but there are two things unexplained yet. Who put that strange notice of our expecting to take this Yukon trip in the Chicago paper?”“I think, perhaps,” said Case, musingly, “that Bill did that himself. He had been listening to our talking about the trip, and he thought that notice would make a good excuse for Jud to call on us and try to arrange passage for the two of them.”“That’s as good a guess as any,” Clay agreed. “The other mystery is, what is the treasure, where is it, and how are we to find it? What do you think about it, Mr. Yukon Kid?”“I think the old man just dreamed it,” said the Kid, bluntly. “Likely the lonely life and the long darkness weakened him in his head and he got to imagining things. There’s not enough gold around here to gild a baby’s tooth. It isn’t likely gold ground at the best. On top of that, about every man who has gone up the Yukon has prospected here. If the snow was off the ground you could see more prospect holes than you would care to count in these two coves. There’s iron and coal in that mountain, no doubt, and, maybe, the old man got his idea of a treasure from them. But they are valueless until we get railroads into this country. The only treasure around here is these furs here in theRambler. You’ve got reason to be satisfied with them.”CHAPTER XXIIISOLVING THE MYSTERYIke did not return until dinner was nearly over. He wore a brave front, but his eyes and lids were very red and the boys knew as well as if he had told them that he had found his uncle’s grave and had been grieving over the gentle old man beneath the mound of stones, but the little lad bore up under his burden of sorrow with a surface of cheerfulness that the boys marveled at.“Well, Mr. Kid,” he said, as he took his place at the table. “How did you leave Mr. and Mrs. Morton and the Bonnie Annie Laurie?”The red mounted to the Kid’s face as he answered enthusiastically: “Fine and dandy. Those three innocents hit the right idea after all. There was plenty of eating places in Dawson but they didn’t set out the kind of grub that mother used to make, and that’s where the old lady shined. Then the old gentleman was a pretty shrewd buyer and he laid in his supplies before prices reached clean up to the sky, although he had to pay a pretty stiff price at that.The old lady’s cooking, and the reasonable prices, and the very sight of that little girl tripping in and out amongst the tables, caught the crowd. The chekakos went pretty nigh broke buying grub that tasted like home, and many an old sour-dough is in a fair way of getting gout after all his years of eating just pork and beans. When the scurvy broke out they had about all the potatoes in town. They could have got anywhere from $1.00 to $10.00 apiece for them, but the old lady wouldn’t listen to anything like that. ‘They only cost us 10c apiece,’ she argued, ‘and it ain’t Christian-like to ask more in the time of sickness and suffering, and the poor can have ’em for nothing.’ So the old-timers formed a sort of bread line, as you might call it, and every day every man, woman and child in Dawson was free to march down that line and get his or her bit of potato whether they had ten cents or not. I reckon, pretty near the whole of Dawson would have been wiped out by the scurvy this winter but for the Mortons—and Dawson knows it. Those old people will make a fortune if they keep at the business.” The Kid paused and the red again mounted into his face. “I might as well tell you now, because you little cusses will pry it out of me sooner or later,” he said, in happy embarrassment. “That little girl and I are going to be married as soon as I make my stake, and I’ve got a hunch that that time is not far off.”Clay grinned. “Why, we knew that long ago,” he said.They congratulated the Kid until his face shone with happiness.“I’ve got a favor to ask of you,” he said, when at last they were through. “It’s comin’ on cold tonight or I’m no judge of Alaska weather. There’s no special reason for my getting down to St. Michael’s before the first steamer comes in, and it’s a long trail back to Dawson, so, if you boys don’t mind, I’ll camp with you until it’s time to start for St. Michael’s.”The boys greeted this announcement with shouts of delight, for they could think of no more welcome visitor than the Yukon Kid.It was as the Kid had prophesied, the morning showed the thermometer at 70 degrees below zero, where it hung steadily for a full week, before the end of which time the Kid had difficulty in keeping the now active invalids indoors. They wanted to be out in the open air after their long, close confinement, and with their growing strength, came the desire for activity.“Don’t try it outside yet,” he advised. “If you do you’ll regret it. Seventy degrees below zero isn’t to be fooled with even by old timers. With kids weak as you are yet, it would mean death. That degree of cold would frost your lungs in ten minutes. Why, even the Indians rarely travel when it gets below 40 degrees. Be patient, boys, this cold weather is not going to last forever. It will get milder soon. In fact, boys, it’s not going to be long before spring comes. I’ll bet you boys have lost all track of the days.”“I guess we have,” agreed Clay. “I can’t be sure of what month it is even. We kept so busy before we were taken sick that we kept no account of days, and then we have been sick a long, long time.”“Well, it’s the middle of March,” the Kid enlightened him. The worst of the winter is over now. Along the last of April the ice should begin to go out.”“And as soon as it goes out, we will be bound for home,” said Alex, happily.“And all the fun and excitement of the city,” sighed Clay, blissfully.“And the news stand for me and Abe,” Ike declared. “Maybe, when Abe picks up the business good, I set him up in a little stand for himself.”As for Abe, he had nothing to say. He was content to follow fadder. Never in his whole young life had he ever been so kindly treated as since when fadder had bought him from his uncle.At last the long cold spell broke and they awoke one morning to find the thermometer at twenty degrees below—warm weather for the Yukon.With the break of the cold spell, the days flew past with flying footsteps, for there was always something to pass the time out in the bracing cold of the gradually lengthening days. There were snow shoe races and even dog racing, in which the Yukon Kid’s team was always beaten, much to Kid’s disgust. But most entertaining of all was the search for the treasure which the boys all firmly believed in, though the Kid only smiled at their fruitless efforts. “Go to it,” he advised them. “It keeps you busy and makes the time pass quicker,” and go to it they did with all their youthful ardor. First they cleaned out the snow heaps in the lonely cabin, but found nothing to reward their search but a few pitiful battered cooking utensils and a scanty store of food. But they built a fire in the cabin and with shovels heated over it, dug up the frozen ground inside in search of concealed riches. In the center of the shore of the cove, they sank a prospect hole, keeping a fire going all the time, except when they raked it to one side to remove the thawed-out earth. In time they reached bed rock and tested thoroughly the pile of dirt they had accumulated, only to find that not a trace of color appeared in the pans.While they had worked a change had slowly been taking place around them. The air had been growing sensibly warmer and the heat of the sun was gradually making itself felt. The snow was slowly melting from the knolls and forming tiny rivulets that trickled their way down to the river. Spring was at hand.It was after the failure of the prospect hole they had sunk, that they all gathered together on theRambler’sdeck one noon for a little after dinner chat.“Well, I expect we might as well give up looking for the treasure,” said Alex, disconsolately. “We have done all we can.”“Yes,” agreed the Yukon Kid, “there’s nothing to it but the excitement of looking and finding nothing. Well, boys, I’ve spent a good time with you, but I’ve got to be going soon. Just step out here and listen.” He led the way out on the ice and motioned for them to be silent. Faintly there came to their ears the soft murmur of running water under their feet. “That’s Father Yukon waking up from his long sleep,” said the Kid, gravely. “It means that I must be on my way or I will not reach St. Michael’s before the ice breaks up. I guess you’ll get there not many days after me for when the ice goes out in the Yukon it goes out in a hurry.”“Mr. Kid,” said Ike, who had been chosen spokesman for the boys in what was to follow. “Mr. Kid, you have been very good to us and more than once you have saved the life, maybe, of some of us, and so we want to give you a little gift, not to repay you for the good things you have done for us, you understand, but just a little gift to show that we don’t forget them good deeds. We want you to kindly accept Buck and his family. We want to feel that we have left Buck with a good, kind master too. That Buck is a good dog, almost as good as Captain Joe.”The Kid’s eyes shone with delight at the thought of being possessor of such a glorious team, but he protested earnestly. “I have not done anything to merit such a gift. Maybe I helped you out a mite that first day at Nome, but it wasn’t any trouble to me. Sizes up to me that each of you has done his part nobly and loyally just like links in a chain. You or the most of you, would have pulled through all right even if I hadn’t happened to come across you when I did.” He hastened a second before he went on. “It seems to me if there’s any link that shows up a little larger than the rest, it’s this little chap here,” patting Ike’s shoulder. “He was willing to give himself up to torture that the rest of you might live. I reckon, though, that any one of you would have done the same in his place.”Alex was twisting and shuffling in embarrassment over this display of sentiment.“There’s one thing we must do before we leave,” he interrupted. “We must climb that mountain. We haven’t climbed a mountain on this whole trip. I’ll dare the lot of you to climb it clear to the top with me.Clay looked up at the great mountain wet and slippery from the melting snows of its summit. “None of it in mine,” he said decidedly.Ike regarded the monster thoughtfully. “I’m a family man,” he declared. “What would become of Abe if he loses his fadder?”“It’s all right to take risks when one has to,” growled Case, “but it’s blamed foolishness to do so just on a dare.”“All right, you babies,” jeered Alex. “If you’re ’fraid to come. I’ll climb up alone.”“I’ll go with you,” shouted the Yukon Kid, “just wait a minute will you?” for Alex was already moving for the mountain’s base. “He won’t get up fifty feet,” he confided to the others. “I will take a rope from the sled here and try to keep him from a nasty fall.”“He can climb like a monkey,” said Clay, doubtfully, “and for all he acts so reckless sometimes he’s got a pretty cool head when he really gets into a tight place. If you don’t want a long climb, don’t try to follow him, for he will not stop at a hundred feet unless that mountain’s so slippery that a fly can’t cling to the side of it.”“Then he’ll find me right beside him,” said the Kid confidently, as he wound the rope around his waist and hastened after Alex, who was already at the mountain’s base.Alex was going about his undertaking cautiously, for he knew he would be subjected to ridicule by his companions if he failed at the very start. He skirted the mountain’s base watching for a likely place to make a start, but finding only bare, smooth, almost perpendicular walls extending upward some fifty or seventy-five feet. Up beyond this smooth base he could see many knobs and little ledges sticking out which promised fair climbing once the intervening space was overcome. It was not until he had nearly reached the little cabin in the cove, that he came upon that for which he was searching, a place where the smooth wall had crumbled down into the sea, leaving in its wake an incline that seemed to offer a chance to reach the easier climbing above. Up the slight incline Alex scrambled like a monkey with the Kid close at his heels. When about five hundred feet up he stopped and sat down to blow and rest a bit.“Say, don’t this look like queer mountain climbing to you?” he demanded of the Kid, resting beside him.“How so, in what way?” the Kid inquired.“It’s just like going upstairs,” explained Alex. “There’s holes just in the very spots where you want to put your hands or feet. Funny, isn’t it?”The Kid stood up on the ledge and peered up at the holes above him. “Whew,” he whistled. “They haven’t just happened there; why, boy, most of them have been made by a pick axe.”“I know it,” said Alex, his face aglow. “Kid, I believe we’re on the trail of that treasure.”CHAPTER XXIVGOOD-BYEThere was no more thought of resting for the excited two. Up they climbed for another seven hundred feet to where the pick holes suddenly ended and they stood upon a ledge of rock which seemed to extend clear across the front of the mountain. The two looked about them with some disappointment. They did not know just what they had expected to find, but here there was nothing in sight but the ledge and the mountain towering above their heads.“This is what I took for grass from the ground,” said Alex, pointing to the green belt that girdled the mountain side close to where they stood.“Don’t look as pretty and fresh as it did from below,” commented the Kid. “Let’s mark the spot here where we came up so that we will not miss the place when we go down. Then let’s mosey along this ledge and see what we can find. Surely no man would be crazy enough to cut all those holes for nothing.”They piled up a loose heap of stones where they had ascended, then they followed up the ledge, closely examining the mountain’s face and the rocks and quartz at their feet.“Great cats,” cried the Kid suddenly. He had stopped in front of some curious markings on the green-hued mountain wall, and stood staring at them with amazement on his face.“What is it?” demanded Alex, excitedly.“Location notices of mining claims on the face of a mountain,” said the Kid, bewildered. “Two of them.” Reckon Ike’s uncle took up one of the claims for Ike and the other for himself. The old gentleman sure was queer in the head just as I thought Why, he could have claimed the whole mountain if he had wanted to. I don’t believe any one would have objected. “Well, let’s scratch our names up to just keep the old man’s company.” He dug into the rock with his sheaf knife and a bit came off in his hands. The Kid gazed on it with frank amazement. He moved along further and pried out another chunk. He repeated this operation a dozen times, heedless of Alex’s questions, the look of amazement on his face constantly growing. The last lump he picked out was as big as a man’s fist and he held it up silently for Alex to see. Under its outside coating of green it showed a dull reddish brown.“What is it?” Alex demanded, impressed by his companion’s manner.“Son,” said the Kid solemnly. “Just cast your eye along that broad green belt and you’ll see something unknown in the whole history of mining—an outcrop of copper, pure copper, millions upon millions of dollars’ worth of it standing out in plain sight. I have got to think it over. Let’s mark up a claim for each of our party and get back to camp. I’ve got to get alone for a while and think this over.”In a few minutes the claims were marked and the two clambered down the mountain to find their companions getting anxious over their long absence.While Alex was telling his excited chums of the wonderful discovery, the Kid walked off by himself buried in thought, nor did he return until dark. Over the supper table he laid his conclusion before them.“It’s big—the biggest thing that has ever happened on the Yukon. It’s too big for us to handle. It needs wharfs, staging, elevators, ships and a whole lot of other things. Likely a million dollars will have to be spent before the first load of copper can be got out of that mountain. Now our claims will not cover one-tenth of that copper belt, and my plan would be to get down to Nome as quick as I could and file our claims on the records. Then, pick out a few old timers I could trust and have them file claims on the balance of the belt, and then all combine to sell out to some big concern that has got the money to get out the goods. I’m sorry,” he said, regretfully, “but you boys will not get your money at once. You can take up a claim at eighteen years of age but you can’t sell until you’re twenty-one. If you care to trust me, however, I’ll see that your assessment work is kept up and your claims fully protected. Three years is not a long time to wait and you’ll all be rich men before you know it.”It was a little disappointing to the boys to find that they were not to get the money for their claims immediately, but Clay’s reply gave them food for thought.“I like that idea of not getting our money until we are twenty-one,” he said. “We are too young yet for wealth. It would likely turn our heads and make fools of us.”Next morning the Yukon Kid started before day, with the two teams of dogs, for Nome, and a week later the river, clear of ice, theRamblerdrove down to St. Michael’s to be hoisted aboard the self-same vessel the boys had come upon.Did they get back home all right? Of course they did;Rambler, Captain Joe, Abe and all the rest.And say, wasn’t it fine that Ike sold that cargo of furs in Seattle for $12,000, $2,000 more than they hoped to get, you’ll remember.I believe, boys, if you could just stroll out on the little pier in the South Branch some evening and listen softly at theRambler’swindow, you’d hear those boys—yes, those self-same boys—planning another long trip.We hope they won’t forget to send us an account of the trip if they so decide. Until that time arrives we will say good-bye.
CHAPTER XXI
THE MYSTERY
Alex and Ike had to be told of the loss of food and also that Bill and Jud were likely lurking in the neighborhood. No mention was made to them, however, of the discoveries Case had made.
It was a gloomy little group after Clay had finished his tale. A winter in the Arctic was to be dreaded at its best, but with little food on hand and no potatoes, it was a horrible thing to meet. It was Clay who tried to enthuse a little cheerfulness into the grim situation. “We’ve got to face it, boys,” he said, “and it’s going to be hard to do, but we are going to make bad matters worse if we just sit and brood on it. I believe that we are going to come out of this all right. The main thing to do is to keep cheerful and keep busy. Let’s go on with our trading just as if nothing had happened, except that we will not only buy furs, but also meat whenever we get the chance. Perhaps we may be able to get a few potatoes at the Catholic Mission. They may have laid enough in to spare us a few. Alex, you and Ike had better, in the morning, overhaul all the stores and see just what we have left and how best to portion it off so as to make it last. Case and I have a little job on of our own to attend to. We will tell you about it later on. Now let’s turn in and go to sleep, each one determining that he is never going to worry over anything until it actually happens to him. Half the time the things we fear never happen. Long brooding over fears makes a coward and I believe even the Lord himself despises a coward. Good night, you fellows. I’m going to sleep.”
He and Case were early astir in the morning and stole out of the cabin softly so as not to awaken the sleepers. It was still dark, but the stars were shining like glimmering lanterns hung far above their heads and the black mass of the towering mountain rose dimly from its white carpeted base to serve them as a mighty guide post pointing out their way. By the time the two boys rounded the mountain’s base and entered the cove beyond, the dim twilight had driven the darkness to flight and they easily found the little cabin nestling up against the mountain side. Theirs was a gruesome task and they went to work at it with reluctant hands. The ground was too firmly frozen to dig a grave so they did the best they could. They carried the gruesome object up to the foot of a big wide-spread spruce and laid it down. Then they covered it with a thick layer of fragrant spruce boughs; upon this mound they leaned up some loose planks and around the whole built up a mound of stones to protect the one beneath from hunger-maddened wolves. This task done they skirted the edge of the cove, looking for any trace of other human habitation along its shore. Both had felt that their enemies might be camped in this very cove but their search pretty well convinced them that this was not so likely. “There’s no telling where they may be now,” Case said. “To look for them in this great, desolate frozen country would be like looking for a needle in a hay stack. They may be camped within a mile of us, or, again, they may be hundreds of miles away by now. Our trouble is that we do not know just when the stuff was taken and we can find no tracks that tell which way the thieves went. Better give it up. We have got a lot to do before the real winter sets in. We ought to start in tomorrow and begin our trading in earnest. We want a lot more furs and most of all we need meat, all we can get of it. It will keep all winter. We may not be fit to work later on,” he concluded significantly.
“You’re right,” Clay agreed reluctantly. “We will start out tomorrow for the next village. But all the same,” he added, “I have a feeling that those fellows are near us now just waiting for a good chance to get at Ike. One of us two must always stay behind. Two are enough to go with the team anyway. The other two, with Captain Joe on watch, had ought to take care of themselves and the boat all right. Well, we can do nothing more here. We had better get back to theRamblerbefore the boys get too curious and come hunting us up.”
They found a hot breakfast awaiting them and the boys finished the computing of theRambler’sstores, a process which Ike with pencil and paper in hand, was enjoying hugely.
“This committee finds,” he announced, “that if we all eats like Alex here there is plenty of food for two months yet. If we eats only enough to live on there be food for four months, maybe. If we feed the dogs Indian fashion, just a little at a time, you understand, there will be quite a lot of salmon left for us. That is all, I think, gentlemen, except the dogs. But Alex here says he will shoot any one who touches Buck and I do the same for Captain Joe, for he helps save my life one time, you understand.”
Clay laughed. “Why, we are not near so bad off as I expected,” he said, brightly. “Almost anything can happen in two months. I’ve got a hunch boys, that everything is going to turn out all right. Let’s keep on full rations for two weeks more, then we can cut down gradually if we see we need to. We had better give the dogs their double rations while they are working and cut it down to the usual feed when they are idle. Now let’s put the stores back where they belong and wash up the dishes and then go out and cut up firewood. This fine weather is not going to last forever. There are going to be days when no one will hanker to go out in the cold and chop wood. Better get up a good pile now when we have the time.” The boys knocked off work at sunset, and after they had finished their evening meal, Clay brought out from his locker a pack of cards, a checker board, and a chess board with its queens and pawns. “Lucky I thought to bring these,” he said. “They will help to pass the time. Let’s have a game and then turn in, for Case and Ike will have to get an early start in the morning.” The boys made merry over the game that followed, but deep down in each young heart was the creeping dread of that scourge of the Northland, scurvy. Clay expressed it when he said, thoughtlessly, “We had ought to save those few potatoes for Christmas. We want to have a special feast Christmas day.”
Case and Ike were gone for three days, but they came back with a pack of fine furs and over a half of a frozen moose.
The next trip, made by Clay and Alex, was more daring. They were gone ten days and brought back all the meat the sled could carry. But their faces were grave. At Holy Cross there was not a potato—which had been their real object in making the trip. Forty were helpless with the disease and more coming down every day with it. Indians who had come down from Dawson lately, reported that their weight in gold dust was being offered for potatoes with no takers. From St. Michael’s came like reports. At Nome there were plenty, but no one could cross the heaving seas of ice floes that separate it from St. Michael’s.
That was the team’s last trip. For news of the boy traders, who paid so liberally for what they bought, spread from village to village and they did not have to seek trade. It came to them. Hardly a day passed without seeing at theRambler’sdoor a sled load of meat or furs. The boys erected a scaffolding near theRamblerup above the reach of the dogs and it was soon full of frozen meat, while the packs of furs in theRamblerwere fast filling up the cabin to the point of inconvenience. All the traders brought stories of the ravages of the scurvy in the villages they had come from the secret dread in the boys’ hearts grew.
One morning, after two days of steady snow, they awoke to find the earth deeply covered with white. Their thermometer hung outside, registering sixty degrees below zero, while over river and land was the quietness of death.
The Great White Silence, about which they had heard so much, had come. It seemed almost evil to speak aloud in the breathlessness of this death-like quietness. As the days passed, it bore down on the lads’ souls until they sat silent for hours at a time. But deeper than the fear of the White Silence was that deeper menace hanging over them and daily growing closer.
“What’s the use of our trying to hide it?” Case demanded one morning. “We have all got it, I guess, and each one is trying to keep it from the others. Open up your mouth, Clay,” Clay silently obeyed. His gums, palate, and tongue were black and swollen. “Humph,” got it hard,” Case grunted. “Abe, you next.” The lad obeyed, and showed a mouth pink and clean as a baby’s. “You’re all right,” Case announced. “Now for you, Alex.” “Worse than Clay’s,” Case said, frankly. “Ike, step up and let me see your tongue. Why, you have only got the first symptoms,” he said, “just a touch of white on your gums and palate.” His own condition he did not need to state. His blackened, swollen lips told the tale. By some whim of nature, the disease had chosen the strongest for its first victims, and, having chosen, it proceeded with hideous rapidity. Within a week Clay, Alex and Case were helpless in their bunks. Ike was also breaking down, not from the disease, which seemed to take but slight hold of him, but from the groans and sufferings of his chums which he was powerless to relieve. Weary and sick at heart, one morning he left Abe in charge of the sufferers and skirting the edge of the ice with aimless steps, rounded the base of the mountain. Here he stopped with a look of interest. A curl of smoke was filtering up from a thick clump of cottonwoods. He stared at it thoughtfully for a minute, then wheeling suddenly, hastened back to the boat from which, presently, emerged Abe clothed in parka and snow shoes and bearing something white, tightly clenched in one small hand, as he skimmed over the crusted snow.
Black night had fallen when the Yukon Kid caught sight of theRambler’slights glimmering in the cove. They meant warmth, light, food and a bed for the night for him, and he spurred his weary dogs on to a fresh burst of speed which soon landed them in the lee of theRambler. Hastily unhitching, he flung a fish from his pack to each of the hungry animals. Then clambering aboard, he flung open the cabin door with boisterous words of greeting on his lips, but they died unspoken as his keen eyes swept the little room, taking in everything in one glance, the three muttering boys in their bunks, and the little Esquimau busy making up raw potatoes into juicy pulp. The lad’s face was marked by tears as he looked at the Kid.
“Plenty sick?” asked the Kid, pointing to the muttering lads.
“Yes. Heap scurvy.”
The Kid glanced at the vacant bunk.
“Fadder dead?”
“No dead,” said the boy. “Get potatoes this afternoon. Big men come. He and fadder trade. Fadder gets potatoes. Big man get fadder. All in paper there,” pointing to a folded note beside the heap of potatoes.
The Kid grabbed it up and opening it with ruthless hands, read:
“Dear boys:—I hope these potatoes help you all to get well quick. I gets them off them two loafers, Jud and Bill. I sent Abe as messenger to them this morning and Bill he comes over and talks it over with me, and we trade. A bushel of potatoes for me. I think he’s a robber, you understand. I don’t think he brings more than three pecks of the potatoes. I goes back with him. I expect I no see you any more, so good-bye boys. I’m sorry I make you so much trouble. With love, Ike.”
“I wants my share of the furs to go to Rebecca, you understand. Abe, he shall have the news stand. Tell him lots of love from fadder. Ike.”
“If you don’t let them dealers in Seattle rob you, you should get $10,000 at least for them furs. Ike.”
The Kid’s eyes raced over this farewell will and testament.
“You know where they take fadder?” he demanded of the mourning lad.
Abe nodded.
“Then get on your snow shoes and come with me,” the Kid commanded.
In a minute they were on the trail, the little Esquimau lad leading. A scant half mile of rapid traveling carried them into the cove and in sight of the gleaming light of the fire amongst the cottonwoods. Now they advanced more cautiously, trying to stop the creak of their snow shoes on the sugar-like snow. Luckily those around the campfire were too busy with their own affairs to notice the stealthy approach. Close to the fire lay Ike tightly bound while beside him knelt the evil-faced Bill applying a smoking iron to the lad’s bare feet. A sickening odor of burnt skin was filling the air, while the torturer was snarling: “Tell, you brat, or I’ll burn you to the bone.”
The Yukon Kid raised his heavy revolver and took steady aim, but something was quicker than he. A giant form leaped out from the cottonwoods upon the kneeling man. He was lifted up like a feather and dashed with the snap of breaking bones against a near-by tree.
“The b’ar. He’s killed Bill,” roared Jud’s mighty voice, as he leaped forward with drawn knife. The bear met him half-way with extended arms. Once the upraised knife was buried in the bear’s white side, then man and beast, locked in a mighty struggling embrace. The Kid watched them, fascinated, as they struggled back and forth. Only a minute the struggle lasted, then something in the man snapped sickeningly and he hung limply in the bear’s embrace, then swaying from side to side, the bear let go his burden to the ground and slipped slowly down beside it, his paws plucking feebly at the knife sticking in his side. When the Kid reached the two, both bear and man were dead.
Bill lay where he had been flung, his evil heart stilled forever. Ike, still lying by the fire, was in a dead faint.
Silently the Kid picked up the lad and turned back for theRambler.
CHAPTER XXII
SOLVING THE MYSTERY
The Kid sat up all night with the sufferers at short intervals administering to each a small portion of potato juice. Ike had recovered consciousness before they reached the cabin. He was but little injured. One foot had been burned a little, that was all. It had been the long strain and the sudden startling appearance of the bear that had caused the plucky lad to faint. A couple of cups of hot coffee put him into fair shape, but his astonishment at finding himself safe and in the warm cabin was great and his surprise at seeing the Kid greater. “Have I been dreaming and just woke up, Mr. Kid?” he demanded.
The Kid told him of what had happened, softening the horrible details as much as possible.
“It was Teddy Bear,” Ike declared. “I got one look a him before everything goes black.”
“Maybe, the Kid admitted. “I thought there was something familiar about him, but it was too dark to tell much.”
“Those fellows tell me this place where the mountain is, is Rainbow Bend.”
“It is, I bet,” exclaimed the Kid. “I’ve been wondering for a month what it was the name suggested to me. I was sure there was no place along the river named that, but still, it suggested something familiar to me, and now it’s all come back to me. I’ve passed it a couple of times when the sun hit it just right and made the mountain appear like a great big rainbow. It’s a wonder I didn’t guess the place when you asked me before. A bend in the river with a rainbow mountain on the point of the bend. Why, no other name could just describe it so well as Rainbow Bend.”
“Then that settles it,” said the little Jew, with tears in his eyes. “Them fellows, I guess, wasn’t lying all the time. They said it was Rainbow Bend and that uncle used to live there in a little log cabin against the side of the mountain. They told me uncle was dead now and they took me to the cabin to see his bones, but they were not there. They looked so frightened when they found them gone that I felt sure uncle had died there and someone had found his body and carried it away or buried it. Maybe it was the boys and they keep quiet so as not to let me worry too much. I think maybe that be it. I feel so bad over uncle, you understand, that I do not care much what them fellows do to me.”
“Lay down boy, and get a bit of sleep if you can,” interrupted the Kid, kindly. “Save your yarn till the boys are able to hear it. It will save a second telling of it. Just try to go to sleep now. You’ll have to take my place tomorrow.”
“Do you think the boys will get well?” Ike asked, anxiously.
“Sure,” replied the Kid, cheerfully. “They will be up and around in a few days, but it’s going to take some time for all marks of the disease to disappear.”
Ike rolled over in his bunk and with a sigh of relief closed his eyes and was soon sound asleep, forgetting his troubles and sorrows and the short, anxious days and long, weary nights he had spent waiting on his stricken companions.
The Kid stood for a moment looking tenderly down on the pinched, tired, little face. “You poor, tuckered-out, little devil,” he muttered. “Hanged if I don’t believe you are the pluckiest one of the bunch, and that’s saying a whole lot.”
At the first hint of dawn, the Kid awoke Abe and set him to cooking breakfast. Ike he let sleep on until the meal was ready. As soon as it was finished, he gave instructions about administering the potato juice, and hitching up the boys’ team, as his own was sadly in need of rest, he skirted the mountain’s base and rounded into the cove beyond. His errand was much the same as that undertaken by Clay and Case upon another occasion. Common humanity demanded that the two men, bad though they were, should not lie exposed to the wolves. He soon reached the scene of the previous night’s encounter, where the three bodies lay as he had left them. He buried the two men in much the same way as Clay and Case had buried the murdered miner. This done, he turned his attention to the bear. It was Teddy alright, but not such a Teddy as had run away from his masters. This Teddy was thin and gaunt and it was evident from the ferociousness of his face that he had completely lapsed back again into the savagery of his brutal ancestors.
“Hum,” mused the Kid as he looked down at the savage face. “Just mad, hungry, and desperate enough to want to kill anything you met up against, wasn’t you, Teddy? You were just running amuck ready to kill anything and these two chaps happened to be the first you stumbled upon. Well, I reckon those boys on theRamblerwill want to think of you as a hero rushing to the rescue at the last moment, and I reckon that it would be sorter mean to rob them of their faith and pride in you. But that look on your face would give you dead away, so I guess I’ll cover you up a bit. Anyway, you’re better deserving of a grave than that fellow Bill was, so here goes.”
Teddy Bear at last buried like a Christian, the Kid explored the clump of cottonwood, and as he had expected, came upon a snug log cabin with a big stone fire place. In one corner of it he came upon the stores stolen from theRambler. These he loaded on the sled and turned his dogs back for the boat.
He was delighted with the improved appearance of his patients, who already were beginning to show signs of a speedy recovery. As soon as he ate the hearty dinner Ike had kept warm for him, he spread out his roll of blankets near the stove and stretched out. “Call me at dark if I don’t wake up before,” he directed Ike. “I am pretty well tuckered out. I’ve been thirty-six hours on my feet and my legs are beginning to get toothache.”
Dark came, but the Kid was sleeping so soundly that Ike would not awaken him until he had prepared the evening meal, fed the dogs, and brought in the night’s supply of wood for the Yukon stove. Even then it was difficult to awaken him from his slumbers.
“Gee,” he exclaimed, as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “I thought I had only just got asleep, and here it is after dark. How are the sick boys coming on?”
“Fine,” said Ike, happily. “Clay and Alex are not crazy in the head any more, and they try to talk some. Case, he’s much better too.”
“Good,” said the Kid. “Now I’ll take a wash in the snow outside and by the time I’ve tucked away some of that good supper I smell, I’ll be fit as a fiddle.”
As soon as supper was over and things cleaned up, the Kid ordered Ike and Abe to bed and took upon himself again the duties of nurse for the night. They were the same as the night before, excepting that the boys often awoke and tried to ply him with questions as to what had happened. But on such occasions the Kid forced upon them bowls of hot milk and firm commands to keep still, and they soon dropped off again into sound slumber unbroken by tossing or mutterings.
When Ike awoke, he found the boys all sleeping soundly and the Kid nodding in a chair beside the fire. “They’ll be in pretty fair shape when they wake up,” the Kid declared. “Of course they’ll be too weak to get out of their beds for a couple of days, but you can let them talk all they want to. Let them sleep as long as they will, though. I am going to catch a cat nap now, but you can call me for breakfast, for I’m hungry as a wolf.”
It was not until the Kid had been aroused and breakfast had been eaten, that Alex awoke and his clattering tongue soon aroused the other two.
It was a joyful morning in theRambler’scozy cabin and many were the exclamations of wonder over Ike’s story of the things that happened during their long illness. “Did any of you boys take my uncle out of the cabin and bury him?” he demanded as he ended his tale.
Clay and Case glanced at each other. “We did,” Clay confessed. “We hated to tell you then for we thought it was no use making things harder for you during the long, gloomy winter ahead.”
“Thank you, boys,” said the little Jew simply, his eyes filling slowly with tears. “Well, uncle is dead and I am free to tell about that letter now. It ain’t much to tell but what I told you already, Clay, and I guess you told the other boys. My uncle tells me in it that he has found a great treasure, enough to make us rich like princes and able to do a great deal for the poor. He wants me, he says in the letter, to come and bring all the cash I got, and tells me to be sure and not tell anyone about it till we gets together, you understand. He says I’ll find him at Rainbow Bend. The rest of the letter was torn off by that Jud or Bill, but I think maybe it tells how to find this Rainbow Bend, I don’t know. Well, boys, uncle is dead, and that wicked Bill and his poor brother dead too, so I guess we never find out about the treasure.”
The Kid, who had been an interested listener to Ike’s story, fumbled in his pocket and produced a small match safe snugly done up in oiled silk.
“I found this when I was looking through Bill’s pockets, hunting for the name of his folks or someone else to notify of his and Jud’s death,” he remarked. “I looked at it but couldn’t make head or tail of it. It looks like a piece off a letter, but I reckon it’s a kind of cipher from the queer marks scattered over it. Maybe it might be the piece tom off your letter, Ike?”
“Hold on a minute,” said Clay, as Ike took the torn scrap of paper. “If those men opened and read your uncle’s letter, they had no need to go clear to Chicago to try to make you tell them what was in it, and then follow you clear up here again on the same errand when they already knew all you knew of the letter’s contents—more, in fact, for they had the piece they had torn off which you had never seen.”
“Put like a lawyer’s question,” exclaimed the Kid, admiringly.
“Very cute question, Clay,” agreed Ike, “but easy to answer. My uncle does not live in America long enough to learn to read and write English. He writes to me in Hebrew. Them fellows think the same as Mr. Kid, that the letter’s a kind of cipher and that I’ve got the key to it. That’s why they keep after me all the time and try to make so much trouble. This piece, Mr. Kid finds, just tells how to find Rainbow Bend. Well, boys, that’s all I know, and now I think I go out for a little walk and get some fresh air.”
“That clears up some of the mystery,” said Clay, thoughtfully, “but there are two things unexplained yet. Who put that strange notice of our expecting to take this Yukon trip in the Chicago paper?”
“I think, perhaps,” said Case, musingly, “that Bill did that himself. He had been listening to our talking about the trip, and he thought that notice would make a good excuse for Jud to call on us and try to arrange passage for the two of them.”
“That’s as good a guess as any,” Clay agreed. “The other mystery is, what is the treasure, where is it, and how are we to find it? What do you think about it, Mr. Yukon Kid?”
“I think the old man just dreamed it,” said the Kid, bluntly. “Likely the lonely life and the long darkness weakened him in his head and he got to imagining things. There’s not enough gold around here to gild a baby’s tooth. It isn’t likely gold ground at the best. On top of that, about every man who has gone up the Yukon has prospected here. If the snow was off the ground you could see more prospect holes than you would care to count in these two coves. There’s iron and coal in that mountain, no doubt, and, maybe, the old man got his idea of a treasure from them. But they are valueless until we get railroads into this country. The only treasure around here is these furs here in theRambler. You’ve got reason to be satisfied with them.”
CHAPTER XXIII
SOLVING THE MYSTERY
Ike did not return until dinner was nearly over. He wore a brave front, but his eyes and lids were very red and the boys knew as well as if he had told them that he had found his uncle’s grave and had been grieving over the gentle old man beneath the mound of stones, but the little lad bore up under his burden of sorrow with a surface of cheerfulness that the boys marveled at.
“Well, Mr. Kid,” he said, as he took his place at the table. “How did you leave Mr. and Mrs. Morton and the Bonnie Annie Laurie?”
The red mounted to the Kid’s face as he answered enthusiastically: “Fine and dandy. Those three innocents hit the right idea after all. There was plenty of eating places in Dawson but they didn’t set out the kind of grub that mother used to make, and that’s where the old lady shined. Then the old gentleman was a pretty shrewd buyer and he laid in his supplies before prices reached clean up to the sky, although he had to pay a pretty stiff price at that.
The old lady’s cooking, and the reasonable prices, and the very sight of that little girl tripping in and out amongst the tables, caught the crowd. The chekakos went pretty nigh broke buying grub that tasted like home, and many an old sour-dough is in a fair way of getting gout after all his years of eating just pork and beans. When the scurvy broke out they had about all the potatoes in town. They could have got anywhere from $1.00 to $10.00 apiece for them, but the old lady wouldn’t listen to anything like that. ‘They only cost us 10c apiece,’ she argued, ‘and it ain’t Christian-like to ask more in the time of sickness and suffering, and the poor can have ’em for nothing.’ So the old-timers formed a sort of bread line, as you might call it, and every day every man, woman and child in Dawson was free to march down that line and get his or her bit of potato whether they had ten cents or not. I reckon, pretty near the whole of Dawson would have been wiped out by the scurvy this winter but for the Mortons—and Dawson knows it. Those old people will make a fortune if they keep at the business.” The Kid paused and the red again mounted into his face. “I might as well tell you now, because you little cusses will pry it out of me sooner or later,” he said, in happy embarrassment. “That little girl and I are going to be married as soon as I make my stake, and I’ve got a hunch that that time is not far off.”
Clay grinned. “Why, we knew that long ago,” he said.
They congratulated the Kid until his face shone with happiness.
“I’ve got a favor to ask of you,” he said, when at last they were through. “It’s comin’ on cold tonight or I’m no judge of Alaska weather. There’s no special reason for my getting down to St. Michael’s before the first steamer comes in, and it’s a long trail back to Dawson, so, if you boys don’t mind, I’ll camp with you until it’s time to start for St. Michael’s.”
The boys greeted this announcement with shouts of delight, for they could think of no more welcome visitor than the Yukon Kid.
It was as the Kid had prophesied, the morning showed the thermometer at 70 degrees below zero, where it hung steadily for a full week, before the end of which time the Kid had difficulty in keeping the now active invalids indoors. They wanted to be out in the open air after their long, close confinement, and with their growing strength, came the desire for activity.
“Don’t try it outside yet,” he advised. “If you do you’ll regret it. Seventy degrees below zero isn’t to be fooled with even by old timers. With kids weak as you are yet, it would mean death. That degree of cold would frost your lungs in ten minutes. Why, even the Indians rarely travel when it gets below 40 degrees. Be patient, boys, this cold weather is not going to last forever. It will get milder soon. In fact, boys, it’s not going to be long before spring comes. I’ll bet you boys have lost all track of the days.”
“I guess we have,” agreed Clay. “I can’t be sure of what month it is even. We kept so busy before we were taken sick that we kept no account of days, and then we have been sick a long, long time.”
“Well, it’s the middle of March,” the Kid enlightened him. The worst of the winter is over now. Along the last of April the ice should begin to go out.”
“And as soon as it goes out, we will be bound for home,” said Alex, happily.
“And all the fun and excitement of the city,” sighed Clay, blissfully.
“And the news stand for me and Abe,” Ike declared. “Maybe, when Abe picks up the business good, I set him up in a little stand for himself.”
As for Abe, he had nothing to say. He was content to follow fadder. Never in his whole young life had he ever been so kindly treated as since when fadder had bought him from his uncle.
At last the long cold spell broke and they awoke one morning to find the thermometer at twenty degrees below—warm weather for the Yukon.
With the break of the cold spell, the days flew past with flying footsteps, for there was always something to pass the time out in the bracing cold of the gradually lengthening days. There were snow shoe races and even dog racing, in which the Yukon Kid’s team was always beaten, much to Kid’s disgust. But most entertaining of all was the search for the treasure which the boys all firmly believed in, though the Kid only smiled at their fruitless efforts. “Go to it,” he advised them. “It keeps you busy and makes the time pass quicker,” and go to it they did with all their youthful ardor. First they cleaned out the snow heaps in the lonely cabin, but found nothing to reward their search but a few pitiful battered cooking utensils and a scanty store of food. But they built a fire in the cabin and with shovels heated over it, dug up the frozen ground inside in search of concealed riches. In the center of the shore of the cove, they sank a prospect hole, keeping a fire going all the time, except when they raked it to one side to remove the thawed-out earth. In time they reached bed rock and tested thoroughly the pile of dirt they had accumulated, only to find that not a trace of color appeared in the pans.
While they had worked a change had slowly been taking place around them. The air had been growing sensibly warmer and the heat of the sun was gradually making itself felt. The snow was slowly melting from the knolls and forming tiny rivulets that trickled their way down to the river. Spring was at hand.
It was after the failure of the prospect hole they had sunk, that they all gathered together on theRambler’sdeck one noon for a little after dinner chat.
“Well, I expect we might as well give up looking for the treasure,” said Alex, disconsolately. “We have done all we can.”
“Yes,” agreed the Yukon Kid, “there’s nothing to it but the excitement of looking and finding nothing. Well, boys, I’ve spent a good time with you, but I’ve got to be going soon. Just step out here and listen.” He led the way out on the ice and motioned for them to be silent. Faintly there came to their ears the soft murmur of running water under their feet. “That’s Father Yukon waking up from his long sleep,” said the Kid, gravely. “It means that I must be on my way or I will not reach St. Michael’s before the ice breaks up. I guess you’ll get there not many days after me for when the ice goes out in the Yukon it goes out in a hurry.”
“Mr. Kid,” said Ike, who had been chosen spokesman for the boys in what was to follow. “Mr. Kid, you have been very good to us and more than once you have saved the life, maybe, of some of us, and so we want to give you a little gift, not to repay you for the good things you have done for us, you understand, but just a little gift to show that we don’t forget them good deeds. We want you to kindly accept Buck and his family. We want to feel that we have left Buck with a good, kind master too. That Buck is a good dog, almost as good as Captain Joe.”
The Kid’s eyes shone with delight at the thought of being possessor of such a glorious team, but he protested earnestly. “I have not done anything to merit such a gift. Maybe I helped you out a mite that first day at Nome, but it wasn’t any trouble to me. Sizes up to me that each of you has done his part nobly and loyally just like links in a chain. You or the most of you, would have pulled through all right even if I hadn’t happened to come across you when I did.” He hastened a second before he went on. “It seems to me if there’s any link that shows up a little larger than the rest, it’s this little chap here,” patting Ike’s shoulder. “He was willing to give himself up to torture that the rest of you might live. I reckon, though, that any one of you would have done the same in his place.”
Alex was twisting and shuffling in embarrassment over this display of sentiment.
“There’s one thing we must do before we leave,” he interrupted. “We must climb that mountain. We haven’t climbed a mountain on this whole trip. I’ll dare the lot of you to climb it clear to the top with me.
Clay looked up at the great mountain wet and slippery from the melting snows of its summit. “None of it in mine,” he said decidedly.
Ike regarded the monster thoughtfully. “I’m a family man,” he declared. “What would become of Abe if he loses his fadder?”
“It’s all right to take risks when one has to,” growled Case, “but it’s blamed foolishness to do so just on a dare.”
“All right, you babies,” jeered Alex. “If you’re ’fraid to come. I’ll climb up alone.”
“I’ll go with you,” shouted the Yukon Kid, “just wait a minute will you?” for Alex was already moving for the mountain’s base. “He won’t get up fifty feet,” he confided to the others. “I will take a rope from the sled here and try to keep him from a nasty fall.”
“He can climb like a monkey,” said Clay, doubtfully, “and for all he acts so reckless sometimes he’s got a pretty cool head when he really gets into a tight place. If you don’t want a long climb, don’t try to follow him, for he will not stop at a hundred feet unless that mountain’s so slippery that a fly can’t cling to the side of it.”
“Then he’ll find me right beside him,” said the Kid confidently, as he wound the rope around his waist and hastened after Alex, who was already at the mountain’s base.
Alex was going about his undertaking cautiously, for he knew he would be subjected to ridicule by his companions if he failed at the very start. He skirted the mountain’s base watching for a likely place to make a start, but finding only bare, smooth, almost perpendicular walls extending upward some fifty or seventy-five feet. Up beyond this smooth base he could see many knobs and little ledges sticking out which promised fair climbing once the intervening space was overcome. It was not until he had nearly reached the little cabin in the cove, that he came upon that for which he was searching, a place where the smooth wall had crumbled down into the sea, leaving in its wake an incline that seemed to offer a chance to reach the easier climbing above. Up the slight incline Alex scrambled like a monkey with the Kid close at his heels. When about five hundred feet up he stopped and sat down to blow and rest a bit.
“Say, don’t this look like queer mountain climbing to you?” he demanded of the Kid, resting beside him.
“How so, in what way?” the Kid inquired.
“It’s just like going upstairs,” explained Alex. “There’s holes just in the very spots where you want to put your hands or feet. Funny, isn’t it?”
The Kid stood up on the ledge and peered up at the holes above him. “Whew,” he whistled. “They haven’t just happened there; why, boy, most of them have been made by a pick axe.”
“I know it,” said Alex, his face aglow. “Kid, I believe we’re on the trail of that treasure.”
CHAPTER XXIV
GOOD-BYE
There was no more thought of resting for the excited two. Up they climbed for another seven hundred feet to where the pick holes suddenly ended and they stood upon a ledge of rock which seemed to extend clear across the front of the mountain. The two looked about them with some disappointment. They did not know just what they had expected to find, but here there was nothing in sight but the ledge and the mountain towering above their heads.
“This is what I took for grass from the ground,” said Alex, pointing to the green belt that girdled the mountain side close to where they stood.
“Don’t look as pretty and fresh as it did from below,” commented the Kid. “Let’s mark the spot here where we came up so that we will not miss the place when we go down. Then let’s mosey along this ledge and see what we can find. Surely no man would be crazy enough to cut all those holes for nothing.”
They piled up a loose heap of stones where they had ascended, then they followed up the ledge, closely examining the mountain’s face and the rocks and quartz at their feet.
“Great cats,” cried the Kid suddenly. He had stopped in front of some curious markings on the green-hued mountain wall, and stood staring at them with amazement on his face.
“What is it?” demanded Alex, excitedly.
“Location notices of mining claims on the face of a mountain,” said the Kid, bewildered. “Two of them.” Reckon Ike’s uncle took up one of the claims for Ike and the other for himself. The old gentleman sure was queer in the head just as I thought Why, he could have claimed the whole mountain if he had wanted to. I don’t believe any one would have objected. “Well, let’s scratch our names up to just keep the old man’s company.” He dug into the rock with his sheaf knife and a bit came off in his hands. The Kid gazed on it with frank amazement. He moved along further and pried out another chunk. He repeated this operation a dozen times, heedless of Alex’s questions, the look of amazement on his face constantly growing. The last lump he picked out was as big as a man’s fist and he held it up silently for Alex to see. Under its outside coating of green it showed a dull reddish brown.
“What is it?” Alex demanded, impressed by his companion’s manner.
“Son,” said the Kid solemnly. “Just cast your eye along that broad green belt and you’ll see something unknown in the whole history of mining—an outcrop of copper, pure copper, millions upon millions of dollars’ worth of it standing out in plain sight. I have got to think it over. Let’s mark up a claim for each of our party and get back to camp. I’ve got to get alone for a while and think this over.”
In a few minutes the claims were marked and the two clambered down the mountain to find their companions getting anxious over their long absence.
While Alex was telling his excited chums of the wonderful discovery, the Kid walked off by himself buried in thought, nor did he return until dark. Over the supper table he laid his conclusion before them.
“It’s big—the biggest thing that has ever happened on the Yukon. It’s too big for us to handle. It needs wharfs, staging, elevators, ships and a whole lot of other things. Likely a million dollars will have to be spent before the first load of copper can be got out of that mountain. Now our claims will not cover one-tenth of that copper belt, and my plan would be to get down to Nome as quick as I could and file our claims on the records. Then, pick out a few old timers I could trust and have them file claims on the balance of the belt, and then all combine to sell out to some big concern that has got the money to get out the goods. I’m sorry,” he said, regretfully, “but you boys will not get your money at once. You can take up a claim at eighteen years of age but you can’t sell until you’re twenty-one. If you care to trust me, however, I’ll see that your assessment work is kept up and your claims fully protected. Three years is not a long time to wait and you’ll all be rich men before you know it.”
It was a little disappointing to the boys to find that they were not to get the money for their claims immediately, but Clay’s reply gave them food for thought.
“I like that idea of not getting our money until we are twenty-one,” he said. “We are too young yet for wealth. It would likely turn our heads and make fools of us.”
Next morning the Yukon Kid started before day, with the two teams of dogs, for Nome, and a week later the river, clear of ice, theRamblerdrove down to St. Michael’s to be hoisted aboard the self-same vessel the boys had come upon.
Did they get back home all right? Of course they did;Rambler, Captain Joe, Abe and all the rest.
And say, wasn’t it fine that Ike sold that cargo of furs in Seattle for $12,000, $2,000 more than they hoped to get, you’ll remember.
I believe, boys, if you could just stroll out on the little pier in the South Branch some evening and listen softly at theRambler’swindow, you’d hear those boys—yes, those self-same boys—planning another long trip.
We hope they won’t forget to send us an account of the trip if they so decide. Until that time arrives we will say good-bye.