The Gold Hunters, page 109 by James Oliver Curwood
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water dashed and fumed? Was it hidden in some gloomy cavern of the mountain sides, its trail concealed by the men who discovered it half an age ago? Would they find it, after all--would they find it?
A great gulp of excitement rose in Rod's throat, and he looked at Wabigoon.
The Indian youth had stretched out an arm. His eyes were blazing, his whole attitude was one of tense emotion.
"There's the cabin," he cried, "the cabin built by John Ball and the two Frenchmen! See, over there among those cedars, almost hidden in that black shadow of the mountain! Great Scott, Muky--Rod--can't you see? Can't you see?"
CHAPTER XIV
THE PAPER IN THE OLD TIN BOX
Slowly out of that mysterious gloom there grew a shape before Rod's eyes. At first it was only a shadow, then it might have been a rock, and then the gulp in his throat leaped out in a shout when he saw that Wabigoon's sharp eyes had in truth discovered the old cabin of the map. For what else could it be? What else but the wilderness home of the adventurers whose skeletons they had found, Peter Plante and Henri Langlois, and John Ball, the man whom these two had murdered?
Rod's joyous voice was like the touch of fire to Wabi's enthusiasm and in a moment the oppressive silence of their journey down the chasm was broken by the wild cheers which the young gold seekers sent echoing between the mountains. Grimacing and chuckling in his own curious way, Mukoki was already slipping along the edge of the rock, seeking some break by which he might reach the lower chasm. They were on the point of turning to the ascent of the mountain, along which they would have to go until they found such a break, when the old pathfinder directed the attention of his companions to the white top of a dead cedar stub projecting over the edge of the precipice.
"Go down that, mebby," he suggested, shrugging his shoulders to suggest that the experiment might be a dangerous one.
Rod looked over