Wabigoon replied in words scarcely louder than a whisper. There was no
joyful shouting now, as there had been at the discovery of the second
fall. Even Mukoki's voice was so low that the others could barely
hear. Something between these chasm walls seemed to demand silence
from them, and as the rumble of the cataract came more and
more clearly to their ears they held their breath in voiceless
anticipation. A few hundred yards ahead of them was the treasure which
men long since dead had discovered more than half a century before;
between the black mountain walls that so silently guarded that
treasure there seemed to lurk the spirit presence of the three men who
had died because of it. Here, somewhere very near, John Ball had been
murdered, and Rod almost fancied that along the sandy edge of the
chasm stream they might stumble on the footprints of the men whose
skeletons they had discovered in the ancient cabin.

Mukoki uttered no sound as he guided the canoe ashore. Still without
word, the three picked up their rifles and Wabigoon led the way along
the edge of the stream. Soon it dashed a swift racing torrent between
the rocks, and Rod and his companions knew that they were close upon
the fall. A hundred yards or more and they saw the white mist of it
leaping up before their eyes. Wabi began to run, his moccasined feet
springing from stone to stone with the caution of a hunter approaching
game, and Mukoki and Rod came close behind him.

They paused upon the edge of a great mass of rock with the spray of
the plunging cataract rising in their faces. Breathless they gazed
down. It was not a large fall. Wabi silently measured it at forty
feet. But it added just that much more to the depth and the gloom of
the chasm beyond, into which there seemed no way of descent. The rock