"Mukoki!" laughed Rod, happy that the end was near.

Even as he spoke he swayed dizzily, and Wabi dropped his gun that he
might keep his companion from falling into the snow.



CHAPTER II

HOW WABIGOON BECAME A WHITE MAN


Had the young hunters the power of looking into the future, their
camp-fire that night on the frozen Ombabika might have been one of their
last, and a few days later would have seen them back on the edges of
civilization. Possibly, could they have foreseen the happy culmination
of the adventures that lay before them, they would still have gone on,
for the love of excitement is strong in the heart of robust youth. But
this power of discernment was denied them, and only in after years, with
the loved ones of their own firesides close about them, was the whole
picture revealed. And in those days, when they would gather with their
families about the roaring logs of winter and live over again their
early youth, they knew that all the gold in the world would not induce
them to part with their memories of the life that had gone before.

A little less than thirty years previous to the time of which we write,
a young man named John Newsome left the great city of London for the New
World. Fate had played a hard game with young Newsome--had first robbed
him of both parents, and then in a single fitful turn of her wheel
deprived him of what little property he had inherited. A little later he