he left the schooner that night and crossed over the shadowy shore
ice, a blizzard was rising. Already the snow-fog it raised had turned the
moon into a misty ball. Through it the gleaming camp fires of the
Bolshevik band told they had camped for the night not five miles from the
mines.

The blizzard suited Pant's purposes well. It might keep the Russians in
camp for many hours, and would most certainly make an effective job of a
little piece of work which he wished to have done.

With a watchful eye he skirted the cabin they had left but a brief time
before. A pale yellow light shone from one of the windows. Either the
place was being looted by natives, or the yellow men had taken refuge
there. The presence of a half-score of dogs scouting about the outside led
him to believe that it was the natives. Where, then, were the Orientals?

Breathing a hope that they might not be found in the mines or the machine
sheds, he hurried on. With a hand tight gripped on his automatic, he made
his way into Mine No. 1. All was dark, damp and silent. The very ghost of
his dead comrade seemed to lurk there still. Who was it that had killed
Frank Langlois, and how had it been done? Concerning these questions, he
now had a very definite solution, but it would be long before he knew the
whole truth.

Once inside the mine, he hastened to the square entrance that had been cut
there by the strange buzz-saw-like machine of the Orientals. The wall was
thin at this place. With a pick he widened the gap until the machine could
be crowded through, and with great difficulty he dragged it to the
entrance of the mine. Once here his task was easier, for the machine was
on runners and slid readily over the hard-crusted snow. With a look this
way, then that, he plunged into the rising storm. Pushing the machine
before him, he presently reached the mouth of Mine No. 3 in which three
days of steam-thawing had brought the miners to a low-grade pay dirt. The
cavity was cut forty feet into the side of the bank which lay over the old
bed of the river.

Having dragged the machine into the farthest corner, he returned to the
entrance and at once dodged into the machine sheds. To these sheds he made
five trips. On a small dog-sled he brought first a little gasoline engine
and electric generator, next eight square batteries, then some supplies of
food, a tank of gasoline, and some skin garments from the storeroom. His
last journey found the first gray streak