With the words of Camillo Bill ringing in his ears, Gordon had that evening quitted the Golden North Saloon, and had gone straight to his cabin, and had laid the whole matter before his wife and daughter, nor had he spared himself in the telling. What one Gordon owed, all Gordons owed, therefore his debt became their debt. From the cabin he had returned to the Golden North and publicly had denounced himself even more bitterly than he had, the previous evening denounced MacShane. Thus, having made all amends within his power, with a clear conscience, he bided the time when he should meet MacShane. Nor was he lacking in diligence in his endeavor to locate him. No traveler from the North crossed his path, but was asked the same question: “Have ye run acrost Burr MacShane?” And, always the answer had been, “No.” It was the same as he floated down the Yukon, and while he worked the Birch Creek bars, always the same question, and always the same answer, and it was the same upon the Koyukuk. Small chance for inquiry though, they found upon the Koyukuk, two prospectors at the mouth of Hog River, and another one further along, were working the bars with indifferent success. One of these, the lone prospector of the upper bar, an old man, had known MacShane years before on the Kuskokwim, but had not run across him since. At Bergman the Commercial Company’s agent had known him on the Lower Yukon. At Moses’s Village, the largest native town on the river, several of the Indians knew him, but could not, or would not, give any information as to his present whereabouts. At Bettles, the head of shallow-draught steamboat navigation the Gordons remained for three weeks, the women resting while Gordon prospected several likely looking creeks. But the creeks had all been prospected before, so the laborious up-river journey was resumed, with the new camp of Coldfoot as their objective, seventy-five miles to the northward. CHAPTER VIII COLDFOOT At last, at the end of a long day’s toil, the trio beached their boat on the shallows, and pitched their tent on the outskirts of the new camp that had sprung up on the flat at the mouth of Slate Creek. They had arrived at Coldfoot, the most northerly gold camp in the world. Supper over, Mrs. Gordon surveyed the cluster of low log buildings, and canvas tents: “Surely, Stuart,” she said, reflectively. “We’ll find Burr MacShane here.” Her husband shook his head: “An’ why d’ye think we’ll be findin’ him here?” he asked. “Why because Coldfoot is the very last camp. If he headed North, he’s bound to be here. There is nothing beyond.”