Two huge skeletons were struggling in deadly embrace.

He could hear no sound but the click-click-click of their bones.

He saw the gleam of knives held between fleshless fingers, and he saw now that both were struggling for the possession of something that was upon the table.

Now one almost reached it, now the other, but neither gained possession.
The clicking of the bones became louder, the struggle fiercer, the knives of the skeleton combatants rose and fell.

Then one staggered back and sank in a heap on the floor.
For a moment the victor swayed, tottered to the table, and gripped the mysterious object in its bony fingers.
As it stumbled weakly against the cabin wall the gruesome creature held the object up, and Rod saw that it was a roll of birch-bark! An ember in the dying fire snapped with a sound like the report of a small pistol and Rod sat bolt upright, awake, staring, trembling.