The search began within days, led by Corporal Paddy Ryan, Olson's would-be host for Christmas dinner. Retracing the trail between Minto and Hootchikoo, Ryan found no sign of the three men, but he did find a rough log-and-canvas shack containing goods apparently stolen from a cache. Only a few weeks earlier, police in Dawson had questioned a man named George O'Brien about a string of cache thefts but released him for want of evidence. An investigator from Dawson recognized a stove in the shack-tent as belonging to O'Brien and telegraphed the Tagish detachment, on the way out of the Yukon, to have him held if he showed up there.
