CHAPTER XVI.
LOST ON THE FROZEN STEPPES.
Yelping and tugging at leash, the hounds were given the scent at the shore point where the ship’s boat had been found. It was decided to let them run free, and to follow the fierce trailers in the biplanes.
Thus it was that Henri was compelled to take on an extra passenger in his machine, no other than the handler of the dogs, who alone could be depended upon to bring the animals to heel if the men pursued should be brought to bay. As luck would have it, the additional weight was that of a little man, who could have been wrapped twice, and some over, in Strogoff’s coat.
All three of the officers were armed to the teeth with modern repeating rifles, taken from the supply on the dispatch boats, and supremely confident of their ability to cope with the estimated small party, however desperate, which they expected to encounter.
The dogs, too, were allies that would make a goodly showing if it came to a clash in close quarters.
The young aviators had been impressed by the sergeant that their business was solely that of pilots.
“Let anything happen to you,” he said, “and my day of self-forgiving would never come. Besides, I am now accountable to Colonel Malinkoff for your safety on the ground, the same as you are responsible for mine when you get me on high. Understand?”
“We get you, sergeant,” was Billy’s reply; “you have our promise not to butt into any shindy where we are not invited.”
“Turn them loose,” was the sergeant’s order to the little man, who was struggling to restrain the leaping hounds.
Two streaks of brown and yellow flashed across the plain.
“All aboard!” shouted Strogoff.
There was a scramble into the biplanes, and a lightning-like getaway.
The hounds were already far afield, but nothing on two feet or four, on wheel or keel, can stay ahead of an aeroplane, and the scampering animals were overhauled in a jiffy, and the pilots holding to low speed to even up the chase.
Along a marshy stretch of ground the dogs seemed at fault, going at zigzag, but ever returning to the spot where first the scent was lost.
The little man, crouching behind Henri in the biplane, requested the pilot to descend forthwith, and as it was simply a ’round and ’round operation to keep in sight of the baffled hounds, there was really nothing else to do but stop.
Billy had already anticipated the situation, and had started to volplane even before his chum had set the planes for landing.
The master of the hounds, whom Strogoff addressed as Petro, was forced to literally drag his canine charges away from their persistent adherence to the one spot on the high side of the marsh.
Lowiez, he of the keen eye, had been doing some scrutinizing on his own account, and read an explanation by certain marks on the flinty ground.
Addressing the sergeant, he briefly disposed of the puzzle:
“Horses here not long since; the men we have been trailing went no further on foot. That is why these beasts are out of the running.”
“Cossacks, I’ll be bound,” exclaimed Strogoff.
“On that theory, sergeant,” continued Lowiez, “we have two surmises, one that the band was on the way to the nearest army command, and the other that they were free riders and traveling as the wind listeth. In either event, does our service extend so far?”
“The arm of the Russian police system,” proudly declared Strogoff, “has no limit within the realm of the Czar. And, too, our special mission is backed by both civil and military authority.”
“As you will,” conceded Lowiez; “it is needless to state that I am with you to the death.”
Turning to Petro, the sergeant said:
“As the dogs can no longer be of use, and as it is practically impossible to safely carry them in the aircraft, I must bid you back with them to the dispatch boats, which had orders to await, for a period of three days, our return.”
Without comment, the master of hounds faced about and started on his long march, with the dogs capering at his heels.
“Well, we have a roving commission now.”
Strogoff had his field glasses glued to his eyes, and taking in the range of open country. The powerful binnacle, however, showed him nothing of interest. It was a dreary outlook at best.
“Fly east, fly west, fly south,” he repeated—“a choice broad enough for an empire maker. It is well that we know what is behind us. Are we prepared for a longer journey, my pilot?”
“We can easily do three hundred miles with our petrol supply,” assured Billy, who had just completed inspection of the tanks in both machines.
“There are two days’ rations in the lockers,” volunteered Henri.
“So far, so good,” commented Strogoff; “there is no use standing here cooling our heels. Let’s be off!”
For three hours the aviation party was continuously on the wing, traveling a southwesterly course, a trying experience owing to the frigid atmosphere and the cramped position maintained.
Toward evening another stop was in order. A bivouac must be established for the night. The aviators had been hoping against hope that a settlement would be reached, where, at least, the privilege of a shakedown before a peat fire would be accorded.
It was a bitter disappointment to Strogoff that fortune had not favored him in these long hours of vigilant outlook with a sight or sign of the horsemen he was pursuing. Almost a monomania with him was that one overwhelming desire to lay his hands upon the arch-plotter Ricker.
The truth was, he had no fixed idea when to quit, and now was so far beyond his reckoning that he did not know how to back out.
When that night the weary four sat huddled together and blanketed to the ears on the frozen plain, Lowiez, who since his first venture and rebuke had offered no remonstrance, suggested that the early morning ought to see them well on the way to the Vistula, and then homeward bound.
“We won’t get anywhere, sergeant,” asserted Billy, upholding Lowiez, “if we wait until the petrol’s all gone—and another day without filling, that will be exactly the condition.”
“Have it over, then, as you will. If you know the way, take it.”
Strogoff had spoken, and resignedly.
When they slept, or how long, none of the party could have told, at first awakening. Their disturbance it was that filled the full measure of mind.
Billy was picked for the initial shock. He opened his eyes against the nose of a horse! That a Cossack was looking at him from higher up did not serve, either, to reduce his pulse rate.
A prod with a lance put Henri in the line of sitting up and taking notice, and similar applications hastened wakefulness on the part of both Strogoff and Lowiez.
“Filimonoff!”
This cry of recognition from Lowiez.
One of the greatest of all Cossacks—Michail Filimonoff, of whom the boys had heard so much in Galicia—the man “who sits his horse like a Petrograd bank clerk, but leads like the devil.”
The Don chieftain, a little to the rear and apart from the other horsemen, gravely inclined his head, when convinced by the uniform that the speaker was a fellow countryman.
Strogoff, too, had once seen the noted free lancer at the staff headquarters of Duke Nicholas, and he followed the lead of his comrade in proclaiming the name.
He then stepped forward to address the Cossack leader, telling him in a torrent of words how and why he had come to grief as a lost man in these frozen steppes.
Filimonoff shook his head. “None of this company,” he gravely advised, “has seen those whom you seek. It may have been Nikita, who rode this way, I am told, not long since. But I did not meet him, and I do not know that he had prisoners.”
Out of the chief’s address the boys singled the word “Nikita.”
“Tell him,” requested Billy, looking to Strogoff, “that Nikita took us into the brotherhood.”
The sergeant turned a gaze of anxiety upon the young aviator, as if in fear that his mind had been affected by overstrain.
“Tell him,” repeated the boy, in form of earnest demand.
Strogoff then complied, but in apologetic manner.
If the big policeman had any further doubt of the propriety of his statement as interpreter it did not stay with him long.
Billy and Henri capped the climax by a joint display of the amulets they carried, and every lance in the Cossack company was raised, including that of the leader.
Filimonoff beckoned the boys to his side, having dismounted to give them greeting.
Said Strogoff to Lowiez:
“The next thing we know those lads will be taking lunch with Duke Nicholas. They started in on familiar terms with a commanding officer at Warsaw the second day I knew them, and have already worked on through to a prince of the desert!”
But by the grace of it all, the pilots were given their bearings and carried the policemen passengers out of the barren maze.