Sandy possessed several books and pamphlets on radium. During his spare time Johnny had delved into these and had been fascinated by the story of radium. He had learned that while radium is worth sixteen million dollars a pound, a quantity worth twenty cents mixed with phosphorescent zinc will so illuminate a watch dial that time may be read from it on the darkest night.
Sandy had shown him a spinthariscope. In this curious instrument he had witnessed the flash of light that comes from a single atom of radium.
“And think!” Sandy had lowered his tone impressively. “Should this instrument be left in a dark chamber for a thousand years, that tiny atom would still give off light!”
As he traveled he paused now and then to chip off a bit of rock with his hammer, only to cast it away. He would do this to-day, to-morrow and the next day. Then, unless he obtained an extra food supply, he must turn back.
Yet in three days he could travel far. Beside some ancient river bed, on the rocks above a cataract that even winter could not conquer, at the crest of some mountain-like ridge, he might come upon the brownish-black, velvet-like quartz that would spell riches for old Sandy, Scott and himself. Always he thought first of his brawny, gray-haired friend.
“He is past seventy,” he told himself. “A prince of a man. Always lived for others. Ever a prospector, this is his last great adventure. It must be a real one. It surely must!”
His mind returned often to the strange tales Curlie had told him, tales of the “Gray Streak.”
“What if they were to swoop down upon me here on this river?” he said to himself with a shudder.
Once more he thought of pitchblende. “I’ll have some that shines like a candle in the dark before I turn back.”
Before he turned back? How little he knew of that which would happen before he turned his face toward camp!
Two things happened in quick succession. A caribou appeared on a ridge not fifty yards from his sled. A quick, fleeting arrow, and his food supply was supplemented by two hundred pounds of rich, juicy meat. Part of this he would hide in a scrub spruce tree, ready for use on his return. The rest would feed his dogs and himself for three days. And there was other food on his sled.
It was while he was preparing this meat that a truly curious thing happened. On a ridge a quarter of a mile from where he stood appeared a lone traveler. He drove a dog team. And such a team as it was! Up until that moment the boy had not believed that dogs could go so fast.
“Like the wind!” he exclaimed. “As if they had wings and raced an airplane.”
The driver was stranger still. He was short and broad. As one looked at him from a distance it seemed that a pair of very broad shoulders had been set upon a pair of long legs, and a head placed atop it all. Yet those legs were powerful and fast. This strange being followed the team with ease.
“The hunchback bowman.” Johnny’s lips parted with wonder, and a thrill ran through his being. The bow and his sled had been made by a hunchback, an Indian. But this Indian had lived hundreds of miles away. “The hunchback bowman,” he repeated, then turned to the task of the hour.
CHAPTER XXI
BOWLED OVER LIKE A TENPIN
As Curlie sped on his way after the “Gray Streak,” which was leading him farther and farther into the great unknown that is the Arctic wilderness, he came to a sudden resolve.
“I’ll turn back! Fifteen minutes more, and then if we do not arrive at their base, if they are not forced down for want of gas, I will head for Fort Chipewyan,” he told himself.
Then nature took a hand. Out of the north a whirling avalanche of snow came tearing down upon them.
Just as the last trace of land was blotted out by this winding sheet of white, the boy made out a broad, level expanse which he knew to be a lake.
“Be over it in five minutes,” he shouted to Jerry. “Got to land there, make or break.”
“Absolutely.” Jerry’s grin was still there.
At that moment, as if angered at thought of losing its prey, the gray storm leaped at them. Throwing its feathery arms about the plane, it tossed them high. Curlie gasped. His indicator showed a speed of one hundred and sixty-five miles an hour as his ship, quite out of control, shot aloft.
Cross currents ripping from both sides tossed the plane as a kitten tosses a ball. Feeling his safety belt loosen, the young pilot dug in his toes and stayed with the ship.
As sudden as their entrance into the cloud came their departure. Tossed forth like dust from a cart wheel, the boy found his plane tilting at an angle of forty-five degrees.
With a quick intake of breath, he righted the plane and headed her downward.
Five minutes later, from out a mass of white they approached a second mass that somehow seemed solid. And so it was. They hit the lake with a force that set their teeth rattling. For a space of seconds it seemed that their ship might go on her nose. But, like some bird lighting on a limb, she tilted twice, then shot away on an even keel.
“Good old ship!” the boy murmured.
There was still call for care. A massive wall of stone, the bold shore of the lake, loomed before them. With a deft turn, the boy brought his plane about and set her skirting that shore. A moment more and they came to rest not a stone’s throw from that protecting cliff.
But what now? As he climbed down from his place Curlie saw at the edge of a clump of willows and scrub spruce, where the shore was less abrupt, a small cabin built of logs.
It was a new cabin. The hewn ends of the logs were still white. Smoke curled from the chimney.
“Jerry,” said Curlie, “do you suppose that some strange chance has led us to the very door of the cabin occupied by those mysterious rascals?”
For once Jerry’s ready answer did not come. Quite as much mystified as his pilot, he merely shook his head and stared.
At that moment Curlie’s ears caught a strange sound, the curious whining, yelping sound of a creature in distress. But what kind of creature?
“Can’t be a dog,” he told himself. “Don’t sound right.” He had never heard such a sound in his life.
As he stood there puzzling over this fresh mystery, the door of the cabin flew open. A man stood in the door, a broad-shouldered, powerful man. And in his hand he gripped an axe.
He did not look at the two standing there. Perhaps he did not know they were there at all. Or did he? Their motor had been shut off far down the lake. He might not have heard it.
However that might be, he did not bestow so much as one glance upon them. Instead, for a space of ten seconds, he looked down through the scrub timber that lined the lake’s shore, then strode resolutely some fifty paces away. And now for the first time Curlie noted that some creature was moving there.
With the snow whirling and eddying about him, it was impossible for the boy to distinguish objects plainly. As he stood there watching that strange, powerfully built man walk from his cabin toward the moving object at the edge of the scrub forest, many questions raced through his mind.
Who was this man? Was this truly the hiding place of the mysterious pilot and his band? If so, what then?
At this point he thrust a hand inside the cabin to draw forth his bow and his quiver of razor-pointed arrows.
“Safety first,” he whispered to Jerry.
“Absolutely.”
Again his mind was filled with questions. What creature was this moving there in the snow-fog? Was it a human being? He doubted this. Had it been he who had produced those strange cries of distress? He could not know.
And now, as the man, axe in hand, approached, the mysterious creature reared himself to his full height. Curlie caught his breath. He was taller than the man. When he lunged forward, as if to seize the man, something appeared to hold him back. All but losing his balance, he leaned far forward.
The man struck at him. The stroke fell short. The next instant, recovering his poise, the creature struck out with surprising speed.
Appearing to have been injured by this sudden blow, the man stumbled backward. But the next instant Curlie caught the gleam of the axe and the creature went down.
“It’s a bear. What a lucky stroke!” he said to Jerry.
But wait. The battle was not over; in fact it had hardly begun. Looming high over the man, a great bulk had appeared from out the low forest. Without the least warning it launched itself upon the man. They went down in a heap and for a space of seconds a wild whirl of snow hid them.
“Come on!” Curlie shouted, gripping his bow. “That’s a barren-ground grizzly! The other was a cub. She’ll get him. We must do what we can!”
He was at the scene of battle in a twinkling. For half a minute it was impossible to distinguish the man from his assailant.
Then the bear threw up her head.
Curlie let fly an arrow. At short range, it passed quite through the beast’s great neck.
With a roar of rage and pain, the monster turned about to sniff the air. Then, as the hair rose on her back like a mane, she reared herself to a towering height.
Cold perspiration started out on the boy’s temples. His antagonist was truly immense. Yet grizzlies had been killed with bow and arrow. A second arrow found its mark. Backing off, he sent a third speeding.
Then the creature charged. One more arrow, and he sprang for a tree. Not a second too soon. She went crashing by him, and then collapsed in a heap on the snow.
Jerry had vanished. But now he appeared again.
“Well,” Curlie stammered, “we killed the bear.”
“Absolutely.” Once more Jerry smiled. “I’d have helped if I could.”
At once they turned their attention to the stranger. He was sitting up in the snow. His face, his jacket, the snow about him were red with blood.
“Wh—where did you come from?” he asked unsteadily.
“Sent from the sky,” was the boy’s quick reply.
“You—you saved my life.”
“Perhaps,” Curlie answered laconically. “We’ll get you to the house, then see how much of you is saved.”
Together he and Jerry assisted him to the cabin. And all the time the young aviator was asking himself, “Who is this man? Why is he alone in this vast wilderness four hundred miles from anywhere? Is he truly a member of that gang? Will they come here? And if they do?”
In the hours that followed there was little time to think of these things. The stranger had been clawed and bitten by the bear in a most alarming manner. Jerry, who until now had appeared pure mechanic, displayed astonishing ability in another line. Bringing his first-aid kit from the plane and supplementing it with materials taken from a medicine chest in the corner of the cabin, he displayed great skill in dressing the man’s wounds.
Through it all the man uttered not one word. This is not to be wondered at. He was in great pain. Once for a short time he lost consciousness. When revived he turned over with a groan to utter a single word:
“Nelson.”
While Jerry engaged with his task, Curlie examined the food supply. In a grub box he found flour, sugar, bacon and a miscellaneous assortment of cans. Under the eaves hung a generous cut of fresh caribou meat.
He put some of this meat to broil over the coals. He brewed a can of strong coffee. When Jerry had completed the dressing of the man’s wounds, he offered the man a cup of this coffee. He gulped it down eagerly; then, to their astonishment, he turned over with his face to the wall and fell fast asleep.
“He’ll do well enough now,” said Jerry.
“But we must get him out to a doctor at once. Complications may set in.”
“Absolutely.”
“What say we eat?”
“Righto!”
Five minutes later they were munching fresh caribou steak and cold biscuits. But in Curlie’s mind a score of questions still circled round and round.
* * * * * * * *
It was on this same day that Johnny Thompson, who had followed the dog team far into the wilderness in search of radio-active rock, met with some of the most startling adventures of his eventful life.
Two hours after sun-up he had paused to build a small fire and had prepared himself a breakfast of beans warmed in a pan, bacon and pilot bread. The dogs, who lay contentedly on the snow, knew that their turn to eat would come when the day’s work was done. Dogs on the trail are fed but once a day.
His breakfast over, he had driven in a leisurely manner up a small stream, across a narrow lake, around a series of rushing cascades, and then across a second small lake.
He was beginning to feel the strain of long continuous travel, his dogs were lagging, when he came to a third lake much larger than the others. There he met with what to him seemed extreme good fortune. He had started upon the journey prepared to spend his nights rolled up in his feather robe, sleeping beneath the cold white gleam of the stars. But here, nestling among the scrub spruce trees, was a cabin. True, it was but a narrow shelter built of logs, but its roof of heavily painted canvas was still intact, its door still hung upon its hinges, and there was a rough chimney of stones with a crude fireplace at its base.
“What could be sweeter?” he said to his dog leader, Ginger. “What, indeed? A floor to sleep on, a place for a fire and shelter from the wind. Going to storm, too.” He stepped outside to sniff the air. “Yep, sure is!”
A hasty examination showed him a lean-to against the upper end of the cabin. Beneath this were tiers of ten gallon tins piled high.
“Empty.” He kicked one.
“No. Full. Gas. Some aerial mining company’s base. Well, I won’t disturb them. My craft don’t burn that kind of fuel.”
Digging into his pack he drew forth a large piece of juicy caribou meat. “Guess this will be better than gas.” His dogs crowded around him. He cut off bits of meat and threw them up to be caught by the hungry travelers.
Having looked after his four-footed friends, he set about the business of making the cabin comfortable for the night. Had he known who was to enjoy these comforts, his steps might have lagged. As it was, he toiled lustily. Finding an axe, he cut down scrub spruce trees and chopped them into fire wood. Having piled one corner high with fuel, he filled a large kettle with ice hacked from the surface of the lake and set it on the fire to thaw.
He was preparing to plan his own dinner when a curious sound for so desolate a region struck upon his ear, the drone of an airplane motor.
“Now, who—”
He dashed to the door. Finding that the plane was out of sight beyond the bend, he ran out upon the ice. The next moment a large plane, gliding upon its skis, came toward him. Having judged its course and concluded that it would pass several paces before him, he stood quite still.
To his surprise and consternation he saw the plane take a sudden swerve. Before he could escape it was upon him. He leaped to one side just in time to miss the still revolving propeller, but was struck on the head by a strut and bowled over like a tenpin to lie there quite motionless upon the snow.
CHAPTER XXII
GREAT GOOD FORTUNE
Which is most to be desired, thrilling adventure or great good fortune? Individuals will ever answer this question in their own way. The soldier of fortune, going from war to war throughout a long lifetime, seeks only adventure. Men of great wealth, shuddering at thought of anything approaching true adventure, lock themselves up in their caged offices to count their gold.
However we are to answer this question, it is necessary to state that while Johnny Thompson and Curlie Carson were passing through thrilling adventures, their good friend Joyce Mills was enjoying a taste of great good fortune.
The days following her father’s narrow escape from the rushing river were trying ones. Yet they were days of hope. Her father’s recovery, though slow, seemed sure. He was a man of splendid vitality. Overtaxing labors had partially shattered his nerves. But all his life he had fought hard battles. This was but one more battle, and he fought it nobly.
At the end of ten days he was able to be about the cabin a little and to sit for long hours dreaming by the fire. Then it was that for the first time Joyce told him the disappointing news of the test that had showed plenty of copper and nickel, but no worth-while amount of radium in his pitchblende samples.
“I am so disappointed.” Joyce’s tone was very sober. “It was my hope that we might truly do this suffering world a great service.”
“With radium?”
“Yes.”
“Never you mind.” He placed a hand gently on her arm. “We will do it yet. If we find only gold, we will use it to buy radium for some little hospital in some needy section of our great city.”
“Does the world need more gold?”
“Perhaps not. But with gold we may purchase the things we and our fellow men need. ‘Ours not to reason why,’” he repeated with a strange smile.
It was on that very evening that Lloyd Hill, the Canadian youth with the alert and restless eyes, came to the Mills’ cabin. He seemed in an uncommon state of excitement.
“Joyce,” he said, coming to the point straight off, “will you do me a favor?”
“Always. Anywhere.” She laughed a strange laugh.
“I’ve something to share; at least I hope I have. That is, I mean there is a great joy or great disappointment due. Whatever it may be, I want to share it—with you.”
“Wh—when?”
“To-morrow.”
“Oh, all right.”
“To-morrow. Will you drive out to my diggin’s? I’m going out early. Been thawing frozen ground all day. Stuff it with dry moss. Won’t freeze, not much. To-morrow—well, it’s my big moment.”
“I—I’ll come.” Her voice was hoarse with suppressed emotion. She had caught it from him.
“Be there at nine.”
“At nine,” she repeated after him. Then he was gone.
She slept badly that night. Sometimes she fancied she heard a voice saying, “You find gold? Mebby yes. Mebby no.” At other times she thought of her companions. She had not quite forgotten that all their efforts to find gold, silver, radium were guided by films that rightly belonged to another. No longer could she believe that one of these men had committed the theft. She thought of Lloyd Hill’s faultless world war record. She recalled the time Jim had saved her dogs, and that night he had talked so earnestly of religion. Most vivid of all was the memory of that hour when her father’s life had hung in the balance and Clyde Hawke had snatched him from the grave.
“They couldn’t have done it!” she told herself stoutly. “And yet—”
She woke from a period of belated slumber just in time to swallow a cup of steaming coffee, hitch her dogs and go speeding away across the snow.
When she arrived at the scene of the diggings the young prospector was nowhere to be seen.
“He’s here somewhere,” she told old Dannie, the dog leader, as she turned him about and tied him to the sled.
Having passed a mound of dark earth, she approached a crude windlass when a voice coming apparently from the very earth called:
“Is that you?”
“Where are you?” she called back.
“Where a miner should be. In the mud. Come to the windlass and look down.”
She obeyed. He was, as he explained, “drifting” along the old bed of the river, cutting a passage toward the rocks that had formed the falls.
“Give me a hand!” he exclaimed. “Twist the windlass. Now! Up she goes! Dump that anywhere, and lower the bucket.”
The excitement of the hour being still upon him, it did not occur to him that the task he had set for her was little fitted to her slight form. As for the girl, catching his enthusiasm, she toiled on for an hour without apparent effort. Again and again the bucket rose; again and again her aching muscles responded to the call.
“It’s gold,” she told herself. “It must be! This time we must win!”
“Dump this bucket to one side, and the next and the next,” he shouted up at last as, feeling her strength oozing away, she stood for a moment easing her aching back. His next words, running through her being like an electric current, gave her strength she had not known before. “These,” he explained, “may be pay-dirt. We should be nearing the pocket.”
Again the windlass creaked and groaned. Again her sore muscles responded to her iron will. One, two, three, four, five, six buckets were added to the fresh pile of earth.
Then, for a time there was silence below. The cry, “Ready! Up she goes!” was slow in coming. It failed to come at all. Instead, there was a low shout of triumph, then a call:
“Catch!”
Before her some shining object rose in air. With a deft hand she caught it. Then her turn came.
“It’s gold!” Her tone, in which were mingled hope, disbelief and unbounded joy, called forth a roar of mirth from below.
“Gold,” he agreed. “Only one sizeable nugget, but gold all the same.”
“Gold!” she cried once more.
At that moment she seemed to hear a voice say: “You find gold? Mebby yes. Mebby no.”
Did she see something stir beyond the low ridge to the right? She thought she had. Dannie appeared to agree, for suddenly he rose to his feet and growled.
“Gold!” She spoke more softly now. “How much gold?”
The young Canadian did not answer. Perhaps he had not heard. With hands that trembled he once more gripped his shovel to fill his bucket with thawed earth, that by this time ran heavy to coarse gravel. And from each shovel-full came more than a suggestion of that yellow sand that is gold.
“Gold!” the girl murmured again, this time very soberly. “Whose gold?”
CHAPTER XXIII
WHITHER AWAY?
What had caused the plane that had struck Johnny Thompson to swerve in its course? Some secret device for changing its course? An unevenness on the surface of the frozen lake? Johnny will never know. Some things, however, he did learn soon after he came to. One of these was that for some unknown reason he had been made a prisoner. He found himself in the narrow confines of an airplane cabin. And in the cabin, quite close to him, was a boy some two or three years his junior. The boy was dressed in a parka of caribou skins, coarse trousers and moccasins.
“Something,” Johnny told himself, “is terribly wrong.” In an effort to sit up, he attempted to move his feet. He found it impossible to move them separately. They were bound together.
“Say!” he whispered hoarsely. “What’s the idea? And who are you?”
“My name,” the other replied quietly, “is D’Arcy Arden. What’s the idea, do you ask? You may answer that. My feet are bound together the same as yours. Looks like we were in the same boat, or perhaps you might say, same plane.” In spite of his predicament, the boy managed a chuckle. In this he was joined by Johnny who immediately felt better in spite of his aching head.
“D’Arcy Arden,” he repeated half aloud. “Where have I heard that name?” He had heard that name; seen it, too. He shut his eyes and at once the image of a square of white cloth with D’Arcy Arden written upon it appeared.
“Your name on a handkerchief,” he said to the other boy.
“My handkerchief!” The boy’s eager blue eyes fairly shone. He tossed his blonde hair back to stare at Johnny. “Did some one really find it? And will he rescue me?”
“Some one found it,” Johnny replied slowly. “Curlie Carson, an aviator. Afraid it won’t do you much good, though. He was down in a storm when you passed. Couldn’t follow, of course. Lost all track of this ‘Gray Streak,’ as he calls it. Where is he now? Hundreds of miles away, I suppose.”
Little he knew about that.
“But tell me,” Johnny commanded in an awed whisper. “What sort of outlaws are these that they come into a country without a mark on their plane, burning the gas of honest people without so much as a by-your-leave, and carrying off everyone who comes near them?”
The young boy’s face broadened into a grin. “Again I must, what would you Americans say? ‘Pass the buck.’ I don’t know, at least not much. You have seen them?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Only their plane. They bowled me over as they landed, then apparently picked me up and chucked me in here.”
“They were kind to you in one way,” said D’Arcy. “They gave you your feather robe. Mind sharing it? I’ve been frozen stiff for days.”
Johnny had been too greatly concerned about the troubles he had suddenly fallen heir to to think about comfort. But another’s comfort; that was different. At once his hands were busy untying the thong that bound his eight-foot-square robe into a roll.
Ten minutes of tugging, twisting, tucking in, and they were lying side by side rejoicing in the warmth that comes even in the Arctic wilds.
“Now,” said Johnny, “tell me what you know. Are they bank robbers from the States?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Rich men’s sons on what they’d call a lark?”
“Oh, my no!”
“Foreigners who are trying to enter this country or the United States without passports?”
“Perhaps. They are foreigners; great husky fellows with tall fur hats and great bearskin coats. They speak hardly a word of English. But if all they wish is to enter a country, why all this secret wandering in the air? Why not enter and have it over with?”
“But you?” Johnny asked.
“My father’s a buffalo ranger down on the preserve. You know we have woods-buffalo in a preserve south of Great Slave Lake, just as you have them in Yellowstone Park. I was looking for some strays when they landed on the river. And they nabbed me.”
“But why?”
“Who knows? ’Fraid I’d get some one on their trail perhaps. I think they’ll use me for ransom, or a decoy sometime, maybe. Who could tell that? All I know is I’m here. Very little to eat. Freezing at night. Flying here, there, everywhere.”
“Have—have they a base?”
“I don’t know. Never been out of this cabin. They—”
“Listen!” Johnny laid a hand on his arm. “Some one climbing into the cockpit.”
At once the motors thundered. “Warming up.” D’Arcy formed the words with his lips, then made the motion of soaring with his hand. Johnny understood. They were leaving.
A glance out of the narrow window told him the weather had cleared.
“Took gas here,” he told himself. “Warmed themselves by my fire, ate my dinner; now we are away.” His heart was filled with impotent rage. “Probably leave my dogs to starve, or wander into the wilds!”
In this last he was wrong. Five minutes later the door was thrown open and a dog tumbled in. He was followed by four others. Then the door was slammed shut.
In their joy at finding him again the dogs nearly ate Johnny up.
“Good dogs!” The boy’s tone was husky. “Lie down, that’s a good fellow! Lie down.”
He watched eagerly until the last dog came tumbling in and the door slammed shut. Then his face fell.
“Ginger,” he murmured dejectedly. “They must have done him in. He was my pal. They’d never get him alive. Poor old Ginger!”
“Was he your leader?” There was true understanding in the other boy’s tone. Born and bred in the North, he knew what a good dog leader meant.
“He was more than a leader,” Johnny said huskily. “For two years, ever since I was in Alaska, he was my companion and pal. But now—”
“Don’t be so sure they killed him,” said D’Arcy. “I haven’t heard a howl from any dog. Plenty of barking, though. He may have slipped his collar.”
“And gone back over the trail!” Johnny exclaimed. “There’s hope in that. If he makes his way back to our camp, then Sandy will know that something has happened to me. And he’ll never rest until he finds me. In his younger days Sandy was a Mountie. You know what they’re like!”
“They get their man.”
“Yes, and Sandy will get his.”
“Who’s Sandy?”
“He’s the man I’m with. We’re looking for pitchblende with radium in it.”
“Pitchblende? Radium?”
“Tell you more later. Look! We’re off!”
They were indeed gliding over the ice. Faster and faster they went until with a graceful swoop they rose above the scrub forest and were away.
“It’s a shame!” Johnny exclaimed. “It’s a shame that a thing so marvelous as an airplane should fall into the hands of such black rascals!”
“Whither away?” he murmured as their speed increased. He could form no answer.
CHAPTER XXIV
A FACE AT THE WINDOW
The mysterious gray airplane bearing Johnny Thompson and D’Arcy Arden to some unknown destination had not been gone from the abandoned mining camp a half hour when a curious figure appeared upon the scene. His was the height of a boy of ten, the breadth of a giant. His prodigious arms, when hanging straight down, touched the snow. His face was all but hidden by a coarse black beard. A pair of red lips, a huge nose and two bead-like eyes gave character to his face. For all his physical appearance, he might have been a baboon dressed like an Eskimo. He was not. He was a hunchback Indian.
No sooner had he arrived upon the scene than he appeared to understand that something was radically wrong.
And, indeed, evidence was not lacking. In a spot of clean snow, stripped of its load and turned upside down, was Johnny’s sled. Close at hand the snow was trampled as if from a battle. In the trampled spot were footprints of a dog and a man.
The Indian searched the entire locality carefully. The cabin, the sled, the scrub forest, all fell under the scrutiny of his beady eye. He was looking, if truth were known, for a dead dog. He found none.
With a grunt he turned to his own team. A second’s hesitation, and he returned to the abandoned sled. Having righted it, he spied something half buried in the snow.
He picked it up. Instantly his eyes lighted with a strange mixture of joy and astonishment as they gazed upon that object. It was a bow, Johnny’s bow. And that bow had been given to Johnny at a spot hundreds of miles away by a hunchback bowman.
This discovery appeared to alter the Indian’s entire course of action. Beginning again, he went over the ground with painstaking care. He searched the cabin, the forest, the ice covered lake. Finally he followed the course taken by the plane as it glided over the ice before its take-off.
When all this had been done, he lifted his face to the sky as if in prayer; then speaking to his dogs, one of the fastest teams known to this white world, he set them upon a course they were to follow not alone until darkness fell but on and on through the night.
Whatever this person’s purpose might be, he could but have appeared as a heroic figure as, steadily following his untiring team, he traced what to all appearance was a blind trail on through the night.
Scarcely less heroic was a lone gray figure, traveling in the opposite direction. With unerring instinct this gray form followed back over the trail Johnny and his team had traveled. This lone gray figure was only that of a dog; but even a dog, with a purpose, may become a hero.
* * * * * * * *
Once more in Johnny Thompson’s mind, as he felt the strange gray plane whose pilot he had not so much as seen go thundering on, many questions whirled round and round. Why, why was he a captive? Why was D’Arcy Arden here? Who were these great, dark, whiskered men who flew an unmarked plane over these northern wastes?
“One would not think it possible for strangers to live so long and travel so far in such a land without supplies of their own,” he told himself. “Yet in no other land could it be done so easily. In summer it is necessary for dwellers in this land to bring in supplies of gasoline and food for winter’s use. These supplies brought in by steamboat are often left in unguarded spots. Up until now, men in this land have been honest. It is the only way man can survive in such an unfriendly land. But now, if this continues, no man will be safe from cold and hunger.”
Having thought this thing through, he renewed his resolve to do all within his power to bring this unbearable situation to an end.
“But what’s to be done?” He was obliged to smile at himself as he realized how helpless he was. With his ankles tied together he was speeding he knew not where in a plane he had seen only from the outside, and which was piloted by men whose very names were unknown to him.
“I may help yet,” he told himself. “Stranger things have happened.”
As he looked down upon the world that glided beneath him, he saw that the shadow gliding across the blanket of white, their shadow, was far to their right.
“Long shadows,” he shouted to D’Arcy.
The boy heard him above the thunder of motors. “Yes,” he nodded. “Soon be night. And then?” He held his hands before him in a gesture of questioning and uncertainty.
In that gesture one might have read, “Where are we going? Where will we land? Do these people have a base? Will they take us there?”
Would they? Curlie Carson had been forced down by a storm. The pilots of the mystery plane had taken a chance and had flown on and out of the storm. Had Curlie come by mere chance upon their base? Was the powerful man, whose life he had saved, an accomplice of the mystery flyers? Let us see.
At the moment Johnny was watching the distant gliding shadow, Curlie sat before a fire that roared up the mouth of a crudely built chimney while, propped up comfortably in a chair, the injured cabin dweller sat beside him.
“We’ve done what we could for you,” Curlie was saying. “The very best we could, but it’s not enough. We’ll have to take you out to a doctor. Complications may set in. Some of those wounds are deep.”
“I know.” The man spoke with a slightly foreign accent, but his choice of English words was good. “You have been very kind. You saved my life. No doubt of it.
“That bear,” his voice rose, “was a thief. Two thieves they were, she and the cub. In a land like this you have to depend upon fresh meat, caribou, rabbit, ptarmigan, fish.
“The trees are short—you know how they are, ten inches across the bottom of the trunk, but tapering off like a top, not ten feet tall. I hung my meat in trees and my fish on racks. Those bears clawed it down and ate it.
“I set a bear trap. I caught the cub in the trap, you saw. I thought the big one was not about. She was. You know. And she—she nearly got me. If it had not been for you, I—
“Say!” He broke off. “Who sent you here? Why did you come?”
“No one sent us,” Curlie replied quietly. “Yes, perhaps some one did. I believe it was God. He does things that way.”
“God? Yes, perhaps.”
“It looked very much like a wild goose chase,” Curlie went on. “We were following a mysterious gray plane. The plane is absolutely without marks. It flies everywhere on gas that belongs to others. It’s a menace. Ever heard of it?” He looked the man squarely in the eyes. But if this man experienced any emotion he did not betray it.
“Heard a plane once or twice,” he said slowly, “flying high. Thought they were gold seekers, out taking pictures.
“You know what lake this is, of course?”
Curlie shook his head.
“Lake Dubawnt. It’s practically unexplored. Some natives here, Caribou Eskimo. Wild as deer. Seen ’em several times. Never came up to them. Might not be safe. Might send you a shower of arrows.
“It’s a big lake. Half as large as Lake Ontario. No one comes here. It’s a thousand miles from Edmonton. And a thousand miles with dog team or canoe is a long way.”
“But by airplane?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And you live here all the year alone?” Curlie’s tone took on an eager note.
“Alone? Oh, no. Not alone.” The man’s voice trailed off into nothingness. Then, turning his face toward the fire, he sat a long time looking into the flames. He appeared to be reading them. After a time he said,
“God sent them? Well, I shouldn’t wonder. God seems to have a hand in many affairs. I’ll be thinking more of Him after this; natural enough that I should.”
And so the twilight faded into darkness and little white foxes came out to bark on the crest of the hill above the fringe of scrub trees. Far away a white Arctic wolf prowled in search of sleeping ptarmigan.
* * * * * * * *
Just as those evening shadows deepened into darkness the gray plane that carried Johnny Thompson and his new found friend to some unknown destination dropped down from the sky to alight upon the frozen surface of a broad lake. What lake? This Johnny could not tell. No one came forward to inform him. He was not invited to dismount from the plane and relieve his stiffened muscles. Half a loaf of hard bread and a bottle of water were thrust in at the door. Then they were left, he and D’Arcy, to darkness and silence.