“This country ain’t healthy f’r you fellers,” he leered at them. “I’m givin’ y’r a tip on the strength o’ this meat. I ain’t sayin’ I’m in love with Mistak, but I reckon I hate the Mounted more. My moniker is Moonshine Sam, if you fellers want ter know, an’ it’s the Mounted that’s chased me into this God-f’rsaken land. They ain’t goin’ to git me here. Git that? Not afore I git me two more policemen!”
Dick’s rifle came up quickly at the grim threat in the outlaw’s words, but Moonshine Sam turned abruptly and followed his companions down into the ravine.
When the three were out of sight the boys breathed sighs of relief. It had been a trying ordeal, and they felt themselves fortunate in coming through it without blood-shed.
“I wish we could have captured them,” Sandy expressed something that had been in Dick’s mind also.
“But it was too risky,” Dick replied. “You must remember they were grown men, and among the most desperate characters the Mounted has to deal with. If we’d tried to capture them they’d have finished us before we reached the home camp.”
Sandy saw the logic in Dick’s reasoning and said no more about it, while they set to work completing the skinning and quartering of the remaining four musk-oxen.
“I think we’d better haul the meat away from here before we cache it,” Dick advised, when they were about finished. “Those fellows will probably come back here as soon as we leave, and search for a cache.”
“Maybe it would be a good idea to follow them for a ways to see where they are going. They might lead us right to Corporal Thalman’s prison,” was Sandy’s suggestion.
“That’s possible and it’s a good idea,” said Dick. “But supposing they strike off in some other direction, and lead us right into the rest of Mistak’s band?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Sandy considered.
“Take um meat ’long for way,” Toma spoke up gravely. “When find out bad fella not mean to come back here, cache meat.”
“That’s just the thing to do!” exclaimed Dick. “We won’t lose any time that way and we’ll be pretty sure the meat will not be stolen when we come back after it.”
In a few minutes the fresh meat was loaded onto the long sledge and they were once more on the way.
The outlaws had had time to travel about half a mile before the boys set out on their trail, and even Toma’s keen eyes saw no sign of them as they wound down the ravine. Dick hoped, as Sandy had, that the outlaws might lead them to the vicinity of Corporal Thalman’s prison. Yet, when two miles on the trail, the snowshoe tracks they were following swung toward the sea, Dick knew no such good fortune was destined to be theirs. Half hoping the outlaws might turn toward the glacier again, the boys kept on following them for a short time, but soon gave up, deciding to depend entirely upon the map to guide them.
Tracing the back trail until they reached the point where they had turned north after the outlaws, the boys halted to cache their meat, since they were now reasonably certain that Mistak’s men did not intend to come back looking for it.
They first buried all the meat, except enough for four days’ rations, in a deep snow bank. Then, from a nearby patch of boulder strewn slope they carried a great many stones, erecting a sort of monument over the cache to prevent its being torn up by foxes. Over this cairn, they threw snow until it resembled, from a distance, the rest of the snowdrift. About a hundred feet north of the cache a small pile of stones was placed, as a landmark provided a storm came and obliterated all other signs of the cache.
The job of stowing the meat completed, the boys once more set out for the glacier. Driving fast, they reached the towering walls of ice and snow in about an hour. Calling a halt they surveyed with sinking hearts the tremendous task that lay before them.
“I wonder if this is the place where Mistak climbed the glacier with his prisoner,” Dick speculated.
“Looks to me like a mountain goat would have a hard time getting to the top from this point,” said Sandy.
“Heap big job get um sledge up ice from here. Look ’long wall. Maybe find easy place,” suggested Toma.
“I think that’s what we’d better do,” Sandy agreed with the young Indian.
Dick also thought it best they should look for an easier place to climb, and so they turned to the right under the walls of the glacier and drove the dog team slowly along, their necks craned upward.
The grumbling noises in the bowels of the glacier gave cause for grave concern in the minds of the boys and they fell silent, dreading more and more the peril of ascending that mountain of ice.
Not far from the place where they had first approached the glacier, they found the walls split as by a giant’s axe and a great gorge led upward at a slant which promised fairly easy climbing. Turning into this they started upward.
A quarter mile of steady climbing, covered by helping the dogs with the supply sledge, and they found themselves about a hundred feet above the tundra. Here, they paused for a much needed rest. Probably five minutes they had sat in the snow, gathering strength for the next lap of the climb, when a low rumble fell upon their ears which seemed nearer than any other noises they had heard from the glacier.
With faces paling, the boys listened intently, while the rumble increased to a roar, growing steadily nearer.
Dick leaped up and looked up the gorge, a sudden suspicion leaping in his mind that froze him with consternation.
He was about to speak when the unmistakable sound of crashing, moving ice was borne to his ears. Around a bend in the gorge appeared a gigantic mass of snow, ice and stones which struck the opposite wall of the gorge with a shock that made the earth tremble under foot and sent a shower of fine ice and snow high into the air.
“Run for your lives!” cried Dick hoarsely. “It’s an avalanche, and we’re right in its path!”
Fear lent wings to the three boys as they saw the awful wall of snow and ice bounding down the gorge upon them. With one accord they rushed toward the steep slope on their left, scrambling up it in frantic efforts to gain a height out of reach of the avalanche, before it descended and crushed them under its ponderous plunging weight.
The dog team sensed its peril instinctively and struggled after the boys, dragging the heavy sledge behind them. Toma, slightly in the rear, grasped the sledge and began helping the dogs in their unequal fight for safety.
“Leave the sledge go!” shouted Dick to the young Indian. “Save yourself.”
But the courageous Toma did not heed. Stubbornly, he stayed by the sledge, falling far behind his companions.
Then, with a roar that shook the walls of the gorge as if an earthquake had occurred, the avalanche plunged past on its way to the tundra far below.
Dick and Sandy barely escaped the flying ice and stones and with a cry of despair they saw Toma with the sledge and dog team vanish in a swirl of flying snow.
The avalanche thundered on, sight and sound of it dying away down the gorge as quickly as it had come. Dick and Sandy were left high on the wall of the desolate gorge, gazing with sad eyes at the point where Toma and the dog team had disappeared.
“It happened so suddenly I can hardly realize it,” Sandy spoke in a low voice. “Poor Toma.”
“I won’t give up hope yet,” Dick declared grimly. “Toma was not caught by the full force of the avalanche. You must remember he and the dogs were almost out of the way when they were hit. Let’s look along the slope.”
Sandy followed Dick to the bottom of the gorge, and the two began picking their way along the path of the avalanche. Every now and then huge masses of snow, left adhering to the walls of the gorge, loosened and fell, starting miniature snow slides in their wake, but Dick and Sandy kept their eyes open and managed to avoid these dangers by a wide margin.
They had retraced their upward trail about two hundred yards when there was borne to their ears the faint but unmistakable bark of a dog.
“Listen!” Dick grasped Sandy’s arm, as they stopped dead still.
Again there echoed in the canyon the sharp bark of an excited dog.
“It sounds like one of our Eskimo dogs,” Sandy spoke in a subdued voice, scarcely able to believe his ears. “But for the life of me I can’t tell where it comes from.”
“Let’s walk on a little further,” Dick suggested.
They continued on their way for a few steps, then stopped again. The dog had barked again, and now the sound seemed to come from above and behind them.
“Why not shout Toma’s name?” said Sandy. “If he’s alive he’ll hear us.”
Dick thought this an excellent idea and in unison they raised their voices.
“Toma! Toma!” they shouted at the tops of their lungs, and paused to listen intently.
A second of silence, then the faraway crags of the glacier threw back their cries like mocking laughter.
Drawing deep breaths for another shout, they hesitated. Several dogs had commenced to bark, and were making a veritable bedlam of racket, what with the echoes that were flying about.
“It’s our dogs!” ejaculated the amazed boys.
“Come on. Toma may be alive,” Dick sang out, charging up the slope of the gorge, with Sandy close at his heels.
Half way up the side of the gorge they came suddenly upon the dogs in a snow filled ledge. There were ten of the twelve dogs alive and well, the other two had been crushed to death under a huge boulder deposited there by the avalanche. The sledge of supplies, badly twisted and smashed, lay overturned, half-buried in the snow, but still hitched to the tangled dogs. Eagerly the boys searched the wreckage, but at first there was no sign of Toma. Then one of the dogs, whining plaintively, began pawing into a heap of packed snow. The boys rushed to the dog and found he had uncovered a boot. Silently, the boys attacked the packed snow with mittens and boots, and in five minutes they dragged their young Indian friend free of the lodged snow.
“Pray he’s alive!” Dick implored, as they lay the quiet form upon some sledge packing.
Toma’s dark face was darker still, as if he had smothered, yet as the boys chafed his hands and listened for heart beats, a flicker of eye lashes showed a sign of life. Redoubling their efforts to bring the boy back, they were finally rewarded by a deep sigh from the dusky lips, and presently Toma’s dark eyes were open.
“Humph!” Toma grunted as he sat up uncertainly, and vigorously shook himself like a big dog. “No can breathe under snow. Think um see Happy Hunting Grounds.”
“It’s a miracle you didn’t!” exclaimed Dick fervently.
“Tell us how it all happened,” Sandy urged.
“Not know much,” Toma blinked, “come too quick. Something hit me. I see many stars, an’ whirl, whirl in snow. Feel like fly like bird, then big bump. All still. I can no breathe. All get like night, then I see you fellas.”
Overjoyed at the recovery of Toma, the boys could do little but discuss the narrow escape for some time. Finally they set to work untangling the dogs, and when that was done they started to repair the sledge.
It took more than three hours to fix the sledge so it was worthy of the trail, but they at last had the worst breaks spliced and lashed with leather thongs. By this time they were all so tired that they decided to pitch camp and fix something to eat. This they did as soon as they were on the floor of the gorge.
“We don’t need to be afraid of any more snow slides for some time to come,” Dick relieved their fears in that direction. “All the loose ice and stones was cleared out by that big avalanche.”
After an appetizing meal of broiled musk-ox, the boys slept for several hours. When they awakened they noticed for the first time a change in the sunlight, and were concerned at the approach of winter which this signaled.
“Seems strange to see evening come again,” remarked Sandy. “Wonder how it would feel to go to bed in honest-to-goodness darkness again?”
“If we don’t get a move on we’ll get more darkness than we want,” said Dick, referring to the approach of the Arctic’s long night.
But when the boys started up the gorge again it was no darker. So far, all the night they were to experience for a few weeks was to be several hours of twilight.
Not far up the gorge, beyond the point where the avalanche had narrowly missed destroying them, Dick called the attention of his chum to three tiny figures walking along the rim of the gorge above them.
“I wonder if those men could be Moonshine Sam and his two companions,” said Dick. “They’ve had just about time to come this far if they had headed this way shortly after we stopped trailing them.”
“Well, I hope they won’t try any monkeyshines like starting another avalanche,” Sandy shivered. “When I die I don’t want to get that kind of a sendoff for the Happy Hunting Grounds. What do you say, Toma?”
The young Indian grunted his emphatic sanction of Sandy’s preferences, while all three watched the men on the cliff. The men they thought might be Moonshine Sam and the two half-breeds from Mistak’s band, kept abreast of the boys for nearly a half hour, then as the gorge began to grow shallower upon nearing the plateau down from which it led, they disappeared.
“If they ever get wind of the fact that we know Corporal Thalman is still alive, our lives won’t be worth a cent,” Dick expressed his thoughts aloud. “They’ll put an end to Corporal Thalman right away, too, if they think for a minute we have a chance to rescue him—if they haven’t done that already.”
The boys hurried on, and soon came out of the gorge upon what they were quite sure was the top of the glacier. An icy wind, that cut to the very marrow of their bones, blew across the vast, white field of ice. But they struck out bravely across the lonely forbidding desert of the north, hoping soon to locate the first of the three main fissures marked on the map.
They were now traveling southwest with the sun in their eyes, and for the first time since they saw genuine “sun-dogs.” The phenomenon was intensely interesting and for a time attracted almost all their attention. The sun-dogs were in the form of four miniature suns situated one above, one below, and one on either side of the big disc of light that was the source of them. They were not really suns, however, but reflections of the sun upon the countless particles of frost in the air. One of the “dogs” was somewhat like the rainbow, for it seemed to hang just a few feet ahead of the dog team, dancing just out of reach, like a will-o’-the-wisp, as they plodded along.
Then they came upon a deep fissure in the glacier which temporarily crowded the sun-dogs out of their minds. The crack was not an exceptionally large one in comparison to other glacial fissures they had seen, being only about four feet across at the widest points. Several smaller fissures were indicated on the map as preceding the first main fissure, so the boys crossed the gap by jumping, improvising a bridge with the sledge for those dogs to cross over which were too stubborn to make the leap.
“We may be misled after all by these fissures,” Dick spoke when they had resumed their journey “New cracks form pretty often, and it’s possible the main fissures Corporal Thalman observed while Mistak was taking him to the prison pit are not the main ones any longer.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Sandy replied. “A lot of small fissures might show up in eight months’ time, but these big fissures are very old and they wouldn’t change much.”
By this time they had reached another small fissure, about the size of the first one, but much longer. As far as they could see on either side of them the crooked crack stretched away like a huge, black snake, wriggling across the snow-bound glacier roof.
Keeping a rough account of the miles they had traversed since reaching the top of the glacier, they believed the first main fissure could not be far away according to the map. An hour after crossing the first small fissure, they reached what they were almost certain was the first main fissure. In places it yawned to an unestimable depth, and at many points was more than twenty feet in width. After sledging along the rim of it for a half mile they located a natural bridge of ice over which they crossed without mishap.
Excited by their success so far, they increased their pace, again crossing numerous small chasms in the glacier before arriving at the rim of the second main fissure. This they finally contrived to bridge at a point where a jutting ice ledge partly spanned the seemingly bottomless void.
From there on, the top of the glacier ceased to be level. Great holes yawned everywhere amidst heaps of shattered ice many feet in height. Apparently, at some time years ago, two divisions of the glacier had met there in their slow progress, crumbling their giant fronts upon one another.
In the midst of the veritable “bad lands” of ice they came upon what they were reasonably certain was the third main fissure, somewhere at the bottom of which was the pit in which Corporal Thalman had been imprisoned. But the immensity of the task still ahead of them awed the boys. For, though they had reached the fissure, it was miles long and they had no way of judging any nearer than five or ten miles just where the prison pit was located.
“There’s nothing to do but look for a way of climbing down to the bottom of the fissure,” Dick finally spoke. “Mistak must know a way to get down there, and if we look long enough, we can find it.”
“Maybe we ought to wait until the policemen get here,” Sandy expressed his doubts, while gazing down into the black chasm that was the main fissure.
“No, it’s best we keep on trying since we’ve come this far without any fatal accidents. Corporal McCarthy can trail us wherever we go, so there’s no need waiting for him and the Constable.”
The boys set out along the glacier looking for a place that offered possibilities of descent into the fissure. It was slow going over the heaps of shattered ice, and before they had gone a mile they were worn out. They halted to rest in a shallow pit which protected them from the cold wind. As they sat there, Dick noticed that a small fissure about three feet wide and as high as a man’s head opened out of a bulwark of ice in front of them. The crack seemed to lead downward at a sharp slant.
“That hole looks like it might lead down to the bottom of the fissure,” Dick said to Sandy and Toma. “Let’s go into it and investigate.”
After resting a few more minutes, they got up and walked into the passage. Advancing cautiously, they reached an underground chamber, about twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and somewhat higher than their heads. The sunlight reached the chamber through its entrance and the dim rays lighted up a very beautiful scene. The walls and roof of the natural cavity were formed of crystallized moisture, shaped in many grotesque and fantastic figures.
“I believe this is part of the crystal grottoes Corporal Thalman mentioned in his message!” Dick exclaimed examining the glittering walls.
“Maybe we just found the outlet that the Corporal failed to find,” Sandy brightened.
But upon investigating further they were disappointed. The first chamber led into a second and smaller chamber which had no outlet, and seemed the end of the cavern.
After sounding the walls to make certain they could not break into a larger cavity, the boys made their way back to the narrow passage leading up to the outer air.
Dick went first, and as he stopped into the sunlight a premonition of danger seized him. But before he could act to defend himself, a shadow was flung across his path and a heavy weight descended upon his head and shoulders. Dick went to the ice, stunned and half-blinded.
Dick was stunned only a moment, but when his head cleared he found himself pinioned by a powerful man, who had just lashed his hands behind him with thongs. Nearby, Sandy and Toma struggled in the clutches of four men. At a little distance away stood Mistak, the half-breed Eskimo, leering with malevolent triumph upon his captives.
When the boys were completely subdued and their arms tied behind them, Mistak came forward and searched them. He found nothing in Sandy’s and Toma’s clothing which seemed to interest him, but Dick’s shirt pocket disclosed the map, and filling the air with French and Eskimo curses, the outlaw saw the handiwork of the imprisoned policeman.
“So you sink to save him!” Mistak glared at Dick. “I get you in time, yes? Ha! By gar, you nevair meddle wiz Fred Mistak’s business more.”
Mistak’s evil intentions were only too evident, and Dick was about to give up hope, when Toma cocked his head to one side in a listening attitude. Dick knew the Indian youth had far keener hearing than the average person, and felt his hopes once more rising. Whatever Toma heard, it was of some favorable significance, for he looked squarely at Dick and solemnly winked one eye.
“How you like find zee lost policeman?” Mistak taunted, stepping squarely in front of Dick. “I take you zere—what you say? Ver’ fine, eh?”
“I have nothing to say to that,” Dick replied as sternly as possible, “but I do know we have friends near and that you will suffer for any harm that comes to us.”
“Ha! Ha!” Mistak laughed coarsely, turning to his companion. “Hear what zee puppy say? They have frien’ in Mistak’ country. Not ver’ near, eh? Ha! Ha!”
It was at the instant of Mistak’s triumph that a rifle shot rang out and one of Mistak’s men threw up his hands and fell silently to the ice. The half-breed Eskimo staggered back, his face paling, and his mouth twisted in a hideous smile.
Again the hidden rifle cracked, accompanied by another, whereupon Mistak’s men ducked and ran under the deadly bullets raining about them, leaving the boys where they had been captured.
“To zee pit!” the boys heard Mistak shriek to his men. “Kill zee policeman before zey come!”
Mistak and his men disappeared, and almost upon their heels leaped the two fur-clad forms of Corporal McCarthy and Constable Sloan.
In a trice they had slashed the bonds of the boys and had set them free.
“After Mistak all of you!” cried Corporal McCarthy, plunging on across the ice after the fleeing outlaws.
Dick kept pace with the Corporal and shouted into his ear: “Mistak is going to kill Corporal Thalman. He’s making for the pit now. You were just in time!”
“We came as fast as we could get here as soon as we got back to camp and found the map and instructions,” panted the policeman. “Good work you fellows have done!”
Just then the fleeing outlaws vanished into the yawning mouth of a cavern that led downward at a steep angle. Slipping and sliding most of the way, the policemen and the boys tumbled after them.
“Halt! Halt!” bellowed Corporal McCarthy when they had reached a more level incline. But Mistak’s men did not heed. Instead, the report of a rifle sounded like a thunder clap in the underground chamber and a bullet richochetted with a rattling noise along the walls of the cave.
“They’re shooting back at us!” cried Sandy.
In spite of the danger the policemen led the way on at a reckless run. Down, down, they went through the dimly lighted corridors of a subterranean vault. When it seemed to them they had gone down for nearly five hundred feet, the cavern swiftly became level and lighter.
“We’re going to run into the bottom of the fissure now!” panted Dick hoarsely.
Dick was right. The light grew stronger swiftly and a moment later they saw Mistak and his three men silhouetted in an opening as they ran out of the cavern.
Presently they burst out upon the frozen floor of a narrow canyon-like passage that was apparently the bottom of the fissure. Far above the sky showed like a tiny, pale ribbon. They could hear the sound of the running outlaws’ boots on the hard surface of the bottom of the fissure and followed them to the right. The passage was crooked and they could see nothing ahead of them further than ten yards, but at length they came upon the scene of Mistak’s contemplated perfidy.
Two half-breeds were at work over a hole some ten feet in diameter. With their spears they were straining frantically to pry loose a huge lump of ice and send it hurtling into the hole.
“They are going to crush the Corporal with that cake of ice!” cried Dick. “We’ve reached the pit!”
The rifles of the policemen came swiftly to their shoulders, and the great fissure reverberated with two shots. One of the half-breeds staggered and sank upon his side, lying still. The other grasped his shoulder with one hand, as if he had been wounded, turned and ran around a bend in the walls of the fissure.
“Don’t follow them!” was Corporal McCarthy’s command. “Let ’em go this time. We must get Thalman out.”
Soon they were crowded about the dark round opening of the prison pit, and were shouting down into the darkness. In the silence that followed their shouts down into the hole, they could hear their own hearts beating. Was Corporal Thalman alive?
At last, as from another world, there was wafted up out of the dark hole, a faint voice:
“Here—I—am—friends. Pretty—weak—but—still—kicking.”
“It’s Thalman!” whispered Constable Sloan hoarsely. “I can hardly believe it.”
“We’ve got to get a rope!” Corporal McCarthy bellowed down to the prisoner. “Hold on, and we’ll soon get you out.”
A wild laugh echoed up from the depths in answer, as if the prisoner was about to lose his mind.
Constable Sloan was already on the run for the rope. He came back in about twenty minutes, having lost no time in finding his way up the cavern to the surface of the glacier where the sledges were.
Hastily they began lowering the long coil down into the hole. After nearly fifty feet had been payed out, Corporal Thalman jerked on the rope to signal he had it in his hands, then they all waited tensely while he tied it securely under his shoulders. At last came the call from the pit that all was ready. All hands grasped the rope then, and began to heave it upward, hand over hand.
It was a strange caricature of a man that at last appeared dangling in the loop. He was pale as a ghost from his long sojourn underground, and a long beard covered the lower part of his face and chest. So thin was he that his bones seemed on the point of bursting through his skin. The prisoner’s clothing was in tatters and immediately upon striking the upper air he began to shiver from the cold.
“We must get him to the sledges quick!” ordered Corporal McCarthy. “There’s blankets up there, and we’ll make some hot tea for him. Just our luck to have him pass in his checks just after we’ve saved him.”
It was a hard struggle to climb out of the cavern with the almost helpless man, but they finally accomplished the task.
Once Corporal Thalman had been wrapped in blankets and furs and treated to a few cups of piping hot tea, he showed signs of returning strength. However, the policemen were in favor of returning with him immediately to the base of supplies where everything necessary for his complete recovery could be obtained.
“I guess you boys are elected for the job of hauling Corporal Thalman to the main camp,” Corporal McCarthy told them. “Sloan and I will stay here for another try at trapping that sly fox, Mistak.”
“But with only one sledge, and that loaded with Corporal Thalman, we can’t haul in the cache of meat on the back trail,” Dick explained.
“That’s alright,” retorted the policeman. “Come back after it when you have Thalman safe in a warm igloo with plenty of hot tea and food nearby.”
It was with much regret that the boys bade good-bye to the policemen once more and started out on the back trail, Corporal Thalman snugly tucked in on the sledge.
Two days later, having traveled slow, for the comfort of their passenger, the boys reached the base of supplies. Sipsa and the other natives seemed overjoyed to see their young white friends again, and they held a feast in honor of the occasion, since hunting had been so good and they had more meat than they needed for the winter.
The day after the home-coming, Sandy was left to care for Corporal Thalman, while Dick and Toma returned to haul in the cache of musk-ox meat. They found the meat unmolested, and in fine condition, however, the signs in the snow about the cache showed that numerous foxes had made a vain effort to scratch away the stones and get at the meat.
A high wind was blowing upon their backs when Dick and Toma pulled in at the supply base with their precious load of meat. Two hours later the wind had risen to cyclonic velocity, sweeping tons and tons of snow through the air until the sun was blotted out and the igloos trembled to their strong foundations.
The storm was warning of winter and Dick and Sandy were much concerned over the safety of the policemen. Under warm shelter the men might weather the blizzard for days, provided they did not run out of food and fuel oil. If they did— Dick and Sandy shuddered to think of what such privations would mean for Corporal McCarthy and the Constable.
Three days the wind howled and shrieked and tore at the tiny knot of igloos under the high ridge, while the tormented sea roared and pounded on the beach, heaving great projectiles of ice far up on the land with deafening crashes.
The third day the wind laid, and several hours afterward, two half frozen men staggered into the camp. Dick had just looked out of an igloo upon the new world of white, when he saw the two figures.
“Sandy! A rifle quick!” cried Dick. “It’s two of Mistak’s men.”
But no weapon was needed. The men were about dead on their feet and were unarmed.
The foremost man gave a hoarse shout upon seeing Dick and flung up an arm to cover his eyes as if he had seen a ghost.
“It’s Moonshine Sam!” Dick exclaimed to Sandy, who had joined him at the igloo door.
Moonshine Sam it was who staggered up to the boys and threw himself upon his face in the snow, his companion dropping to his side.
“I’m givin’ up,” moaned Moonshine Sam to the boys as they bent over him. “I’d rather let the law do its worst than stay in this hell-hole any longer.”
Dick and Sandy dragged the two outlaws into their igloo, one by one, putting on some tea for them. They could not bear to see even those hardened criminals suffer.
Inside, they found both the half-breed’s hands frozen as hard as stones. Moonshine Sam’s left foot was frozen just as bad, and both men’s faces were black. The hot tea and warmth of the igloo made the men delirious, and Moonshine Sam especially, babbled ceaselessly.
“It’ll git ye! It’ll git ye!” he repeated many times, writhing with pain.
“What?” Dick asked the outlaw solemnly.
“Har! Har!” the man laughed madly. “Out there, fool!” he cried. “The white things! Mistak an’ the north!”
Both Dick and Sandy did their best to quiet the raving outlaw, but to no avail. One moment he was cursing everything alive, and swearing to kill all the mounted police in Canada; the next moment he became as fearful as a child.
“Ye’ll save me from him,” he clutched at Dick with clawing fingers. “Ye won’t let the ‘white Eskimo’ git me,” he mumbled.
By fragments the story of Moonshine Sam’s experience in the blizzard came out. There had been a division in the band, Mistak and Moonshine Sam quarreling and going their separate ways. Only one half-breed had had the courage to mutiny against Fred Mistak, and follow the white man. The two had been caught out in the storm with no food, dogs, or sleeping bags. Only by chance had they reached the igloos of the policemen’s encampment.
It was hours before Moonshine Sam finally fell into a troubled sleep, and the boys could seek rest themselves.
When they awakened, Toma was bending over them.
“Police come back. They in igloo. Want you come to them,” said the young Indian.
Outside, on the way to the policemen’s igloo, the boys found dusk upon the desolate land. Only a rim of the sun shed its fiery radiance upon an overhang of dull, gray clouds. Winter was overtaking them.
The boys found two gaunt and grim men when they crawled into the snow house of the two officers. Constable Sloan had been wounded in an ambush perpetrated by Mistak, shortly after the boys had started back to camp with Thalman. Mistak had bested them for the present, Corporal McCarthy was forced to admit, but the question was, should they give up and go south before winter, leaving Mistak free in his fastnesses.
“That’s up to you, Corporal McCarthy,” Dick and Sandy replied as one. “You’re the commander of this expedition.”
“Well, then, I’m for staying here,” went on the officer. “I’ll get Mistak if I die in the attempt, and I mean what I say. Sloan swears he’ll stick by me, but that’s no reason why the rest of you should. If you start tomorrow you can go by sledge to the nearest seaport and book passage back to Canada before you get caught in the long night, and travel is made unsafe. What do you say?”
“We won’t quit,” Dick returned, pale but determined. “Sandy and I want to see this to a finish and Corporal Thalman swore only yesterday that he’d never let us take him back until Mistak went with him, or was left behind for the foxes.”
“Shake,” Corporal McCarthy extended a hard hand, and Dick and Sandy grasped it in turn.
“For a couple of kids you’re the nerviest he-men I ever met with,” Sloan spoke up, a courageous grin on his pain drawn face.
“I’ll second that,” hastened Corporal McCarthy.
When Dick and Sandy left the igloo, they walked very straight, and they were silent. The dreaded long night of the northland was close at hand and they must stand up under hardships more terrible than they had either ever endured, for, had Constable Sloan not called them “the nerviest he-men I ever met with?”
The last of the sun was seen October 18th. Corporal McCarthy had been forced to take charge of the camp until Constable Sloan recovered from his wounds, and so the long-thwarted capture of Mistak, the white Eskimo, was due for another long delay under the pitchy blackness of the Arctic night.
Moonshine Sam recovered, and was kept constantly under guard, though he repeated again and again his promises to keep the peace if he were put on parole. The half-breed, who had staggered into camp with the white outlaw, died from exposure, and was buried, under a cairn of stones a few miles from camp.
Corporal Thalman’s iron constitution soon rebuilt itself, now that he was among friends, and had almost all he could eat. And so the little garrison was stronger by one more man.
Under the smothering darkness that now had descended upon the land, time passed as if the hours were days, the weeks months, and a month a year. The men and boys contrived games of all kinds to play indoors, yet they had to economize on their fuel oil, and whenever they could, they slept away the hours.
It was with great joy that they greeted the coming of the moon that first month of uninterrupted darkness. Fortunately fair weather came along with the bright disc in the Heavens, and everyone sallied forth to hunt and play in the open air.
The policemen went some distance inland during the period, but due to the liability of the weather to change for the worst at any hour, they dared not go on any protracted search for Mistak. They did, however, bring in three musk-oxen and a polar bear.
Dick, Sandy, and Toma all became proficient, during the moonlight period, in a game of throw and catch which the Eskimos played. It was great fun and required no little skill. A long stick, perforated with small holes was employed, together with a walrus tusk, sharpened to a point. The stick was thrown into the air and caught in one of the holes upon the ivory point.
There were also foot races and snowshoe races in which the mounted police joined, along with the Eskimos and the boys. Weight lifting, wrestling, and other tests of strength were also favorite pastimes of the Eskimos and were invaluable in counteracting the depressing effects of the moonlight and the eternal darkness.
Constable Sloan told them that the moon would remain in the sky from eight to ten days. A storm fell upon them, however, after seven days and nights of moonlight, and they were all forced to hibernate in their igloos to escape the bitter cold and heavy darkness.
During the second period of utter darkness, the thermometers all froze and burst, except those especially designed for use in the Arctic. Sandy fell sick with a bad cold that threatened to develop into pneumonia, and lay abed two weeks before Dick’s continuous nursing brought his chum through safely.
Bundled in furs hour after hour, in their sleeping bags and out, all suffered immeasurably from the close and stifling air of the igloos. The Eskimos rubbed themselves with oil in order to soften their skins and file their pores, but it was some time before the boys could bring themselves to apply the messy stuff in place of their old friend soap and water. But as soon as they did, they felt much better. For their clothing no longer chaffed them and the bite of the low temperature was considerably lessened.
Moonshine Sam became a greater trial with the passing of every hour. He lapsed into strange spells that seemed to be brought on by the oppressive darkness and the terrible hardships he had weathered while with Mistak.
“I’ll git him, er he’ll git me,” he would mumble, starting up out of a stupid trance. Then he would clench and unclench his red hands, and gnash his yellow teeth in a frightful rage.
He finally grew so violent that the policemen no longer would permit the boys to take their turns watching him, doing it all among the three of them.
I’d hate to see him and Mistak come to blows, Corporal Thalman shuddered, after coming off of a two-hour watch in Moonshine Sam’s igloo. “One or both of them would pass in his checks before the fight was over. I guess the white Eskimo is pretty hard on the men that desert him.”
The second period of moonlight came at an inopportune time. A dense film of clouds obscured it for four days and the ghostly white snow fields were almost as dark as when there was no moon. But it finally cleared off, only to reveal more trouble. The dogs were dying from attacks of madness. Dick and Sandy counted twenty-two dead in the snow, some their own, some belonging to the Eskimos.
After several hours of observation they discovered a dog in the throes of the polar sickness. The animal began to whine, then suddenly snarled, and frothed at the mouth. After biting himself several times, he ran madly in and out among the igloos, finally circling far out over the snow. When the diseased dog finally rushed panting and red-eyed back to camp, all the other dogs had hidden from him. Dick shot the dog then to prevent its suffering any longer. That was the last case of the madness among the dogs during that phase of the moon.
“It’s what the Eskimos call Piblockto,” Constable Sloan explained. “The Eskimos get it themselves sometimes, especially the women, though it’s not so fatal among human beings as among dogs. So if you fellows hear some unearthly screeching you’ll know what it is. Don’t bother anyone who gets it The natives leave them alone unless they start running away where they’re apt to freeze to death. The fits only last about half an hour.”
The boys did not have to wait long before they saw an actual case of what Constable Sloan had described.
It happened to an Eskimo woman whose month old infant had died of exposure, which was a rare occurrence. Grief stricken, the poor woman was wandering around among the igloos in the moonlight, wailing softly to herself, when the boys chanced to pass her on their way to the policemen’s igloo.
Their hair raised under their parkas as suddenly the woman let out a most blood-curdling scream, leaped into the air several times, and finally commenced to tear her clothes off, piece by piece. Dick and Sandy ran behind an igloo and watched from hiding. Several Eskimos appeared from various igloos, and the boys could hear them babbling about piblockto and the angekok. They gathered that the Eskimos believed the woman was temporarily possessed by one of the bad spirits that haunted the northland.