The Eskimos did not attempt to do anything for the poor woman until she had torn away so much of her warm clothing that she stood in danger of freezing to death. Then three men came out and dragged her, shrieking into an igloo. Presently her screams died away and all was quiet.
Dick and Sandy hurried on their way, their flesh still creeping from the scene they had witnessed. But before the moon had once more dropped down under the horizon, they saw several of these attacks of piblockto and became somewhat accustomed to them.
It was in January, during the dark of the moon, that some mysterious enemy began his depredations. First, two dogs were stumbled upon in the dark, their heads crushed in by an axe, and part of their haunches cut away. Next, an Eskimo youth, out to bring in some snow for melting, crawled back to his igloo, hours later, wounded by a spear. Several other Eskimos were pursued by some animal the nature of which they could not detect in the pitchy blackness. Sandy swore that once, when he was about to venture out of the igloo to see how the weather was, that he had touched a cold face with one hand, and that a darker blot in the darkness had melted out of sight, without making any sound in the snow.
Finally, no one but the policemen dared to venture often into the dark, and they only with a weapon handy.
“I’ve got my own ideas as to what this ghost is,” Dick told Sandy. “The policemen think the same as I do, too. It’s as simple as anything.”
“What is it, then?” Sandy wanted to know, as he cut a new wick for a seal oil lamp.
“Why, Mistak, of course.”
“Then, how is it that he can see in the dark?”
“He can’t, any more than we can,” Dick replied. “He just prowls around, and when he runs into someone he takes the chance to put a scare into all of us.”
“Sounds reasonable,” admitted Sandy. “But, gee, I don’t like the idea of him hanging around. Suppose he should take a notion to attack us. We’d be just about helpless in these igloos.”
Dick realized Sandy was right and he spoke to Corporal McCarthy about it as soon as he came in off a watch at Moonshine Sam’s igloo.
“I don’t think Mistak has the nerve to attack us,” Corporal McCarthy replied. “The fellow is sly as a fox, but he’s afraid of the police, don’t you believe he isn’t?”
The following interminable night seemed to prove Corporal McCarthy right in his opinion that Mistak lacked the daring to perpetrate an open attack. Yet that did not prevent the outlaw from continuing his strike and run tactics. No one could feel safe with these skulking enemies waiting in the pitchy blackness of the Arctic night to kill, maim or steal.
Then, thirty-six hours before they anticipated the return of the moon, Sandy disappeared. He had gone to Moonshine Sam’s igloo with meat for Constable Sloan then on watch, and had neither returned to his igloo nor reported to his destination. A blundering search of the vicinity in the darkness proved futile, and he could not be located in any of the Eskimo igloos.
Alive to the danger which would threaten Sandy if he were lost in the vast land of darkness, Dick appealed to Corporal McCarthy.
“I know how you feel, and I wish we could do something, but it’s useless to hunt blindly for him,” the Corporal replied regretfully. “We must hope he turns up by himself or that some of the Eskimos happen to run onto him.”
“Do you suppose Mistak or some of the other outlaws might have attacked him?” Dick asked falteringly.
“I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t possible. I don’t like to think the worst any more than you do. Anyhow, we know Sandy McClaren is pretty well able to take care of himself. There’s no danger of him laying down and dying while he’s an ounce of strength left to find his way back to us.”
Dick was forced to accept this as his only comfort for the present. But as the hours passed and Sandy did not show up, the suspense became unbearable. A host of questions thronged and tormented his worried mind. Could Sandy, if lost, hold out until the moon came up to light the way for him and a searching party? Had Mistak captured him and imprisoned him? Or had the outlaws brutally murdered him?
But one thing Dick was thankful for—the weather remained fair, with no wind, and a temperature as high as fifteen degrees below zero, warm for the Arctic winter.
As the time drew near for the reappearance of the moon, Dick did not sleep at all, but paced up and down on the packed snow in front of his igloo. He was there when the first pale, cold, faint light stole over the snow, and with a cry of gladness, he turned to the bleak horizon, where the edge of a yellow disc had just appeared as the moon rose.
Corporal McCarthy was quickly at Dick’s side. “We can start a search right away now,” said the officer sympathetically. “I’ll have two parties of Eskimos start on in different directions, one led by Sipsa, and one by Constable Sloan. Corporal Thalman can take charge of Moonshine Sam while we’re gone.”
The searching parties were hastily organized, and started off. Corporal McCarthy, Dick and Toma formed a third party. They started out at the beaten path between Dick’s igloo and Moonshine Sam’s. It was from there they were quite certain Sandy had vanished. But the vicinity of the path and the village of igloos was so criss-crossed with tracks that they could make no headway. So, striking out blindly, they headed southward, while the other divisions of the searchers took the remaining three directions.
Outside the vicinity of the encampment where the snow was unbroken, they began walking back and forth, examining every foot of snow for signs of Sandy’s feet.
But the snow was covered by a crust several inches thick, and an ordinary weight made no impression. Despairingly, they kept on, until at last Dick spied something glittering in the rays of the moon. Quickly he ran to the object and picked it up. Renewed hope was expressed in his loud summons of Toma and Corporal McCarthy.
What Dick held in his hand when his two companions arrived, was a hunting knife, in the bone handle of which had been carved two tell-tale initials—“S.M.”!
Eagerly, the policeman and Toma examined the knife that Dick had found, which had, without a doubt, once reposed in Sandy McClaren’s sheath. Yet, after the first flush of excitement had worn off, they all realized that the clue was a very inadequate one. In itself it could not lead to Sandy. Only it served as an added incentive for them to search more diligently for some more definite trace of the lost boy.
As they circled slowly, getting farther and farther from camp, the snow continued to present a hard crust which had registered no record of the feet that had passed over it under the impenetrable shroud of the polar darkness.
But their patience was rewarded when Toma found a bit of bearskin with the long hair adhering to it. Upon examining the fur closely, they saw that it had been slashed from a larger piece of fur with a knife.
“It might have been cut from Sandy’s trousers,” ventured Dick.
“That’s possible,” rejoined Corporal McCarthy, “but we just found what seemed to be Sandy’s knife. What did he cut the fur with?”
Neither Dick nor Toma could answer that question, and at the time it did not seem important enough to worry about. Close to a hundred feet from where they had spied the first bit of bearskin, they found another fragment of the same kind of fur. It, too, had been obviously cut with a knife.
“Now I know Sandy has cut off these bits of fur to mark the way he went,” Dick cried excitedly. “Let’s hurry on and see where the next one is.”
After progressing nearly a quarter mile across the crusted snow, they had picked up nearly twenty bits of fur similar to the first one Toma had found, and were certain something more tangible would soon turn up.
Then the trail of fur fragments disappeared and was replaced by the imprint of several snowshoes, as they at last reached soft snow.
All three bent to examine the tracks. There were three pair of snow-shoe tracks and one pair of small boot tracks.
“The boot tracks are Sandy’s, I’m pretty sure,” was Corporal McCarthy’s confident statement. “The snow-shoe tracks must have been made by those who captured him, unless someone picked up his trail after the moon came up.”
Hastening onward, they followed an unbroken trail for nearly a half hour, when they again were discouraged upon reaching more crusted snow upon which the trail vanished. But not long were they at loss. Running ahead a short distance, Dick stooped and picked up something which he waved triumphantly to Toma and the Corporal. It was another bit of bearskin.
“Sandy’s started marking his trail again!” Dick called.
“I’m getting so I’m not so sure just who has been leaving these markers,” Corporal McCarthy said. “That knife we found back there makes me wonder if it’s really Sandy who has dropped those pieces of fur.”
“Why, who could it be then?” Dick asked incredulously.
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” was the policeman’s enigmatic reply. “But in the meantime you two fellows be ready to obey orders.”
Wondering what the Corporal was hinting at, Dick started out to find more of the trail markers. About every fifty or a hundred feet they found them, so that there was no doubt as to the fact that they were going right.
Corporal McCarthy cautioned them to keep their eyes open now, for they had reached the end of the level snow and were among some large snowdrifts formed by huge boulders that had lodged the snow. Directly over their heads loomed the long upward slant of the high moraine which had so long served them as a landmark. However, they were in a part of the country unfamiliar to them, and so did not know what to expect. Added to this the moonlight deceived the eyes, and made it difficult for them to tell a boulder from a living body.
“Be prepared for an ambush,” the Corporal instructed Dick and Toma. “Mistak hasn’t taken Sandy all this distance for nothing. He knew we would follow.”
But minute after minute passed and there was no sign of Mistak or his band, nor of Sandy, with the exception of the clear prints of the snowshoes leading in and out and around the drifts and boulders. Like so many ghosts the three trailers hurried on in the pale moonlight, their snowshoes making scarcely no sound at all in the feathery drifts.
Suddenly, there broke upon the icy air a mocking laugh. The three stopped dead in their tracks, mouths agape.
“What was that?” whispered Dick.
“Him sounded like bad spirit,” Toma’s voice was subdued from sudden fright.
Corporal McCarthy said nothing, but his hands tightened on his rifle while he searched every black shadow with probing eyes.
Shaken by the eerie sound, they prepared to go on again, when once more the mad laugh pealed out, vindictive, vengeful and subtlely mocking.
“It must be a mad man,” quavered Dick.
“Nonsense,” grated the policeman. “It’s some of that devilish Mistak’s work. Anyway the sound came from ahead of us. Unlimber your rifles, lads, we’re going to see some action, I think. If I’m lucky enough to get a bead on Mistak, I’ll never get him to Canada alive, mark my word.”
Crouching, so as to make use of every bit of shelter, they now moved slowly forward, holding their breaths for a repetition of the cackle of laughter. The very boulders themselves now seemed to be moved in the deceptive moonlight under their imaginative eyes.
And again they heard the laugh—ahead of them yet. On and on they crept, a dew of perspiration standing out on their foreheads, and freezing there in tiny drops. But not a sign of any person or thing did they actually see. Only the frequent peals of wild laughter urged them fearfully on, like a will-o’-the-wisp in some frozen swamp.
The boulder strewn snow presently gave way to treacherous gashes in the ground made by the erosion of some age-old glacier. Clambering and sliding in and out of these precipitous gullies, they kept on after the elusive laughter.
Long since they had given up following the snowshoe tracks. The laughter of a man—even a mad man was much more tangible than footprints. But had it not been for the grim, fearless policeman, Dick and Toma would have turned back.
An end to their reckless advance came in a very unexpected manner. Clambering out of a steep gully, they found themselves at the edge of a trackless expanse of soft white snow, apparently as level as a floor and just as solid footing. The laughter had not been repeated for some time before they negotiated the last glacier gash, and they were beginning to wonder if their ghostly guide had deserted them.
It was Toma who saw it first—the form of a human being sitting erect against a snow bank across the white level of snow.
“Look. Somebody there!” Toma whispered.
“It—it must be a dead man,” faltered Dick.
“Not on your life,” gritted Corporal McCarthy. “See him move. That fellow’s tied and that fellow is Sandy McClaren!”
Dick’s eyes suddenly testified as to the accuracy of the policeman’s statement. “Sandy!” he almost shrieked, starting to run toward him.
But the iron hand of Corporal McCarthy dragged him back as if he had been merely a pillowful of feathers.
“Look out there!” cried the Corporal. “This is a trap you can bet and we’ll go slow.”
Sandy apparently was gagged, for though he had begun to wriggle, he made no sound with his mouth except an almost inaudible gurgle.
Corporal McCarthy was pawing in the snow for something. Dick finally saw what he was after—a stone. The policeman finally found one that was quite heavy. He raised this above his head and to Dick and Toma’s amazement, threw it out upon the snow between them and Sandy.
The boys expected the stone to bound and roll a little way, but to their horror, as the stone struck it disappeared and, following it, more than twenty square feet of snow caved downward with a rustling hiss and disappeared into a fathomless black void.
Dick’s gasp of dismay was followed by a piercing voice from the shadows of the boulders behind them. It was the voice that had done the laughing, but this time it did not laugh but cried out in an expression of rage and disappointment.
Corporal McCarthy’s rifle was at his shoulder when the sound reached his ears, but there was nothing to shoot at—only the ghastly moonlight of the polar night, and the inky shadows. The policeman raised his rifle and shook it.
“Beat you that time—you half-breed devil!” his big voice pealed out across the desolate wastes. “And I’m praying you’ll come down here and fight it out where I can get a bead on you.”
But there was no answer, and a moment later the Corporal turned back to the boys.
“Clever trap,” he explained in an undertone. “But I had my suspicions, and as soon as I saw Sandy out there in plain sight, I knew there was a nigger in the fence. That was a snow bridge we came pretty near busting through. Wind built it up across this gorge. Now we’ve got to get at the boy.”
Calling across the chasm, they explained to Sandy that they must find some other place to cross over to him. Hurriedly making their way to the left along the treacherous brink, which for many yards was bridged by the frail snow drift, they finally came to a narrow place and one by one leaped over with their snowshoes in their hands. It took them but a few moments to strap on their snowshoes again and run to Sandy. In a trice they had slashed his bonds and yanked the gag from his mouth.
With a joy they could not express, Dick and Sandy embraced, whereupon Sandy’s story came tumbling from his lips by fits and starts.
Briefly, it was this: About half way to Moonshine Sam’s igloo, following the beaten path, he had heard stealthy footsteps coming toward him. In the gloom he could see nothing, and so he had stopped, waiting for some sign that the person was a friend or an enemy. Then, without warning, a smothering fur robe had been thrown over him and he was lifted up in strong arms and carried away. At a distance from the igloos far enough so that his cries for help would not bring his friends, Sandy’s captors had put him on his feet, and taken off the robe. They then had taken his knife away from him and had thrown it away. Sandy had then been compelled to accompany the men on foot. When his eyes had grown accustomed to the dimly starlit night, he had managed to recognize Mistak among the three, and had found out that they were leaving bits of fur behind them to mark their trail. Sandy had not been able to fathom their purpose in leaving such a plain trail, nor had he been fully aware of the nature of the cunning trap laid by Mistak when the outlaw had left him bound and gagged against a snowdrift, after a long roundabout journey among a network of deep gorges.
“I didn’t know what it was all about till I saw you three stop out there in front of me, and throw that stone,” Sandy concluded. “I guess I made a pretty good bait for that trap.”
“I pretty near went right on after you, too,” shivered Dick, recalling their narrow escape, “but Corporal McCarthy was wise enough to see through it.”
“Well, let’s be getting back to camp,” the policeman interrupted them. “We’re a lot farther from home than we ought to be. If a storm catches us before we get in there’s no telling whether we’ll ever get back.”
“I’m sure beginning to wish it really was home we were going back to,” groaned Sandy. “In two days I’ve only had one chunk of walrus meat to eat.”
“Buck up, Sandy,” Dick replied cheerfully, as they set out on the back trail. “We’ll be back at camp before you know it.”
But Dick was wrong. Before they were on the trail an hour, a bank of clouds that had been hovering in the north, spread out fan-like across the stars and presently the moon was blotted out as if some giant hand had taken it from the sky.
With not even the stars to light their way, the four travelers stumbled blindly along, until Corporal McCarthy ordered them to halt.
“We can’t keep on like this,” said the Corporal grimly. “We’ll get so far off the back trail that we’ll never find our way back. The only thing we can do is build an igloo and wait for the moon to come out again. Let’s hope a storm don’t come up.”
After blundering about in the darkness, which was so thick they could cut it with a knife, they finally located a drift which was solid enough and large enough for the cutting of snow blocks for an igloo. It was a poor snow house they erected largely by their sense of touch, but it served the purpose. Hovering inside their makeshift shelter they waited silently for the clouds to disperse, praying for fair weather to continue.
Yet the supreme power that governed the capricious whims of the mighty ice cap seemed deaf to their supplications for a half hour after the igloo had been completed the temperature began to fall alarmingly. A wind sprang up out of the northeast, just a whisper at first, like the vast, mournful sigh of a melancholy spirit, then rapidly it grew louder, by gusts and fits, until a thirty mile an hour gale was sweeping the snow wastes with the fury of a stampeded lion. The wind sought out every niche and cranny in the hastily erected igloo, and through the heavy garments of the shivering refugees it cut like so many tiny knives. Futilely, they tried to stop up the holes where the wind seeped in while the gale laughed and howled and whistled, as if in mad glee at the discomfiture it was causing the shivering mortals.
In the grip of the terrible cold, the four kept from falling into that dreadful drowsiness which signals death by freezing, by beating themselves and each other with their numbed arms. The fur rims of their parkas became heavy with icicles formed by moisture from their mouth. Their eyelashes froze together from the watering of their eyes. With each breath it seemed red hot irons had been thrust down their throats and liquid fire loosed in their lungs. For extreme cold has much the same sensation of extreme heat.
Two hours they fought a losing fight, then the capricious gods of the north changed their minds and the wind began to lay. Almost imperceptibly at first, each gust a little weaker than the last, until finally, they all crept out of the igloo to find a vast silence pervading the ghostly land. Cold and pale, the Arctic moon now lighted their way, for the clouds had been herded southward by the passing polar wind.
The temperature had risen a little when all four set out on the return trail, now almost blotted out save where the wind had struck it squarely and had blown the loose snow away around the packed snowshoe tracks.
In his weakened condition Sandy had almost succumbed to the cold, and part of the way they had to carry the gritty young Scotchman.
Thus they stumbled into the village of igloos hours later, lungs burning from the frost, bodies numb and prickling in a dozen places.
No more had they arrived than they found their troubles were not over.
Corporal Thalman met them with disturbing news, as soon as they had stumbled into an igloo and lighted an oil heater.
Moonshine Sam had escaped during the storm!
“I couldn’t stay awake,” Corporal Thalman said bitterly, in explanation of Moonshine Sam’s escape. “I was the only one to stand the watches, because I couldn’t trust any of the Eskimos to stick to their post. It’s a wonder he didn’t kill me while I was helpless.”
“But I thought he wanted to stay with us for protection from the vengeance of Mistak,” Corporal McCarthy said impatiently. “How was he acting up to the time you fell asleep?”
“He seemed to change his mind,” replied the other officer. “I recall him mumbling about the gallows, and about knowing he’d be hung if he was taken back by the police. I think he intends either to try to rejoin Mistak, or make his way south alone.”
“Well,” Corporal McCarthy’s voice was expressive of an inward, suppressed rage, “we’ll have to bring him back! If we don’t Mistak will kill him.”
Quickly, the Corporal gave his instructions. He and Corporal Thalman were to set out after Moonshine Sam as soon as they had eaten. Dick, Sandy and Toma were to remain in camp, and as soon as Constable Sloan and Sipsa came in with the searching parties, the boys were to report to them the escape of the outlaw and pass on orders for their aid in retaking the prisoner.
A half hour later, the two Corporals departed from the village of igloos with a day’s provisions, and a camp stove, packed on their backs. Not long after they had gone the searching parties straggled in, discouraged and half frozen from the blizzard which they, too, had been caught in.
Alone among the Eskimos, the three boys treated their frost bites with snow and alcohol rubs, fed themselves on musk-ox steaks, and when again fairly comfortable, became impatient at inaction. It was far worse to sit in idleness than to get out and do something.
“Let’s go hunting,” suggested Dick.
“That’s better than sitting here in this igloo waiting for something to happen,” Sandy rejoined. “I believe I’d go crazy in this awful silence if I had to sit around and wiggle my thumbs.”
Toma seemed willing enough to stay behind and take care of things in the absence of the boys, and so Dick and Sandy started out without him, carrying only their rifles and hunting knives, for they dared not go far away from camp. They knew that, while they had weathered one brief blizzard, they could not expect to be so fortunate next time.
Looking for musk-oxen, the boys climbed the high moraine east of the base camp and followed the top of the ridge southward until they reached an arm of the glacier on the other side.
They had gone upward of two miles when they came suddenly upon the print of a sealskin Arctic boot in the snow. The boys stopped and studied the track.
“This can’t be made by any of the policemen, or Sipsa either,” said Dick with bated breath. “They all had snowshoes.”
“And it can’t be Mistak either,” Sandy observed. “He’d be traveling on snowshoes too.”
The boys looked at each other significantly.
“Then it’s just about got to be Moonshine Sam,” Dick spoke slowly.
Again they bent over the boot track.
“You can see it was made before or during the blizzard,” Dick said. “It’s partly drifted full of snow. Let’s look for other tracks.”
Several feet away from the first, on the other side of a long, low, snowdrift they found the next track. It was raised up out of the snow, the wind having sucked away the loose flakes all around it. Another and another they found, as the trail grew hotter, but the tracks seemed to have been made by a person wandering aimlessly here and there.
“I’m certain it’s Moonshine Sam now,” Dick breathed. “His tracks show how crazily he was going, blinded by the storm.”
Hastening on, the boys presently came to fresher footprints, made, obviously, after the wind had laid. The tracks were now sunken in deep snow, revealing how, from lack of snowshoes, the man had floundered along.
They had followed the fresher tracks for about half a mile, when to their surprise another trail, made by snowshoes, joined and followed the first.
“I wonder who that could be,” Sandy spoke.
“Well, it’s only one man, so it can’t be the policemen, unless they’ve divided up. I hardly think they’d do that.”
“Maybe it’s Mistak or some of his men,” was Sandy’s conjecture. “Don’t you think we’d better go back?”
“Not on your life we’re not going back!” Dick said determinedly. “We’ve been lucky enough to strike a hot trail, and believe me, we’re going to stick to it. But I do wish we could get in touch with the policemen. Look around, Sandy, and see if you can’t see someone.”
But a careful scanning of the bleak snowfields failed to disclose any sign of life.
“We’ll have to keep on alone I guess,” Dick said finally.
Once more they started out on the double trail, their senses on the alert for a sight or sound of those they followed.
Fresher and fresher became the trail, for the man on snowshoes was rapidly overtaking whoever he pursued, provided that was what he had been doing, and according to signs the man in boots had increased his pace to a floundering run as if he wanted to get away from someone.
The boys came to the brow of a long incline, slanting to a level tundra, and down the slope saw two men, surprisingly close.
“Sit down, Sandy,” Dick whispered. “Don’t let either of them see us.”
Dropping down in the snow, the boys watched an interesting chase. The man on snowshoes was rapidly overtaking another who plunged along hampered by sinking at every step.
Sandy clutched Dick by the arm and said hoarsely, fearfully: “That man in front is Moonshine Sam—sure enough.”
“And you can bet the fellow on snowshoes is Mistak,” came back Dick confidently.
“They’re going to fight!” exclaimed Sandy. “What if someone’s killed?”
“We can’t help it, Sandy. It’s their fight. We’re risking our lives if we try to stop it, without killing one of them ourselves, and you know we couldn’t kill in cold blood. Oh, if the policemen were only here!”
Tensely the boys watched the two draw nearer together. When a hundred yards separated them, Moonshine Sam turned, shook his fists over his head, and let out a loud yell. Then he started back. The man was going to fight now that he was in a corner.
Mistak carried only a spear as a long distance weapon. The boys divined that he and his band had long since run out of ammunition for the few firearms they possessed.
Dick and Sandy held their breath as they saw the white Eskimo draw back his arm and pose for a throw. An instant Mistak bent backward, still as a statue, then his body and arm snapped forward simultaneously, like a catapult. The spear shot forward in a low arc toward Moonshine Sam, half as swift as an arrow.
Moonshine Sam fell flat in the snow none too soon, and the whizzing weapon buried itself in the snow a few feet beyond him. Like a flash Moonshine Sam leaped to his feet, wheeled and ran for the spear, pawing frantically in the snow, he at last found the buried spear.
Mistak was making for the other outlaw at a spraddling run, as Moonshine Sam aimed the spear to throw it back. But he had a running target that was purposely bobbing up and down and zig-zagging.
Then the spear flashed through the moonlight, a streak of potent death, but the white outlaw was not an expert spear thrower. The weapon missed Mistak by several feet.
“They’re going to close in,” Dick whispered, burying his fingers into Sandy’s arm in his excitement.
Both outlaws obviously had drawn knives now. Moonshine Sam must have stolen one before he escaped from the igloo. They circled warily. First one then the other advanced, Mistak moving more swiftly on his snowshoes, though his footwork was ponderous enough.
Moonshine Sam finally ceased trying to outmaneuver his opponent, and stood stolidly, knee deep in the snow—waiting.
Then Mistak struck, like a flash. But Moonshine Sam was not so inexpert with a knife as he was with a spear. The white outlaw parried Mistak’s swift thrust and sent him reeling backward, almost falling when one snowshoe caught on its mate. But the white Eskimo quickly regained his feet, and began to circle again for an opening.
For several minutes Mistak kept Moonshine Sam turning about, then he rushed in again. The knives clashed and held. It was strength against strength now as each outlaw strove to bring his knife downward for a fatal thrust. Weaving and straining, sometimes locked together as still as statues, the outlaws struggled, while the perspiration came out and froze on the faces of the hidden boys.
At last the two men broke away from each other for a brief second, but this time Moonshine Sam didn’t wait for Mistak to attack. He lunged forward out of the snow and caught the white Eskimo by his knife, arm and waist. Three times the attacking outlaw’s knife flashed up and down in the moonlight, and the boys knew Mistak had been wounded. Then the clenched two rolled to the snow, struggling like fiends. Minute after minute they fought, Mistak now handicapped by his snowshoes instead of aided by them. At last the white Eskimo was pinned upon his back and Moonshine Sam’s knife began slowly to descend against the strength of the outlaw leader’s left hand clutching the knife wrist.
With the end almost in sight, the boys heard a distant shout, and looking north of them, saw four men bearing down the slope.
“The police! The police!” cried Dick, as he got to his feet and began shouting and waving to them.
Two of the four men ran toward the struggling outlaws, but they were too late to stop the impending tragedy. Moonshine Sam’s knife found its mark, and he arose, shaking the snow from his clothes, leaving a still form in the snow.
It was not until then that the victorious outlaw discovered the two policemen descending upon him. With a startled shout, he started to run away, then aware that he could never get away alive, he shook his fists defiantly at his pursuers, and with a hoarse yell, plunged his knife into his own breast.
“He’s beaten the law!” exclaimed Dick, horrified by this grim justice of the frozen north. “Come on, Sandy, let’s go down and join the policemen.”
They found Corporals McCarthy and Thalman inspecting the two silent forms on the tundra when they arrived on the scene of the battle. Both outlaws were dead beyond a shadow of doubt.
“Well,” Corporal McCarthy looked up from the silent face of Mistak, “the game is over, and for once, the mounted got licked—but it took death to do it,” he concluded grimly, briefly ordering that two graves should be hollowed out in the snow, and the bodies interred.
Dick and Sandy found a little later, that the two who had accompanied the Corporals were the last of Mistak’s band, an Indian and an Eskimo—both with their hands tied behind them. The corporals explained that they had run across them starving in an igloo, after they had deserted Mistak. The outlaws had given up without a struggle, morosely accepting a fate they considered less terrible than that which the awful northland might have dealt out to them.
Though the shadow of the recent tragedy darkened their spirits, it was an infinitely relieved party that set out on the trail back to the supply base. With every step that carried them further from those still forms in their snow graves, their hearts grew lighter.
On the way back they sighted Constable Sloan and Sipsa, and hailed them with the tragic news. The two joined them on the return journey, and already the talk was of the trip back to God’s country in the spring.
“Lordy, how glad I am it’s all over,” Sandy grew steadily more cheerful. “My, what I can tell Uncle Walter when I see him again!”
“About all I’m going to be interested in,” Dick broke in, “for a few days, after we get back to your uncle’s post, is going to be good, roast turkey, with sage dressing—pumpkin pie—apple sauce—nice brown pan gravy—stewed cranberries—coffee with sugar and cow’s cream—chocolate pudd——”
“Stop!” Sandy’s exclamation expressed how his stomach rebelled against such fruitless tantalization. “If you say another word about food, I’m going to die right here of starvation.”
Dick slapped Sandy on the back and laughed, then arm in arm they went on together.
* * * * * * * *
The last of the long night passed slowly but steadily away, and the spring came to gladden the hearts of Dick and Sandy.
March 4th they saw the sun again, and never did they greet the rising of that great orb with such heartfelt joy.
A day later they started southward, Sipsa and the other Eskimos accompanying them to the mainland, which they reached safely in kayacks. Leaving all camp paraphernalia that they did not need, with the Eskimos, they left the children of the north happy and sorry to see their white friends go. Dick and Sandy, too, felt a pang in their hearts as Sipsa’s smiling face vanished out of their ken, probably never to be seen again. But as they left the Arctic behind them, under the spring sun, all feelings of regret at parting were replaced by one great and growing joy—they were going home!
It was a gala day at the trading post of Walter McClaren, Hudson’s Bay Factor; a day for feasting and story-telling. For Dick Kent and Sandy McClaren had come back from the far north.
In the big dining room the factor’s old Indian housekeeper and cook hovered about a long table loaded with the best products of her culinary art. Her stoic face could scarcely conceal the pleasure she derived from witnessing the seemingly insatiable appetites of her master’s nephew and his chum.
Walter McClaren, a big florid Scotchman, sat at the head of the table beaming upon the boys and recalling his own boyhood days. He believed boys should have plenty of excitement and outdoor experience, and as he listened to the ceaseless recounting of their recent adventures with the Eskimos, his smile grew broader and broader, while the roast turkey and dressing vanished along with sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, stewed cranberries, and chocolate pudding.
“We just caught the boat going south,” Dick said between bites. “If we’d been a day later we’d have been held up more than a month before another boat came.”
“I think you fellows have been pretty lucky,” rejoined Sandy’s uncle. “If I’d known for a minute what I was sending you into, I’d never let you go.”
“But I’m glad we went,” returned Sandy. “I wouldn’t go through it again for anything, but just the same after it’s all over, I wouldn’t trade the experience for—for a commission in the mounted police.”
“That just reminds me that from what Inspector Dunbar says, you fellows are slated for some kind of a special medal or something for your services in the Arctic.”
“Medals!” Dick was alive in an instant, his half-eaten turkey drum stick forgotten for the moment. “You don’t mean that, Uncle Sandy!”
“Well, it must be a fact, if Inspector Dunbar said so,” replied the factor. “But that’s not just exactly what I want to discuss with you fellows,” continued the old Scotchman, knocking out his pipe on a leg of his chair and refilling it. “I have a proposition for you.”
“A proposition!” exclaimed Dick. “What is it now. A lost mine? Buried treasure? Outlaws? Missing men?”
“Hurry up. Tell us what it really is,” Sandy exclaimed, alive with interest.
“Well, you’ll have to give me a chance to talk then,” Mr. McClaren came back patiently. “And Dick hasn’t guessed what the proposition is. It’s not as profitable as lost mines or buried treasure, nor as dangerous as hunting outlaws, but more entertaining than hunting missing men. There’s money in it, some excitement and a chance to make good with one of the greatest organizations in the world.”
Dick and Sandy were begging now, for their interest certainly had been intrigued. So engrossed had they become in what the proposition was going to be that they even forgot to eat, sitting there with their mouths open and loaded fork half suspended.
“The proposition is this,” the factor stated. “I’m thinking of starting a branch fur-trading post near Great Slave Lake and I need some enterprising ambitious men to help out. There’s some bad competition—a free trader in that region, but I think he’ll be some careful what he does to any of the Hudson’s Bay Company men.”
“Gee, do you want us to be fur-traders?” Sandy interrogated.
“That’s about the size of it, boys,” Sandy’s uncle replied. “I’m sending one man up who is an expert on furs, and there’ll be a mounted police post established there. You boys can help with the trading, and can hunt and fish and trap all you like. It will be a real vacation from the hard job you had in the Arctic.”
“It’s beginning to look good to me already,” Dick spoke eagerly. “What do you say, Sandy?”
“I’m for it if you are,” replied Dick’s chum, “and we can take Toma along.”
The young Indian who had remained impassive during the conversation, brightened at Sandy’s words and his dusky face was split by a huge grin. He had been afraid of being left out of the plans and was now much relieved.
The factor signaled the old Indian housekeeper. “Pour us all some more coffee,” he directed. “I’m going to propose a toast.”
Dick and Sandy exchanged glances. What was the toast going to be, they wondered.
When the coffee cups were all filled and creamed and sugared, the old factor stood up and the boys did likewise. Lifting his cup high over his head, Mr. McClaren said:
“Here’s to the health of Dick Kent, fur trader, and may he never buy a pelt that sheds or trade a rifle for a black cat’s hide thinking it’s a black fox skin.”
The boys burst out laughing, but touched cups with Sandy’s uncle and drank the toast.
“Now let me give a toast,” Dick spoke up.
“Go ahead,” Mr. McClaren agreed.
Assuming a gallant pose, Dick upraised his cup and said solemnly: