“Lot of them out there. Gaunt, hungry beasts. Dangerous, I guess.”
Again he thought of the four cartridges. They were not enough. He might be obliged to cut his team loose and make a dash for it.
The dogs heard the challenging call from the wild creatures of the forest and bunched together as if for defense. Their manes stood straight up. The leader, a part-hound, was growling in a low tone, as if talking to himself.
This team of five dogs which Joe drove was a pick-up team. Besides the part-hound leader, there was one huskie and three dogs of uncertain breed. The huskie’s team mate, Sport, was slight of build and inclined to shirk. The two “wheel-horses” were short, stocky fellows who worked well in traces and showed signs of being good fighters.
Like some scout preparing for an Indian attack, Joe now loosened the dogs’ traces from the sled. But that they might not rush out heedless of danger to be cut up by the merciless fangs of the wolves he chained each dog to the sled.
“Time enough to let you at them later,” he murmured. He felt a certain amount of security in their companionship.
Just what he meant to do, he did not for the moment know. Darkness had fallen. Like twin glowworms, the eyes of the wolves shone at the edge of the forest. Already some of them were creeping out into the open. There were a number of them; just how many he could not tell.
“The one that sent out the call was probably the daddy of a large family,” he told himself, “and he’s invited the whole family to a feast. But,” he said as he set his teeth hard, “there won’t be any feast if I can help it.”
Leaning his rifle against the sled, he dropped his chin on his hands to lapse into deep thought. Then suddenly he leaped into action.
“Why didn’t I think of that before?” he exclaimed as he tore at the wrappings of the sled.
He had thought of the radiophone equipment packed away on his sled, the reserve outfit which always rode there.
“If I can only get it set up,” he told himself, “I’ll be able to call Curlie. Then he and Jennings will make a dash for it. With rifles and plenty of ammunition they’ll beat the wolves off. We’ll feed some of their carcasses to the dogs and have that much more caribou meat for ourselves.”
His fingers trembled as he unpacked the detector and set it firmly upon the overturned sled. He had caught the gleam of a pair of flashing eyes much closer than he had thought the wolves would dare to come. He had caught, too, the ominous sound of chop-chopping jaws. Pete, the huskie, was ki-yi-ing and straining at his chain. Major, the dog who always guarded the sled at night, was sending forth a low rumbling challenge.
As Joe set his amplifier into position, he sent a flash of light from his electric torch full upon one of those gray beasts. The wolf, recoiling as if shot by a rifle, doubled into a heap, then sprang snarling away.
Joe laughed at this wild demonstration of fear. The next instant his face sobered. He was surprised at the size of these timber wolves and at their gauntness.
“Starved to skin and bones. Ready for anything,” he muttered grimly as he set two jointed poles straight up in the snow.
From the top of these poles hung suspended his coil aerial. There remained but to connect the batteries. He was bent over the sled, intent upon making these connections secure, when he was startled by a mad chop of jaws directly behind him. The next instant there was a wild whirling of legs and fur, as Major engaged a wolf in combat.
Snatching his rifle, Joe stood ready to do deadly execution once the combatants separated.
“But only four cartridges,” he breathed, “and my call for help not yet sent.” His heart sank.
Even hampered as he was by the chain attached to his collar, the faithful old watchdog was more than a match for his lighter opponent. Over and over they tumbled. Twice the chain, tangling about the wolf’s legs, seemed about to make him prisoner. At last with a savage onslaught Major leaped clean at the enemy’s throat. There followed a gurgling cough. For a second the end seemed at hand. But the next instant, Major’s teeth lost their grip. The wolf, feeling himself free, and having had quite enough, slunk away into the shadows.
“Might as well let him go,” was the boy’s mental comment. “He’s well licked. He’ll not want to come back. Save my shots for those who mix in next.”
In this, perhaps he made a mistake. Bleeding from many wounds, the wolf carried a rank scent of battle and blood back to his companions, a scent more maddening than was that of the frozen meat upon the sled. Hardly had he disappeared into the darkness than there arose from out that darkness a war song such as Joe had never before given ear to, a song that made his blood run cold.
“Not a second to lose,” he exclaimed as he snapped the receiver over his head, threw on the switch and pressed his lips to the transmitter.
He was talking on 200. “Hello! Hello! Curlie, you hear? Wolves. Six miles from Indian’s shack. Sled broken. Must fight for life. Got four shots. Bring rifles. Come quick.”
Eagerly he pressed the receivers to his ears. Wildly his heart beat. It was a tense moment. Would Curlie be listening in on 200? Would the message carry? Would he respond?
After a moment had elapsed, with the gleam of eyes coming ever closer, he repeated his message. Again he pressed the receivers to his ears.
“He won’t hear,” he muttered half in despair. “Have to make a dash for it. Meat might save us—might satisfy them. But they’re mad with the smell of fresh food. They’re—”
A voice boomed in his ear. It was Curlie.
“Coming,” he roared. “Hold fast.”
“Ah!” Joe breathed as he snatched the receiver from his head and clutched at his rifle, “that’s better!”
Even as he said it, a flash from his electric torch caught a huge fellow, the leader of the pack, all but upon them. Like the other, he doubled up and leaped away, but this only made the boy understand that his position was still perilous. Curlie had not told him how far he was away.
“Must be at least five miles,” he groaned. “Take him a half hour. Major, old boy, do you think we can hold them?” The answer from the dog was a low, rumbling growl.
There was a deal of comfort to be obtained from that growl. Heretofore Joe had thought of these sled-dogs as mere beasts of burden; thought of them as he might have thought of horses or mules on the flat, sleepy, safe prairies of the Mississippi valley. Now he found himself regarding them as friends, as fellow warriors engaged in a common business, the business of protecting their lives against the onrush of the enemy.
“Some dogs you are,” he murmured gratefully. “You not only pull a fellow’s load for him, but in time of danger you turn in and fight for him.”
He knew that if he came out of this combat alive he would always cherish a feeling of loyal friendship for these five companions in combat.
It was a tense moment. They were in a tight place. A chill raced up his spine and his knees trembled as he caught the gleam of new pairs of eyes burning holes into the darkness. Others had heard the blood-curdling war song and had come to join in the battle.
The flash of the torch held the beasts at bay for a time, but at last it only maddened them as they pressed closer in.
Joe was in despair. Should he loose the dogs? He scarcely dared. They would rush out at those burning eyes and be destroyed. Then he would be alone. And yet, if worse came to worst, if the enemy rushed in, there would not be time to loose them, and chained as they were, the dogs would fight at a disadvantage.
In the meantime, Curlie Carson was bounding over the trail. Now he had covered a mile, now two, now three. There were three miles more. Panting, perspiring, staggering forward, now tripping over a snow-covered bush, and now falling over a log, he struggled on.
“He—he can’t make it!” Joe all but sobbed as he counted the moments! “Ah, here they come!”
There was time only to loose the chain of Major before three gray streaks leaped at them.
Major met one and downed him. Ginger, the hound leader, chained as he was, grappled with a second. The third leaped at the boy’s throat. Just in time he threw up the rifle barrel. Gripped in both his hands, it stopped the beast. Kicking out with his right foot, he sent him sprawling. The next instant the rifle cracked. One shot gone, but an enemy accounted for.
A fourth wolf sprang upon the gentle, inoffensive Sport and bore him to the snow.
Leaping upon the sled, Joe stood ready to sell his life as dearly as he might. Catching the ki-yi of Pete, the huskie, he reached over and unsnapped his chain, to see him leap at the throat of the nearest enemy. “They’re coming, coming!” Joe sang out.
All fear had left him now. He was in the midst of a battle. That they would win that battle he did not dream. Curlie could never reach them in time. But, like Custer’s men, they would die game.
Sport was down. Major was strangling the life from a clawing wolf. Ginger was engaged in an unfinished battle. Two wolves leaped at the sled, one from either side. The rifle cracked. A wolf leaped high and fell. The second sprang. He was instantly met and borne to the snow by Bones, the second “wheel-horse.”
But now they came in a drove, five, six, seven, gaunt gray beasts with chop-chopping jaws.
With deliberate aim the boy dropped the foremost, then the second. Then, calmly clubbing his rifle, he waited.
The foremost wolf was not two yards from the sled, when Joe was startled to hear a rifle crack and see the wolf leap high in air. He was astonished. Curlie could not possibly have reached his objective in this time. Who was this man, his deliverer? Leaning far forward, he tried to peer into the darkness, as the rifle cracked again and yet again.
For a second, as he stood there on the sled, with the big Arctic moon rising above the forest, with the crack of the strange rifle, the roar of dogs and the howl of wolves dinning in his ears, Joe fancied himself acting a part in the movies. It was too strange to seem real.
This lasted but a second; then, realizing that the battle was more than half won but that some of his dogs might be in danger, he sprang from the sled. The next instant with the butt of his rifle he crushed the skull of a wolf whose fangs were tearing at the throat of a dog. The wolf, crumpling over, lay quivering in death.
As he bent over the prostrate dog he saw that it was Sport.
Frightened, bewildered, disheartened by the crack-crack of the newcomer’s rifle, the remnant of the wolf-pack took to its heels. Soon save for the growl and whine of dogs, silence reigned in meadow and forest.
The man with the rifle stepped forward. To Joe’s surprise he saw that it was Jennings.
“Why! It’s you!” he exclaimed.
“Who did you think it might be?” laughed the miner.
“Why, it might have been most anyone. Might even have been the man Curlie’s looking for, the outlaw of the air. I thought you were with Curlie. Curlie’s coming—must be most of the way here.”
“Then,” said Jennings quickly, “I’d better go back and meet him, then he and I will go back and bring the other sleds. Here,” he handed Joe two clips of cartridges, “guess they’ll not come back. Never can tell though. You’ll be safe with these.” He turned and walked quickly away.
Left with his dogs and his outfit, Joe made a thorough examination of things. Three of his dogs, Ginger, the leader, Major, the sled guard, and Bones, his team-mate, were sitting on their haunches or curled up licking their wounds.
“Sport’s done in,” he murmured with a queer catch in his throat. “Dogs get to be a fellow’s pals up here. Pete’s missing. Rushed out after the retreating enemy to avenge his team-mate, I guess. Only hope he doesn’t get the worst of it.”
Five dead wolves lay near the sled. These he dragged into a pile. “Enough pelts there for a splendid rug,” he told himself. “I’ll get some Indian woman to tan them.”
Then, realizing that it would be some time before his companions would return, and having nothing else to do, he began skinning the carcasses. He had nearly completed the task when, from the edge of the forest, there came a long-drawn howl.
“What, again?” he exclaimed seizing his rifle. “All right, come on. I’m ready for you this time.”
A pair of fiery balls shone out of the shadowy edge of the forest.
Lifting his rifle he took steady aim. His breath came quick. To shoot in the quiet calm of perfect self-composure was quite different from a pitched battle.
He had a perfect bead on the spot between the eyes, when the creature moved.
He came a few paces closer; then again halted and howled.
And now once more the boy had a perfect aim. His finger was on the trigger. It was a high-power rifle. The shot could not fail.
“Now!” he whispered to himself. “Now!”
But at that instant a strange thing happened. Old Ginger, the leader, answered the creature’s call. The answer was not hostile but friendly.
Joe’s rifle dropped with a soft plump into the snow. The next instant he cupped his hands and shouted.
“Pete! Pete, you old fool, come on in here. You nearly got shot.”
It was indeed Pete, the huskie. He had returned safely from his expedition of revenge for a lost comrade.
As he came trotting in, head up and ears pricked forward, he marched straight up to Joe, as a huskie will, and jamming his nose straight against his leg, gave a big sniff. After that he curled up with his comrades to lick his wounds.
Two hours later the camp in the forest was once more in order. The meat had been piled high upon a hastily made cache of strong boughs, roped between trees. The dogs had been bedded down with spruce boughs. All was snug for the night.
They were preparing to turn in. To-morrow would be a busy day. They would spend the greater part of it in camp. The broken sled must be mended. Joe’s dogs must be allowed to recover from the first shock of the battle. Jennings would repair the sled. Curlie and Joe would go ahead breaking the trail on snowshoes for a few miles. This would be the day’s work; that and keeping a sharp lookout for the outlaw of the air.
“The outlaw of the air!” Curlie was thinking of him when there came a rattle from the loud-speaker attached to the receiving set tuned for long wave lengths.
Leaping to the tuner, he touched its knob, twisted it first this way, then that. He touched a second and a third knob, then bent his ear for the message.
“Another government affair,” he told himself. Then, suddenly, as if bursting out from the very room, came a loud, “Bar-r-r-r!”
Instantly his hands flew to the radio-compass as he muttered.
“That’s him, the outlaw!”
He measured the distance accurately, calculated the direction, then located it on the map.
“There!” he murmured. “He’s right there. Not forty miles. A little off the trail. For safety from discovery I suppose. Camped there for the night. By a forced march we could reach that spot before nightfall to-morrow. Question is, shall we do it?”
Throwing on his coat, he went out of the tent. There for ten minutes he bathed his temples, throbbing with excitement, in the cold night air. Pacing up and down on the narrow trail he debated the problem.
“If we try to steal upon him, he may discover us first and elude us,” he told himself. “If he does that, probably we can’t catch him, for his dogs will be fresher than ours. If we wait for him here, he may take some Indian trail which cuts around this point and we may never see him. So there it is.”
It was a difficult decision but much quiet thinking led him to believe that there was more to be gained by waiting than by moving. They ought not break trail beyond the point where they now were. That would but give the man warning. Early in the morning, he would send Joe exploring across-trail for any other trail that might pass close to this one. They would move camp to a position a few yards off trail in the forest. Then he would set a watch.
Instinctively, as he entered the tent, he examined the clip of cartridges in his rifle.
“Not looking for him to-night, are you?” grinned Joe.
“No, not looking for him, but you never can tell,” said Curlie soberly.
“Think it’s necessary to set a watch?”
“No. That dog that guards your sled, old Major, is watch enough. He’ll let us know if anyone comes down the trail, and even if they should attempt to escape us they couldn’t do it—not with two of our teams in prime condition.”
Early next morning Curlie established himself in the midst of a thick clump of young pine trees where he could keep a constant watch on the trail and not be seen by anyone approaching.
He had dragged into the clump a number of spruce boughs. On these he sat. On one side of him was his smaller radiophone receiving set and on the other his rifle. The receiver of the radiophone was clamped over his ears beneath his cap. This day he was to be a detective of the earth as well as of the air.
The camp had been moved well back from the trail, where without danger of being heard Jennings could work upon the broken sled. Whether their quarry were caught in their trap this day or not, they must be prepared to travel on the morrow.
As he sat there with his eyes moving up and down the trail he thought of the adventures his calling as a secret service man of the air had brought him. He recalled those wild hours on the tossing sea when death appeared so near that it seemed almost to beckon. He thought of the girl, Gladys Ardmore, who had behaved so bravely on that night. He wondered what she might be doing at that moment.
Then his mind carried him back to the adventure which appeared to be just before him. The man he was seeking had repeatedly broken all the laws of the air. He was subject not only to heavy fines but also to long years of imprisonment. That he would fight and willingly commit murder to escape punishment Curlie did not doubt. Yet here was Curlie, ready and willing to attempt to stop him in his mad career.
“One does not do such a thing for himself,” he reasoned. “He does it for the good of others. Here in Alaska are thousands of lonely people who can be cheered by music, stories and speeches broadcasted over thousands of miles. Yet a few outlaws of the air can spoil all that. It is the duty of some of us to see that they do not do it. There are matters of even greater importance; a miner lost on the tundra, snow-blind and all but hopeless, can, if he has a small radiophone set, send out a call for aid. From a large station this message may be picked up. He may be located and his life saved. Even the great explorer, Munson, may need some such assistance.”
Had he known how prophetic this last thought was, and how much he was to have to do with the explorer who was at that moment more than two thousand miles away on a ship beset by the perpetual ice of the Arctic, he would have been startled.
As it was, his mind turned to the mystery that always surrounds true adventure. He recalled the words of an old friend:
“Adventure, true adventure, like fame, does not come to those who seek it. It comes unbeckoned and unannounced. Oh! yes, you can blunder about and get into all kind of scrapes which really do not mean anything to yourself nor to anyone else, but that is not adventure. You may even succeed in getting yourself killed without experiencing an adventure.
“You’ll know an adventure when you see it. When, with no willing of your own, but following the plain lead of duty, you feel yourself going into something as dark and mysterious as an unexplored cave; when your heart beats madly, your knees tremble and your tongue clings to the roof of your mouth, yet you go straight on because you know that duty leads you, then you may be sure that you are about to enter upon a genuine adventure.”
As Curlie recalled these words he wondered whether or not, before the day was done, he would find himself entering upon a true adventure. Would his quarry, the outlaw of the air, come down the trail?
The day wore on. Noon came. He ate a frozen lunch. The sun sank lower and lower. His vigil did not relax, but he began to lose faith in his plan.
“Joe said he would come and tell me if he found other trails,” he told himself. “The outlaw can’t have gone round us. Where can he be? If we’ve missed him—well, anyway, he can’t escape us. They’ll take him when he enters Valdez.”
And yet, as he thought it through, he was not so sure of it. The man was utterly unknown. Not one person who was in any way interested in his capture had ever seen him. Hundreds of strange men drifted in and out of the seaport city of Valdez every day. How then was anyone to put his hand on any one of them and say, “This is the man”?
He was interrupted in these disconcerting reflections by a sound in his receiver. It was a whisper—thewhisper.
“Hello - hello - Curlie,” it said. “Hello - are - you - there? Do - you - hear - me? I - have - something - important—dreadfully - important - to say. He—the - man - you - want—has - turned - back. Went - forty - miles - to-day. Now he - is camped. So - you - see - you - did - not - get - him - did - you - Curlie? I - am - sorry - Curlie - extremely - sorry - for - he - goes - fast—very - very - fast. You - cannot - catch - him - can - you - Curlie? So - good-bye.”
As the sound ceased, Curlie leaped to his feet. His fists were clenched. Through his tight set teeth he hissed: “I can catch him! I can! I can! And I will.”
Hastily gathering up his equipment and his rifle he hurried away at once to break the news to his companions.
Strange to say, in all this time it had never occurred to him to doubt the truth of the Whisperer’s message nor to question her sincerity in wishing him well or in desiring to assist him. And yet she had been playing a very artful game of hide-and-go-seek in the air with him for many weeks and in all that time, except perhaps that time in the hotel window (told about in “Curlie Carson Listens In”), he had not caught one single glimpse of her. He had heard her whisper, that was all. Can one judge a person’s character by the quality of his whisper? Well, that’s the question.
“What does it mean?” puzzled Joe, as Curlie reported the Whisperer’s message. “Did he listen in last night when I was calling for help? And was he frightened by that?”
“Might have,” said Curlie, “but anyway you couldn’t help that. You were in a mess and had to be helped out.”
For a moment the two boys were silent. Then Curlie spoke again:
“Might not be that at all. I listened in on a message last night. It was from Munson, the explorer. It was not broken in upon as his others have been. There may have been something in that message which caused the outlaw to turn back.”
“Well, anyway,” he exclaimed, “whatever the cause is, we’ll go out and after them the first thing after dawn. Is everything all right; sled fixed and dogs doctored up?”
“Everything’s fine as silk.”
“All right then, let’s have some chow. After that we’ll turn in. Luck doesn’t go with any one person forever. Why, even to-morrow we might catch up with our outlaw friend.”
“Hardly that,” smiled Joe. “We’ve got forty or fifty miles of unbroken trail to make before we really get on the scent at all. By that time, traveling on a hard-packed trail as he is, he’ll have a big lead on us. There are probably forks and crosses in the trail a hundred miles or so farther on, so we’ve got a real task ahead of us. We’ll have to be sly as foxes to catch him now.”
“I suppose that’s so,” Curlie sighed, “but we’ll get him, see if we don’t.”
“Say!” exclaimed Joe suddenly, “who is this whispering friend of yours anyway?”
“Don’t know,” said Curlie, scratching his head.
“Ever seen her?”
“I don’t know.”
“How’s she come to be traveling with this man anyway?”
“Can’t say.”
“Mighty queer, I’d say.”
“I’d say as much myself. Queer and interesting. I may as well admit that I am as much interested in coming up with the Whisperer as I am in catching this outlaw.”
“Well, we won’t do either if we don’t eat and turn in,” said Joe as he reached for the frying pan.
Joe’s prophecy that they would not at once catch up with the man they sought, proved correct. The first two days they struggled forward through soft snow, over a trackless wilderness. Then they came upon the campsite of the outlaw, his last camping place before he turned back.
To Curlie this was a thrilling moment. It was the first earthly sign he had ever seen of this strange pair, the outlaw and the Whisperer. Heretofore he had followed only the trackless trail of the air. Now he had footprints of a man and of many dogs to go by. The mark of the camp, though three days old, was as fresh as if it had been abandoned but two hours before. There had been no snowfall. There was never a breath of wind in that forest.
“As long as his trail is not joined by any other,” Jennings told the boys, “we can follow it with our eyes shut. We could do that three months from now. There might be four feet of snowfall, but on top of it all there would be the depression made in the first two feet of snow. There is never any wind to move the snow about, so there’s your trail carved in the snow, permanent as marble till the spring thaw comes.”
“But when he comes to the Yukon River trail?” suggested Curlie.
“Well, that’s going to be harder.” The miner wrinkled his brow. “But we’ll find a way to track him—the way he hitches his dogs, track of his sled. There’s always something if you are sharp enough to see it.”
Curlie examined the marks of the camp very carefully. It was evident that the man knew as much about making an Arctic camp as did Jennings. The square made by the tent floor showed that he had spread down a canvas floor and the heaps of spruce twigs tossed all about told that he had bedded the place down before he spread out his blankets or sleeping-bags.
“Two teams,” was Jennings’ comment, “and eight or nine dogs to the team. Fine big fellows too. Shouldn’t wonder if they were Siberian wolf hounds.”
One thing Curlie made a secret search for: footprints. There were enough of one sort. The broad marks of a man’s foot clad in moccasins or Eskimo skin-boots were everywhere present. What he sought was the mark of a smaller foot, a much smaller foot, the foot of the Whisperer. But though he examined every square yard of trampled ground around the camp, and though he ran ahead of the dogs for two miles after resuming the trail, he saw no trace of a woman’s footprint.
“Looks like he drove one dog team and led the other,” he told himself. “Looks as if—”
For the first time he began to doubt the existence of the Whisperer.
“Can it be,” he asked himself, “that the outlaw and the Whisperer are one? Does he change his voice and pretend to give me tips when he is in reality only leading me on?”
In his mind he went back over the times when the Whisperer had broken in on the silence of the night. There had been those two times when he had been listening in at the Secret Tower Room, back there in the city (told about in “Curlie Carson Listens In”). There had been two times when he had caught her whisper out over the sea.
“That time,” he told himself, “she told me he had gone north. Why should this man keep me informed of his own doings? He ought to know that I’d report it; that someone would follow him if I didn’t.
“No,” he told himself, “there must be a real Whisperer. The girl must exist. She’s somewhere up there on the trail ahead of us. And yet,” he reasoned, “if she is there, where are her tracks?”
Again he began convincing himself that she did not exist, that it was all a hoax invented by the mind of this clever outlaw. The more he thought of it the more sure he became that this was true. The more sure he became of it the more his anger grew.
“To be shamed, to be tricked, deceived, buncoed by the man you are pursuing!” he exploded. “That is adding insult to injury!”
With the plain trail stretching straight out before them, they now traveled far into the night, traveled until dogs and men were ready to drop. Only then did they turn to the right of the trail and set their weary muscles to the task of making camp.
To follow the trail of the outlaw of the air for the first four days was but to trace out his sled-tracks in a wilderness that was trackless save for the footprints of caribou, wolf and bear. But once he had reached the Yukon, all this was changed. There were three trails to choose from. Which had he taken? The one to the left which led up the river, the one to the right, down the river; or the one which led straight before them up one of the branches of the mighty Yukon? The last trail, less traveled than the others, led away toward the Arctic Ocean.
“He may have taken the down-river trail, for that would carry him farther and farther from communication with the outside world,” said Jennings, as he searched in vain to distinguish his track from those of scores of other travelers.
“Might have taken the up-river trail,” he went on. “He’d be in some danger of getting caught by a message sent on ahead but since the telegraph wires are down the message would have to be sent by radiophone, so he could listen in and take up some branch and over the hills if he needed to.”
“You don’t think he’d go straight ahead, up the branch?” said Curlie.
“Why should he?” the miner looked at him in surprise. “Up that trail for fifty or a hundred miles you’ll find Indian huts and miners’ cabins here and there. After that you’ll find nothing but a blind trail that grows steeper and steeper. There’s no food to be had save wild game and little enough of that. Why should he go up there?”
“Might run up there for a blind and live with an Indian for a time.”
“If he did we’d trap him like a rabbit in a hollow stump!” declared the miner emphatically.
“Well, since we don’t know which way to go and it is getting dark,” suggested Joe, “I move that we make camp right here.”
This suggestion was acted upon and some two hours later Curlie might have been seen nodding over his radiophone boxes. His companions were fast asleep but he had remained up with the receiver clamped over his head in the rather forlorn hope that the outlaw would let slip some fragment of message which might reveal his whereabouts.
“Fact is,” he told himself, “that in spite of all the evidence against it, I still have a sneaking feeling that the Whisperer is a real person, a girl, and that she’s up here somewhere in the white wilderness. I—I sort of hope that sooner or later she’ll whisper some more secrets to me.”
In this hope, for the night at least, he was doomed to disappointment. No whispered secrets came to him from out the air.
A message came, however, a message which set his mind at work. He had fallen quite asleep when he was suddenly wakened by a voice in his ear. He recognized at once the voice of the government official who had dictated that other message regarding the band of smugglers caught operating on Behring Straits.
The message itself to him was unimportant, or at least for the time it seemed so. It gave more definite details of the evidence procured and stated one fact that was most important: The big man, the one higher up, the brains of the smugglers, had not been apprehended. Indeed, it was not even known who he was. It was thought that he might be at this moment in Alaska, but where? This question could not be answered.
The message had proceeded to this point. Curlie had maintained a drowsy interest in it, when he sat up with a sudden start, all awake.
The message had been broken in upon by a powerful sending set which was much nearer to Curlie than was that of the government man.
“Got—gotta get him,” he mumbled as his slim fingers caressed his radio-compass coil.
“There! Got him! That’s it!”
He was not a moment too soon, for not only had the message ceased but the interruption as well.
“Huh!” he grunted, scratching his head. “Huh! Up there. Wouldn’t have believed it. Why, good gracious, it can’t be! Yet I couldn’t have missed it. How that man travels! Two hundred miles! And no trail to speak of. Probably none at all.”
For a moment he sat in a brown study. Then he suddenly shook his fist toward the north.
“We’ll get you now, old boy!” he exclaimed. “We’ll get you! You’re breaking trail for us. We’ll follow that trail if it takes us right out on the ice-floes of the Arctic and we’ll get you, just as Jennings says, like a rabbit in a hollow tree. That is,” he said more soberly, “if there doesn’t come a heavy snow.”
The man, so the radio-compass had said, had taken the trail which led straight away toward the Arctic Ocean.
Then for a long time Curlie sat staring at the knob of his tuner. He did not see the knob. He did not see anything. He was concentrating, reasoning, thinking hard, trying to put a lot of facts together and make them fit.
So the master-mind of the smugglers had not been caught. What if the outlaw of the air proved to be that man. Why might he not? That would explain why he was so continually breaking in upon the message regarding it.
“And that,” he whispered, leaping to his feet and dashing out of the tent in his excitement, “that would explain why he appears so eager to frustrate all of Munson’s plans to keep in touch with the outside world by radiophone. Munson assisted in breaking up the smuggler band. If the outlaw is their leader, there is nothing he would not do to wreak revenge.
“And—and”—he breathed hard because of the thoughts that came trooping into his mind mind—“that might explain the man’s change of plans. The very night that Munson sent his message telling of his supply of food on the shore of the ocean this outlaw, who probably listened in, turned about and started straight north, to—to where?”
Dashing back into the tent, he unfolded a map. For a moment with strained attention he studied it.
When he straightened up it was to whisper, “Yes, sir! That’s it! Flaxman Island! His present course will bring him straight to Flaxman Island and Munson’s food supply.”
He sat down again. “Now,” he asked himself, “once he arrives there, what will he do? Will he winter there, living upon the explorer’s supplies and thus save himself from prison, or will he, out of revenge, destroy the supplies? If he stays and lives on the supplies, what will happen if Munson comes ashore with his band? Huh, some interesting problems there!”
“Interesting and foolish,” he told himself as he dropped into another mood. “All imagination, I guess. Suppose there’s nothing to it. Probably he’s not the king of smugglers at all, but just a plain mischief-maker of the air. When he caught Joe’s message to me, that night when we fought the wolves, he knew he was being pursued and turned back. Now he’s hiding out till the storm blows over. Possibly knows where there is a native reindeer herder up there at the end of the stream and over the hills!
“Well, old top,” he again shook his fist toward the north, “you might just as well come out of your hole. The storm isn’t going to blow over. Your little cabin of false dreams is going to be wrecked by it, and that before many days.”
But the outlaw’s teams of powerful dogs had endurance to exceed anything ever before witnessed by those who followed on their trail. Even Jennings was astonished by the manner in which they ate up the miles.
“Those dogs are devils!” he exclaimed after ten days of trailing them. “Devils is what they are and the prince of devils is their driver.”
Straight north the trail ran. There could be no mistaking it. In the soft snow of the forest, as Jennings had said, it might have been followed after three months had elapsed just as surely as on the day after it was made.
Up frozen streams, over ridges when streams were too rapid to freeze even in midwinter, down narrow Indian trails when snow-laden branches constantly showered the traveler with snow, the trail led. On and on and on. Always, as nearly as possible, due north.
At night, camp made and supper over, Curlie, his instruments before him, his receiver over his head, always sat on his sleeping-bag. With arms crossed over his feet, with head dropping forward, like Jack London’s primitive man, he listened for sounds. The sounds he expected to hear were from the air, not from the forest; that was the only difference. Otherwise he was that same primitive man, hunting and being hunted in turn. He was ever pursuing the outlaw, but who could tell when this same outlaw might face about upon the trail and become himself the hunter?
So they moved forward. Once Curlie received a thrill. On examining a camp lately deserted by the one who went before, he came upon a strange footprint, a single print of moccasin or skin-boot in the snow. Yet how it made his heart beat! This footprint was much smaller than that of the outlaw. Could this be the Whisperer? At first it seemed to him that there could be but one answer: “It is.” But at that time they were not beyond the creeks and rivers inhabited and traveled by Indians. Two Indian sleds had not long since passed that way. Might it not be that some Indian woman or girl had visited the camp of the outlaw? So Curlie’s certainty was destroyed, yet he still had a feeling that this might have been the footprint of the Whisperer.
Nothing more came to him from the air. The outlaw was silent. So too was the Whisperer. Night after night he caught only now and again a fragment of some song or some orchestra production being broadcasted thousands of miles away. Now and again there would come fragments of messages from afar, but never anything of importance.