From the air they learned nothing of the position of the outlaw, but by examining the signs of camp and trail Jennings, long accustomed to these signs, was able to announce to them each night that they were drawing closer, ever nearer to the man they sought. Now they were three days’ journey from him; now two, now one and a half, now only one. Faint and far distant they fancied they caught sight of the column of smoke rising straight above the forest from his camp fire.
Food became scarce. They had bought dried fish from the last Indian camp they had come upon. Now this had to suffice for both men and dogs. The outlaw, they knew by signs of the trail, had been more fortunate. Once, a reindeer straying from some distant domestic herd had forfeited life by crossing his path; at another time a caribou doe and her fawn had fallen victim to his rifle.
“It’s tough luck,” Jennings had exclaimed. “Him with all that fresh meat and us with none; but the tables will turn. We’re gaining, gaining every day. The soft trail for him becomes hard for us, after the night’s freeze. You’ll see, we’ll get him yet.”
“But where do you think he’s heading for?” Joe demanded.
“Can’t tell,” Jennings scratched his head. “Maybe some Eskimo village, maybe some reindeer camp and maybe—did you say Munson had a supply camp somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Well, maybe he’s heading for that.”
“To use it or destroy it?”
“Destroy it?” Jennings stared at him in astonishment. “What would be the sense of destroying it? He doesn’t know he’s being followed; leastwise, I don’t think he does. Who’d think of destroying a winter’s supply of grub? It wasn’t Napoleon who burned Moscow, was it?”
Joe did not answer, but he and Curlie had their own private notions about the matter.
Then, just as they hoped to be closing in upon the prey, two things happened which postponed that great event for many days. They came suddenly out upon the open tundra, where the snow was hard-packed by the wind, where the trail was difficult to follow, and where, with as good a trail as the boys had to follow, the soft snow no longer gave them the advantage and the outlaw could make as good time as they—probably better, for his dogs were stronger.
“Bad luck to us,” Jennings stormed. “We’ll have to follow him straight to the Arctic and us with no food but a dozen pounds of fish. If we don’t watch out we’ll be in full retreat, eating our dogs as we go.”
Curlie, who had been sitting on his sled silently watching something in the distance, suddenly leaped to his feet exclaiming:
“It moves!”
“What does?” demanded Joe.
“Something off there to the left.”
“Think it’s him?”
“Who?”
“The outlaw.”
“No, I don’t. What I do think though is that it’s a reindeer or caribou.” A moment later he ordered: “Make camp right here. We’ve got to have meat and this is our chance.”
Looking to the clip in his rifle, he turned to go, then, after a second’s reflection he turned back, partly unpacked the sled and, having dragged out a strange-looking belt, buckled it on beneath his mackinaw.
“Just by way of extra precaution,” he smiled.
Atop the nearest ridge he turned to wave his hand. Had he known what events would transpire before he saw his companions again he would most surely have turned back. Not knowing, he shaded his eyes for a moment once more to locate the moving spot on the horizon, then went strolling down the low hill.
Having covered half the distance between himself and the brown spot on the horizon, Curlie decided to drop down below the crest of the hill. By going up a narrow ravine for a half mile, then creeping over the ridge and following down the bend of a second ravine, he would, he was sure, come out close to the feeding animal, quite close enough for a shot.
Stealthily he carried out his plans. When at last he reached the end of this little journey and, with finger on the trigger, slowly rose from the ground where he had been creeping for the last hundred yards, he was so surprised that for a second he felt paralyzed.
There, not twenty yards away, with his back to the boy, feeding like some contented domesticated creature in a pasture, stood as fine a buck caribou as one might ask to see. The wind being away from him, and toward the boy, he had neither smelled, heard nor seen Curlie. He did not even know of the boy’s presence there.
To say that Curlie was suddenly stricken with buck fever, would be putting it mildly. His fingers trembled. Cold perspiration stood out upon his brow.
This lasted but a second, then he was himself again. It was a tense moment. The fate of their expedition might hang upon his shot; the question of going on or turning about must be decided by their ability to procure food.
“How,” he whispered, “how in time do you shoot a caribou when he’s got his back to you?”
He hesitated. A shot fired now might not reach a vital spot, yet the creature might at any moment sense his presence and go crashing away over the hard-crusted snow.
At this moment he was startled by a loud “ark-ark-ark” to the right and above him.
“Two of ’em,” he whispered as he dropped behind his snow bank.
The thing he now witnessed both surprised and amused him. A second caribou had appeared at the crest of a steep hill. Having paused there long enough to call to his companion, instead of racing away to a place of gradual descent, he spread out his snowshoe-like hoofs and with a loud “ark-ark,” went scooting, toboggan-fashion, down the hill. So fascinated was Curlie with the sight of this performance that for a moment he forgot his duty to his friends and himself. But just in time he brought himself up with a snap. The rifle went to his shoulder. Just as the second buck, the larger of the two, reached the bottom and stood at attention, the rifle cracked. The buck leaped high, to plunge back upon the snow.
Crack-crack-crack went the hoofs of the first caribou as he raced away, and the crack-crack-crack answered the rifle.
It took not a second glance to tell Curlie that his first shot had reached its mark.
“Think I hit the other. Two’s better than one,” he muttered as he raced away over the fresh trail. True enough, there were drops of blood here and there on the snow.
“Went over the ridge. I’ll get him!” Curlie snapped a fresh cartridge into his magazine as he went zig-zagging his way up the hard-packed and slippery hill. Twice he lost his footing and narrowly escaped a slide to the bottom, but each time he escaped by digging into the snow with fingers and toes.
At the top he breathed a sigh of relief. For a few seconds he could catch no sight of the caribou, then he saw it disappearing over the next ridge. Just as it dropped from sight, it appeared to stumble and fall.
“Done for!” exulted the boy. “Just one more ridge and I’ve got him.”
For a second he hesitated. It was growing dark.
“Ought to go back,” he mumbled. “But there’ll be a moon in an hour and I can get along without light till then.”
Hurriedly sliding down the ridge, he made his way up the other. Arrived there, he glanced straight ahead, expecting to see the caribou lying at the bottom of the ravine. But not a brown speck marred the whiteness of that snow.
“That’s queer!” he exclaimed. “I was sure he was done for.”
By looking closely, he was able to see four sharply-cut paths in the snow crust.
“He tobogganed down and I thought he fell,” Curlie grinned. “That’s one on me. Well, there’s no use to follow him. If he is well enough to go tobogganing, he’s not greatly in need of attention. I better get back and tend to the other one.”
Darkness had fallen. It was with the greatest difficulty that he made his way back to the spot where the dead caribou lay.
Once there he proceeded to cut up the meat. Then, having built a cache out of blocks of snow which would keep the meat out of reach of wolves and foxes, he shouldered one hind quarter and turned to go.
Then and not till then did he realize that he did not exactly know the way back to camp. He had come a considerable distance, and in the eager excitement of the hunt had failed to take note of each turn in his trail or to fix in his memory the shapes of the hills about him that they might serve him as guide posts.
“Pretty pickle!” he told himself. “Here I’ve got a heavy load and I’ll likely as not have to walk ten miles to make five. Going to storm, too,” he told himself as he studied the hazy horizon. “The mountains were smoking with snow forty miles away this afternoon. Ho, well, guess I’ll make it some way.”
Shouldering his burden, he went slipping, sliding down the hill. He had not been going many minutes before he realized that he was not going to “make it someway”—not that night at least.
A playful breeze began throwing fine snow in his face. As he approached the crest of a ridge this breeze grew rude. It gave him a shove which landed him halfway back down the hill.
“Stop that, you!” he grumbled as he gathered himself up and attempted the hill anew.
But the thing did not stop. It grew in violence until the boy knew he was facing one of the sudden, severe blizzards known only on the Arctic hills, a storm which no man can face for hours and live.
“It’s no use,” he told himself. “I’d just blunder round till I’m hot and exhausted, then sit down and freeze. Better sit down here while I’m still all here.”
Making his way to a spot somewhat sheltered by a cut bank, he placed his burden on the ground, then set to work with his sheath knife cutting blocks from a snow bank. Out of these he built a snow-fort-like affair which protected him on two sides.
“Wish I knew how to build a snow-house,” he told himself. “But I don’t, so what’s the use to try?”
Having accomplished this much, he cut thin strips of meat from the caribou carcass. These he placed upon the snow. When they had frozen he ate them with relish.
“M-m!” he murmured. “Most as good as cooked and a whole lot better than dried fish.”
Having eaten, he gathered his garments close in about him and sat down upon the ground.
Presently he rose suddenly and, having drawn several small articles from pockets in his belt, proceeded to wind a coil antenna. This when completed he hung to the top of his Alpine staff which he had stuck upright in the snow. Then, having thrust a pair of receivers over his head, he sat down again.
In the belt there was arranged a complete radiophone receiving set with a range of two hundred miles.
“Might hear something more interesting than the storm,” he told himself. “B’r’r’r! It’s sure going to be bad.”
Back in the camp Jennings was working on an Eskimo type of harness for Ginger, Joe Marion’s leader. The white man’s collar, which was very much like a leather horse collar, had worn a sore spot on his neck. A harness made of strips of sealskin and fashioned in a manner somewhat similar to a breast collar, would relieve this.
Joe Marion had gone a short way from camp in the hope of finding a snowshoe rabbit or a ptarmigan. His search had been rewarded. In crossing a low hill he had caught the whir of wings and had, a moment later, sighted three snow-white ptarmigan. These quails of the Arctic wilderness went racing away across the snow. His aim was good and, with all three of these in his bag, he was sure of some delicious broth and tender, juicy meat that night.
He was searching about for other birds when a sudden gust of wind sent cutting bits of snow into his face.
“Huh!” he grunted, looking away to his left. “Well, now, that looks like business. Came up quick, too. I’d better be getting back.”
He had no trouble finding his way back to camp, but by the time he reached it the snow fog was so thick he could not see three rods before him.
He found Jennings struggling with the tent ropes. The tent was in a complete state of collapse.
“Wind tore it down,” shouted Jennings. “Give—”
The wind caught the tent and fairly tore it from his grasp.
“Give us a hand,” he puffed as he regained his hold. “This is going to be bad. Got to pack up and get out of here and find shelter of some kind. Tent won’t stand here.”
“There’s a lot of willow bushes with the dead leaves on down there by a little stream,” suggested Joe.
“That’s the place. We can tie the ropes to the willows. Willows keep off the wind. Come on, let’s pack up.” Jennings threw the tent into a heap.
“But Curlie? He’ll be coming back.”
“Set up a stake. Write a note. Tell where we’ve gone. Got a pencil, paper?”
“Yes.”
“You write it.”
Creeping beneath the overthrown tent, Joe managed to scribble a note. This he fastened securely to an Alpine staff and, having tied a red handkerchief to the staff that Curlie might not miss it, set it solidly in a hard-packed snowbank.
“That’ll do,” said Jennings. “Now give us a hand. Watch your face; it’s freezin’—your cheeks. Take your mitten off and rub ’em.”
The dogs, with tails to the wind, stood patiently enduring the storm. But when Jennings tried to get his team together they backed, twisted and turned in such a manner as to render them useless.
“Here, Ginger,” shouted Joe, “here Bones, Pete, Major. Show ’em what a real dog team can do!”
So great was the comradeship between these dogs and their young master that he was able in a moment’s time to hitch them to the sled, ready for action.
“Good old boys!” he muttered hoarsely; “we’ve fought wolves together. Now we’ll fight this blizzard.”
A sled-load of camp equipment was soon moving down to the willows by the creek bed.
In the course of an hour they had succeeded in establishing a safe and fairly comfortable camp. The dry willow leaves served in lieu of Arctic feathers, while the stems and branches made a crackling fire whose genial warmth pervaded the tent in spite of the storm.
“Now for a feed,” said Joe, producing his hunting bag.
“What you got?”
“Ptarmigan. Three of ’em.”
“Good!”
“We’ll save one for Curlie,” said Joe, tossing one of the birds into the corner. “It’ll be better piping hot.”
“I’m worried about Curlie,” said Jennings, cocking his head on one side to listen to the howl of the storm. “This is no night to be out alone. Ought to do something, only we can’t; not a thing. Be lost yourself in no time if you went out to look for him.”
“You fix these birds and I’ll set up the radio-phone,” suggested Joe. “He took his belt set with him. We can at least listen in for him.”
A half hour later, as he sipped a cup of delicious broth, Joe gave an exclamation of disgust:
“What’s the good of all my listening in? He can’t get a message off. He’d have to have a high aerial for that. Could manage it with balloons on a still night, but not in this gale. Wires would tangle in an instant. You can—”
He broke off abruptly, to clasp his receivers to his ears. He was getting something.
* * * * * * * *
Curlie had once read a book written by a man whose daring exploits in the north he had greatly admired. This writer had said that the notion that falling asleep when out in a blizzard might cause one’s death by freezing was a great mistake.
“Should you find yourself lost in a blizzard,” he remembered the words as well as he might had he read them but an hour before, “seek out a sheltered spot and compose yourself as best you can. Save your strength. If you can fall asleep, so much the better. You will awake refreshed. You will not freeze. If you become chilled, the cold will waken you.”
“I wonder if that is true?” he thought to himself as he huddled against the cut bank between his two walls of snow to watch the snow sifting down the hillside like sand down a dune.
He did not attempt to decide whether or not he would put the thing to a test. He merely sat there until the white, sifting snow became brown and gold, until the gale became a gentle breeze, until all about him was the warmth of a tropical clime.
Before him a palm tree spread its inviting shade. Across the horizon a slow procession moved, camels and horses. “A caravan,” he murmured. Then silently the scene shifted. Before him instead of palms were cacti. Instead of camels a great herd of cattle urged on by men on horseback, who swung sombreros and lariats. A cloud of dust followed the herd lazily. But ever just before him the brown sand sifted, sifted, sifted eternally.
Into this scene there moved a beautiful girl. She was dressed in the gay costume of a Mexican; her cheeks were brown with the sun, but she was good to look at. Moving with a strange grace, she came close to him and whispered in his ear. What she said was:
“Curlie! Curlie Carson, are you there?”
The question seemed so strange that he started, and, starting, he suddenly awoke. The girl and her desert vanished like magic. Before him the sifting still went on, but now again it was sifting snow. Drowsy with fatigue, benumbed but not chilled by the cold, he had fallen asleep and had been dreaming. The two deserts were but dreams.
As he sat there staring at the snow he suddenly realized that part of his dream was reality; the whisper continued:
“Curlie Carson, can you hear me?”
Clapping his hands to his ears, he suddenly realized that his belt radio was working and that the Whisperer had returned.
Springing to his feet, he attempted to grasp the coil aerial. His hands and arms were like blocks of wood.
Madly he thrashed them about until circulation was partially restored. The Whisperer was still speaking. What she said was not as important as the mere fact that she was speaking at all. He had remembered that he was lost. He thought he knew about where she and the outlaw should be located. If he could but discover the direction from which this whisper came, he might take a course to the left of it and in that way find the camp of his companions. It was a desperate chance but better than none. He was now convinced that the writer of that book was mistaken. He knew now that a person with a clear conscience has no business going to sleep when the mercury is thirty or forty below.
“Are you - there - Curlie?” came the whisper. “I would - have - called - you - sooner Curlie - but I - could not. We - have come - a - long way.”
Ah, now his fingers were working. He could move the coil. He held his breath. Had the last word been spoken? Was he lost as before? No!
“Something - tells - me - you - are - near - us - now - Curlie. Do - be - careful. It - is - dangerous - very - very dangerous.”
As the whispered words ceased, Curlie’s fingers trembled. He had located the Whisperer not forty miles away. He thought he knew the way back to camp. The wind had fallen somewhat. There was now a chance, a chance for his life. Dragging out his pocket compass, he fought his way to the top of the hill, then mapped out as best he could a course which should take him to camp.
Before leaving his shelter Curlie hacked from the quarter of caribou meat a piece the size of a roast. This he managed to tie to his back. He then faced up the hill and, having reached the top, scrambled and slid to the valley beyond.
A wild battle with the storm followed. Panting, freezing, aching in every muscle, yet doggedly determined, he fought his way from hilltop to hilltop.
“Ought to be getting near the place,” he told himself as he found himself in a valley broader than any other he had crossed. “Nothing looks familiar. Can’t see far. Blamed snow keeps blowing so.”
Suddenly he stopped short. A black hulk loomed just before him. His heart skipped a beat? What was it? A cabin? Some Indian’s hut? A miner’s shack? What a boon in a wild night such as this!
He was not left long in doubt. Pressing eagerly forward for twenty yards he at last paused to exclaim: “Willows! Just willows with dead leaves on!”
But willows were something. They meant a shelter from the blasts of wind which had been slowly beating the life out of him. They meant, too, a possible fire.
“I’ll just get into them and see what can be done,” he mumbled as he once more beat his way forward.
So great was the relief from getting away from the knife-edged wind that he felt there must be somewhere among the willows a hidden fire.
“Might make one, at that,” he told himself.
Struggling through the dense growth, he came at last to an open spot some five yards in diameter which, he decided, was probably a frozen pool. About this the willows grew to a height of eight feet. The protection from the gale was complete.
“I’ll camp here till it blows over!” he thought as he began cutting down some slender willows with his sheath knife. These he spread on the smooth surface of the bare spot. Above them he built a tent-shaped shelter with only one end open. This completed, he began making a pile of dry twigs and leaves. Over this at last he piled larger, green branches. Finally he dug down in the soft snow to where deep beds of mosses lay. These were soft and dry.
“Good tinder,” he murmured as he unwrapped a package of matches and struck one of them.
Soon he had a crackling fire.
“That’s better,” he chuckled. “Much better! Might even do a little cooking.”
Chipping off strips of frozen meat, he sharpened a twig and strung them upon it. These he held before the fire until they were done to a delicious brown.
“Mm!” he exulted. “Couldn’t be better! I only wish the other boys had some. Wonder just where they are now.”
Had he but known it, they were camped in the other end of this willow clump, not a quarter of a mile away. Five minutes’ walk down the frozen stream would have brought him to them. But they had allowed their fire to die down and had crept into their sleeping-bags. No smoke came from them to him and the smoke from his fire was blown directly away from them; so they passed the night in ignorance of their close proximity to each other. When morning came they took courses which carried them miles apart.
As for Curlie, when morning broke and he found the storm had passed, he at once made his way to the top of the hill to reconnoiter. There strange things awaited him.
As he reached the crest of the hill he beheld, apparently on the ridge just beyond, a sight which caused his pulse to quicken. He saw two dog teams moving along at a steady walk. There were seven dogs in the first team and eight in the second. They were hitched white man fashion, two and two abreast. The sleds of the long, basket type were well loaded. Atop the first rode a powerfully built man, dressed in an Eskimo parka. On the second sled, with back to Curlie, rode another person. Dressed as this one was in an Eskimo costume, one might have said he was looking at a small Eskimo man, a woman or a girl.
“The outlaw and the Whisperer,” he murmured.
Involuntarily his feet moved forward. To approach them alone would seem madness. Yet, so great was his desire to unravel their secret that beyond question he would have risked it. But a strange thing happened at that moment.
The sled party had come to the end of the ridge. They should naturally have gone gliding down the slope but, to Curlie’s vast astonishment, they moved straight on into thin air.
“What”—his mouth flew open in astonishment.
The next instant he laughed.
“A mirage!”
And so it was. As he focused his eyes closely upon the scene he could detect the faint outline of the long ridge upon which the party was really traveling.
“Might be forty miles away,” he told himself, “and I was going to stop them. Well, anyway,” he mused, “it’s a glimpse that may aid us in the future.”
He set himself to studying every detail of the equipment—dogs, harnesses, sleds, clothing, everything. He even sat down on the snow and traced on an old envelope with the stub of a pencil the picture as he saw it.
Then, suddenly, the sleds dropped from view.
“Light changed or they came to the edge of the ridge,” he told himself.
Left to his own thoughts, he began to doubt that this was the outlaw and his companion. There were natives in this region. These people had been dressed as natives. True, the dogs were hitched white man fashion and the sleds were white man type, but the Eskimo had learned many things from the whites; they took pleasure in imitating this superior race of people.
“No,” he said to himself, “it might not have been them. I don’t really know that the Whisperer exists at all. I don’t—”
He paused suddenly, to stare away to the left of him where was another stream and a second long clump of willows. The wind had dropped to a whisper. The air was keen and clear. From the midst of this clump of willows, straight up a hundred feet there rose a thin, pencil-like column of white vapor which appeared to be smoke.
“Now who,” he asked himself, “can be camping down there?”
His heart beat fast. Was it Jennings and Joe? He would see.
Hurriedly, yet with utmost caution, he made his way down the hill toward that clump of willows from which the thin column continued to rise.
As soon as morning broke, Joe and Jennings were out of the tent and away to make a search for their lost comrade.
With Joe’s team of four dogs and an empty sled they struck away up the hill in the direction of their old camp. They found the tattered handkerchief still fluttering in the breeze and Joe’s note safe beside it.
“Not been here,” said Joe. “Better drive out there in the direction he took when he went after that caribou.”
Taking his team to the right of the old camp site he led them backward and forward until Ginger, the leader, suddenly pricked up his ears and whined.
“He’s got the scent,” said Joe. “He’s on the trail. He’s a hound. Hounds are great for that. All we got to do is to follow. Ginger will find him.”
Away they raced after the dogs. Ginger did not hesitate for a moment until he led them straight to the pile of snow on which Curlie had cached his caribou meat, the part he could not carry away.
“Shows he got his game,” said Joe, looking with a feeling of pure joy at the pile of fresh meat.
As for the dogs, they stood on their haunches and howled with delight. Hacking off some small pieces Jennings threw one to each dog. These they swallowed at a gulp. He next piled the meat on the sled and lashed it there securely.
“Might as well take it along,” he explained.
Once more Joe took the dogs in a circle that they might pick up the trail. They found it at once and went racing away. But at the crest of the second hill they paused and refused to go farther.
Urge them as he might, lead them back and forth as he did, Joe could not get them to pick up the trail and go on.
The truth was that the trail did not go on. They had come to the spot where, after following the second caribou, Curlie had turned back. All tracks were snow blown but the scent was still there.
“Lost the trail,” said Jennings after a half hour of fruitless endeavor.
“Guess so,” said Joe, wrinkling his brow. “Guess the only thing we can do is to look around over the hills.”
They did “look around over the hills.” They searched until darkness began to fall, but discovered no trace of their missing comrade.
“Might as well go back to camp,” suggested Jennings. “He may have found his way back. He—he’s sure to turn up.”
There was a tone in his voice which suggested that Curlie might not turn up.
Hungry and weary, they were making their way back to camp when, on reaching the end of the willow clump farthest from camp old Ginger suddenly pricked up his ears and springing into the bushes attempted to drag his teammates after him.
“Hey there, you Ginger!” shouted Joe. “What you doin’ there. Got a rabbit er something?”
“Might be a trail,” said Jennings excitedly. “Cut him out of the team; hang on to his trace, follow him and see where he takes you.”
To Joe’s great astonishment the dog led him straight to a willow bush camp and the ashes of a burned-out fire.
“A camp!” he exclaimed. Then he shouted:
“Oh, Jennings! Tie up the other dogs and come in here.
“Do you think it could have been Curlie that made this camp?” he asked after the miner had looked it over.
“Might have. There’s nothing to prove he did or didn’t. Snow’s too hard to leave footprints and there’s no other sign.”
“Seems queer, doesn’t it? Not a hundred rods from our camp.”
“Question is,” said Jennings, “whoever he may be, where has he gone? If he’s a stranger he may have looted our tent by now.”
“That’s right,” said Joe, greatly disturbed.
“Let’s get out on the edge of the bushes and see if Ginger doesn’t pick up his trail.”
The old leader did pick up a trail at once. The trail led away from their camp. They were tired and hungry, but for all that, so eager were they to find some trace of Curlie and to solve this new mystery that they cached the meat in the tops of some stout willows and supperless turned their faces to the trail.
It was growing dark but since there was nothing to be done save to follow the dog leader, they marched on over hill and valley in silence.
At last they found they were approaching a second clump of willows. Involuntarily Joe reached for his rifle.
“May be camped there,” he whispered. “May be all right; may not. In a wilderness like this you never can tell.”
They approached the clump of bushes in silence. It was a small clump, soon searched. It was empty. They were about to leave it in disgust when Joe suddenly exclaimed:
“Look here at this!”
He pointed at some bushes from which the leaves had been completely stripped.
“Reindeer or caribou,” whispered the miner as if afraid of being overheard. Snapping on his flashlight, Joe examined the bushes and the ground.
“Believe you’re right. There are his tracks. He’s trampled the ground in a circle and eaten all the leaves in a circle too. How do you account for that?”
“Reindeer tied to the bushes.”
“Reindeer of the man we have been following,” said Joe thoughtfully.
The conclusion was so obvious that neither of them troubled to voice it. Curlie Carson had no reindeer, therefore it was evident that it had not been he whom they had been following on this new scent. Some man, who it was they could not even guess, had come to their willow clump and had camped there all night. Before coming he had tied his reindeer to this other clump and had left him there. In the morning he had returned to the reindeer and, having untied him, had driven away. At least this was the way Joe reasoned it out in his own mind. It was probable that Jennings’ conclusion was not far from the same.
“It is probable,” Joe went on to assure himself, “that this fellow is some Eskimo herder, who having left his reindeer to search for other reindeer or for rabbit and ptarmigan, has been caught in the storm and been obliged to camp in our willow clump for the night.”
All this fine reasoning was, as reasoning very often is, entirely wrong. But since neither Joe nor Jennings knew it to be wrong, they turned their reluctant dogs toward camp and wearily made their way back.
Joe was thoroughly downhearted. Curlie, he felt sure, had been frozen to death. There was nothing left but to go on without him, but without his genius to aid them it seemed probable that the expedition would end in utter failure.
The message he had caught the night before had been that of the Whisperer; the one which had so fortunately wakened Curlie from what might have been a fatal sleep.
“And the Whisperer was less than forty miles away,” Joe now told himself. “If Curlie had got back to camp we might by now have had our man in handcuffs. As it is, he has made another day’s travel and the race is still young. But,” he thought, with a feeling of determination, “with Curlie, we’d catch him yet.”
As you have doubtless guessed, the camp discovered by Joe and Jennings was that made by Curlie. They had been on his trail and not on the trail of some stranger. But had they attempted to follow his trail from that last clump of willows where the reindeer had been tied they would have become more and more bewildered, and had they followed that trail all night they would have caught no glimpse of their lost companion.
That you may understand why all this is true, I must tell you what happened to Curlie after he began to approach the clump of willows from which rose the thin column of white vapor.
“Glad I’ve got my rifle,” he told himself, as he moved in close to the willows. “You can never tell what you’re coming up against.”
Walking on tiptoes, he approached the end of the willow clump farthest from the column of white vapor.
“Just slip in through here and have the first look,” he whispered.
Pushing aside the bushes, he disappeared behind the dead leaves. There was not a breath of wind. This made it hard. It was impossible to avoid rustling the leaves. Since there was no wind to stir up other leaves, he felt sure that his presence must be detected.
His breath came quick as he paused to listen. No sound came to him. He moved on a few paces, then suddenly he paused. Had he caught a sound? Yes, there it was, a rustling of the leaves, of branches switching together.
“What’s that for?” he whispered, crouching low. “May be a signal.”
For some time he did not move. When at length he ventured to go forward, it was on hands and knees. Down low there were no leaves. Traveling in this manner he made no sound.
Only once his foot touched his rifle, causing a rattling sound.
Stopping dead still, he paused with wildly beating heart to listen.
“What a fool I am,” he told himself at last, “creeping up on some simple innocent people probably. But when a fellow is a hunter, he gets the habit of wanting to have the first look.”
A moment later he did get the “first look.” And at that instant he leaped to his feet and let out a wild shout of laughter.
The only creature to be seen in the bushes was a milk-white reindeer. This deer was hitched to a short, flat sled, such as reindeer herders use. The sled was overturned and had tangled with the willows. Because of this and because of the three inch wide rawhide strap which held him to the sled, the reindeer was unable to move from the spot.
The explanation of the column of vapor was not far to seek. It was merely the deer’s breath rising straight up from the willows. Since it was intensely cold the moisture from his breath froze at once and since there was not a breath of air stirring it could be seen mounting in air for many feet.
“Wouldn’t do to get too close to an enemy on such a day,” he told himself; “he’d spot you in an instant.”
This knowledge was destined to prove of great value to him in the days that were to come.
“Well, now,” he said, addressing the deer, “I’ve got you. Question is, what am I going to do with you. You’re evidently a bad actor; must have run away from your master. And I never drove a reindeer in my life.”
He paused in thought. The reindeer would be of service to him if he could but learn to drive him. He needed no food save that which the tundra supplied, the reindeer moss under the snow. To ride on the broad-bottomed sled in his search for his companions would be far preferable to walking; besides, it meant more speed.
“Huh!” he grunted, “try anything once. So, you old lost ship on the Arctic desert, let’s turn you over and see what you’ve got on you.”
Grasping the sled he disentangled it enough to allow him to turn it over. The sled carried a light load, all of which was covered with a piece of canvas securely bound on by a rawhide rope. That the reindeer had traveled some distance was testified to by the fact that many holes had been torn in the canvas as the sled traveled upside-down.
“Let’s see what treasure is hidden here,” he said.
His fingers trembled from curiosity as he untied the rope.
To his joy he found a very good sleeping-bag of deerskin, a pair of deerskin mittens, three large frozen fish and a camp-kit consisting of knives, spoons, cups, a tinplate, matches, reindeer sinew for thread and various other odds and ends beneath the canvas.
“For all these,” Curlie said, “old reindeer, I thank you. They’ll come in handy when we take the trail.”