CHAPTER IVCHUKCHE TREACHERY
The proposed hunt for “big yellow cats and little yellow men” did not come off, at least not at the time appointed. Morning found the tundra, the hills, everything, blotted out by a blinding, whirling blizzard. It was such a storm as one experiences only in the Arctic. The snow, fine and hard as granulated sugar, was piled high against the cabin. The door was blocked. Exit could be had only through a window.
Dave Tower, in attempting to make his way to the storeroom to secure a fresh supply of canned milk and evaporated eggs, found himself hopelessly lost in the blinding snow clouds. Possessed of singular presence of mind, he settled himself in the lee of a snow bank and waited. In time, a pencil of yellow light camejabbing its way through the leaden darkness. His companions had formed themselves in a circle and, with flash lights blinking here and there, sought and found him. After that, they remained within doors until the storm had spent its fury.
It was a strange world they looked upon when, after three days, they ventured out once more. The snow was piled in ridges. Ten, fifteen, twenty feet high, these ridges extended down the hillsides and along the tundra. Through one of these, they tunneled to Mine No. 2, making an enclosed path to the mine from the cabin.
“From now on, let her blow,” laughed Johnny when the tunnel was finished; “our work will go on just the same.”
When the men were all back at work, Johnny thought once more of the big yellow cat and the little yellow men. The storm had wiped out every trace of his struggle with the men and every track of the cat. But the native village? Might he not discover some trace of his assailants there? He resolved to visit the village.Since his men were all employed, he would go alone.
An exclamation of surprise escaped his lips as he rounded the point from which the rows of dome-like igloos could be seen. Where there had been nineteen or twenty homes, there were now sixty or seventy. What could this mean? Could it be that the men who had attacked him but a few days before were among these new arrivals? At first, he was tempted to turn back. But then there came the reflection that Nepossok, the old chief who made this his permanent home, was friendly to him. There would be little chance of treachery in the broad light of day.
He hurried on and walked down the snow-packed streets of a northern nomad village.
Reaching the old chief’s tent, he threw back the flaps and entered. He was soon seated on the sleeping platform of the large igloo, with the chief sitting solemnly before him and his half naked children romping in one corner.
“Many Chukche,” said Johnny.
“Il-a-hoite-Chukche. Too many! Too many,” grumbled the old man.
Johnny waited for him to go on.
Twisting the string of his muckluck (skin boot), the old man continued: “What you think? Want’a dance and sing all a times these Chukche. No want’a hunt. No want’a fish. Quick come no cow-cow (no food). Quick starve. What you think?”
“Perhaps they think they can live off the white man,” suggested Johnny.
The old man shot him a sharp glance.
“Eh—eh,” he grunted.
“But they can’t,” said Johnny firmly. “You tell ’em no can do. White man, plenty grub now. Many white men. Many months all a time work, no come open water. No come grub. Long time, no grub. See! You speak Chukche, this.”
“Eh—eh,” the old man grunted again. Then as a worried expression came over his face, “What you think? Twenty igloo mine. That one chief mine. Many igloos not mine. Nocan say mine. T’other chief say do. Then do. Not do, say mine. See? What you think?”
From the old chief’s rather long speech, Johnny gathered that Nepossok was chief over only twenty of the families of the village; that the others were under another chief; that he could tell them to hunt and fish, to be prepared for a food scarcity later, but that they would do as they pleased about it.
Johnny left the igloo with a worried expression on his face. If these natives had moved to this village close beside them with the notion that they would be able to trade for or beg the food which he had stored in his warehouse, they were doomed to disappointment. And having been disappointed, doubtless they would become dangerous.
This last conclusion was verified as he went the rounds of the village peering into every igloo. There were rifles in each one of them, good ones too—high power hunting rifles for big game—lever action, automatic. In every igloo he found men stretched out asleep, andthis on a splendid day for hunting. They were but waiting for the night, which they would spend in wild singing, tom-tom drumming and naked dances.
Johnny did not find the people he had come to seek. In none of the igloos did he see a single person resembling, in the least degree, the little yellow men who had attacked him on the hill.
All this but confirmed his own opinion and that of Jarvis, that somewhere in these hills there was hiding away a company of Orientals, spies of their government, perhaps. But where could they be?
Johnny was not surprised, two days later, when, on coming out of his storeroom, he found a dark-faced and ugly Chukche looking in.
“Plenty cow-cow,” the man grimaced.
“Ti-ma-na” (enough), said Johnny.
“Wanchee sack flour mine.”
“No,” said Johnny, closing and locking the door.
The man departed with a sour look on his face. He returned within an hour. With himwas a boy. Between them they carried the most perfectly preserved mastodon tusk Johnny had ever seen.
“Flour?” the man said, pointing to the tusk.
Johnny could not resist the temptation to barter for the tusk. He yielded. The man carried his flour away in triumph.
After that, not a day passed but a half score or more of the natives came sneaking about the cabin, the storeroom, and the mine, begging for food.
As the days wore on, as famine came poking his skeleton form into the igloos of the improvident natives, the condition became truly serious.
Johnny dispatched a messenger inland to discover if it would be possible to obtain deer meat from the Reindeer Chukches living there. When he found that a few deer might be obtained, he began trading sparingly with the coast natives. They had little to trade, and the little he could spare would only postpone the disaster that seemed hanging over the camp like a cloud. The natives would not hunt or fish and eachday found them growing more insolent and threatening.
This to the eager young miner was a great trial. Mining operations were going on splendidly. Mine No. 2 yielded a richer pay dirt each day. Indications were that in a very few days they would be mining the mother-lode from that digging and would be storing away pure gold in moose hide sacks, some to be sent to the men whose wealth had made the expedition possible and some to the orphans of Vladivostok.
It was at this time that the native with the dark and frowning visage came with the announcement that he had located some immense tusks of extinct monsters, a short distance inland. He begged Johnny to go with him to look at them and assured him that if they pleased him, they should be brought to the coast for barter.
“All right, come sun to-morrow, I go,” said Johnny.
“I better go along,” said Pant, when the native had left.
“Go if you want to,” said Johnny.
Next morning, just at dawn, the three men started on their quest for the ancient ivory.
The way led first up the frozen river bed, then over low-lying hills to a stretch of tundra. At the distant border of the tundra towered high cliffs, flanked by snow-blown mountains. Toward these they journeyed, tramping along in silence.
As they neared the cliffs, Johnny fancied that he saw some dark creatures moving among the rocks. The distance was too great for him to know whether they were human beings or animals.
It was with a creeping sense of danger and a feeling of thankfulness for Pant’s companionship, that, after arriving at the cliffs, he found himself being led into a dark cave in a hill of limestone rock.
“U bogak ivory” (look, here is ivory). The native whispered the words as if afraid the extinct monsters would waken from the dead and demand their tusks.
He had lighted a single tallow candle which gave forth a sickly, flickering light.
The place seemed fairly spooky. Only the pit-pats of their footsteps wakened dull echoes through the vaulted cavern. Johnny could not help feeling that there were more than three men in this cave. In vain he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of the walls to right and left of him.
They had gone perhaps seventy-five paces into the darkness when there came a sudden indistinguishable sound. Johnny thought it like the dropping of a small rock, followed by a half suppressed exclamation. A chill crept up his spine.
They moved on a few paces. Again came a sound. This time it was like two steps taken in the dark. At the same instant, fingers gripped his arm. He sprang into an attitude of defense.
“Stop,” came a whisper in his ear. “Place’s full of natives.” It was Pant. “When I knock the candle to the floor, you drop flat and crawl for the door.”
For a second Johnny stared in the dark at the place where Pant’s face should be. He caught again the puzzling gleam of yellow light.
“All right,” he breathed.
Ten seconds later, as the candle executed a spiral curve toward the floor and flickered out, Johnny dropped flat and began to crawl.
CHAPTER VTHE BIG CAT
Hardly had Johnny and Pant disappeared over the hill that morning in their quest for the supposed old ivory of rare value, when things began to happen in the neighborhood of the camp. Dave Tower and Jarvis had been detailed to inspect Mine No. 3, with a view to opening it as soon as the mother-lode had been reached in No. 2. Armed with pick and shovel, they had crossed the first low ridge, which made a short cut across the bend of the river, when Jarvis suddenly whispered:
“Hist! Down! The cat!”
Dave dropped to his knees, eyes popping at the sight just before him. Not twenty yards from them was a huge tiger. With head up, tail lashing, he seemed contemplating a leap which might bring him over a third of the distancebetween them. Two more leaps, and then what? Dave’s hair prickled at the roots; a chill ran down his spine; cold perspiration stood out on his forehead.
“If only we had a gun,” he whispered.
“Keep yer eye on ’im,” the Englishman whispered. “Don’t flinch nor turn a ’air. ’E’s a bad un.”
For fully three minutes—it seemed hours to Dave—the great cat lay spread flat to the snow. Then a nervous twitch of his paws told that he was disturbed. Dave’s hands grasped the pick-handle until it seemed they would crush it to splinters.
But what was this? The creature turned his head and looked to the right.
In another second they saw what the tiger saw. A clumsy, ponderous polar bear, making her way inland to some rocky cavern for a sleep, had blundered upon them.
“Ship ahoy!” breathed Jarvis. “Twelve feet long, if she’s an inch, and a bob for a tail at that.”
“Look!” whispered Dave. “She has her cub with her.”
“And the cat sees ’er. ’Oly mackerel, wot a scrap.”
When Johnny Thompson dropped on hands and knees in the cavern after the Eskimo’s candle had flickered out, he felt his arm seized by the twitching fingers of Pant, and, half by his own effort, half by the insistent drag of his companion, who seemed to be quite at home in this dungeon-like darkness, he made his way rapidly toward the door.
Complete darkness appeared to have demoralized the forces of evil that had been arrayed against them. Soft-padded footsteps could be heard here and there, but these persons seemed to be hurrying like frightened bats to a place of hiding. Twice they were stumbled upon by some one fleeing.
Johnny’s mind worked rapidly.
“Pant,” he breathed, “if they strike a light and hold it, we’re lost!”
“Got your automatic?”
“Sure.”
“Take time to get hold of it.”
“Got it.”
“Shoot at the first flash of light. That’ll fix ’em. They’re cowards. All natives are.” Pant jerked out the sentences as he crawled rapidly.
They were none too soon. In another moment a match flared. Seemingly in the same instant, so quick was Johnny’s movement, a blinding flash leaped from the floor and a deafening roar tore the tomb-like silence.
Johnny had fired at the ceiling, but this was quite enough. The light flared out. There was no more lighting of matches.
Creeping stealthily forward, avoiding the overturning of the smallest stone or bit of shale which might betray their position, they soon neared the entrance.
“Gotta make a run for it,” breathed Pant. “Automatic ready?”
“Ready.”
“Give ’em three rounds, then beat it. Makea dash to the right the instant you’re outside. Ready?”
Johnny felt the hand on his arm tremble for an instant, then grip hard.
When the great, white bear and her cub came upon the scene on that snow-domed hill where Jarvis and Dave cowered before the tiger, the point of interest for the tiger was at once shifted to the fat and rollicking cub. Here was a juicy feast. And to the great cat, inexperienced as he must have been in the ways of the creatures of the very far north into which he had wandered, the cumbersome mother seemed a rather insignificant barrier to keep him from his feast. One spring, a set of those vicious yellow teeth, a dash away, with the ponderous mother following at a snail’s pace—that seemed easy. He carefully estimated the short distance between them.
But if these were the sensations that registered themselves on the brain cells of this tawny creature, he had reckoned wrong.
He had made just two springs when themother bear right about faced and, nosing her cub to a position behind her, stood at bay.
Seeing this, the tiger paused. Lashing his tail and crouching for a spring, he uttered a low growl of defiance.
The bear’s answer to this was a strange sound like the hissing of a goose. She held her ground.
Then, seeing that the cat did not spring again, she wheeled about and began pushing the cub slowly before her.
“Will ’e get ’im?” whispered Jarvis.
“Don’t know,” answered Dave. “If I had a rifle, he wouldn’t. Whew! What a robe that yellow pelt would make! Just prime, too!”
Lashing his tail more furiously than before, the tiger sprang. Now he was within thirty feet of the bear, now twenty, now ten. It seemed that the next spring would bring him to his goal.
But here he paused. The mother was between him and his dinner. He circled. The bear circled clumsily. The cub was always behind her. The tiger stood still. The bear moved slowly backward, still pushing her cub. Againthe tiger sprang. This time he was but eight feet distant. He growled. The bear hissed. The crisis had come.
With a sudden whirl to one side, the cat sprang with claws drawn and paws extended. It was clear that he had hoped to outflank the bear. In this he failed. A great forepaw of the bear swung over the tiger’s head, making the air sing.
She nipped at the yellow fur with her ivory teeth. Here, too, she was too late; the tiger had leaped away.
The tiger turned. There were flecks of white at the corners of his mouth. His tail whipped furiously. With a wild snarl, he threw himself at the mother bear’s throat. It was a desperate chance, but for a second it seemed that those terrible fangs would find their place; and, once they were set there, once the knife-like claws tore at the vitals of the bear, all would be over. Then he would have a feast of good young bear.
At the very instant when all this seemed accomplished, when Jarvis breathed hoarsely, “Ah!” and Dave panted, “Oh!”, there came asound as of a five-hundred-pound pile-driver descending upon a bale of hay.
Like a giant plaything seized by a cyclone, the tiger whirled to the right twelve feet away, then rolled limply over and over.
“Ee! She packs a wallop!” breathed Jarvis.
“Is he dead?” said Dave.
The bear moved close to the limp form of her enemy and sniffed the air.
“Looks like she got ’im,” grinned Jarvis, straightening his cramped limbs.
For the first time the mother bear seemed to realize their presence, and, apparently scenting more danger, she began again pushing her cub before her, disappearing at last over the next low hill.
“Bully for ’er!” exclaimed Jarvis.
For some time they sat there on the crusted snow unable to believe that the tiger was dead, and unwilling to trust themselves too close to his keen claws and murderous fangs. Finally, Dave rose stiffly.
“Let’s have a look,” he muttered.
“Sure ’e’s done for?”
As they bent over the stiffening form of the great yellow cat, Jarvis gave the head a turn.
“Broke!” he muttered; “’is neck is broke short off! I say she packed a wallop!”
“And the skin’s ours!” exclaimed Dave joyously. “What a beauty! We’ll skin him before he freezes.”
Suiting his action to his words, he began the task. He had worked in silence for some time when he suddenly stood up with a start.
“What’s that?” he exclaimed.
“What’s what?”
“My knife struck metal—a chain about his neck!”
“Somebody’s pet!” exclaimed Jarvis, “and a bloomin’ fine one!” He bent over to examine the chain.
“But whose?” asked Dave.
“’Ere’s the tag. Take a look.”
“Looks oriental. Some numbers and letters. I can’t read them.”
“Sure,” grinned Jarvis. “Ain’t I been tellin’y’? It’s the bloody bloomin’ ’eathen from the islands down the sea-coast. They’re ‘angin’ about ’ere. They’ll be lettin’ out a ’ole menagerie against us some fine day—elephants, lions, mebby a hyena or two, and who knows what?”
He stood and stared at Dave; Dave stared back at him.
As Johnny Thompson prepared for the dash out of the cave, where he and Pant were to have been trapped, he realized that it was a desperate move. Pant had seen only lances and harpoons. There were doubtless rifles in the natives’ hands as well. He knew very well their intentions: they feared him as a leader and, hoping to trap him here, had planned to end his life. One by one, they would pick off his men. At last there would be a rush and the remaining few would be killed. Then the supplies would be theirs. In this land without law, they had nothing to fear but the failure of their plans. If he could escape this one time, he would be on his guard; he would protect himself and his men.
“C’mon,” Pant cried. “Three shots; then for it.”
Three times the automatic shook the walls of the cavern. Then they were away, out in the open breaking for cover among the boulders that lined the cliff.
Now they were dodging from rock to rock; now, for a second, Johnny saw the natives swarming from the cave like bees; now, they were hidden from sight; and now, he paused for an instant to send a bullet over the head of a runner who ran too well.
Soon they had lost themselves among the hills. Only once, in the five-mile run home, did a native appear on a hilltop. He beckoned, then disappeared.
After a time, when near camp, they slowed down to a walk.
“Pretty close,” smiled Johnny, slipping his gun into his pocket.
“I say,” murmured Pant, “do you think they were the same ones that attacked you back here on the hill a few nights ago?”
“No. Their work’s too crude. These others were real chaps.”
That night, after darkness had fallen over the hills, Johnny went into Mine No. 1 with a flashlight alone. Having reached a point where Langlois had been found dead, he sat down on a frozen ledge and stared at the rust-reddened pick-handle, which seemed to point an accusing finger at him for bringing that fine fellow here to meet his death. What had killed him? This was as much a mystery as ever.
There were many mysteries about this place; there was that earth-tremble that, to-night, was more noticeable than ever; there were those strange brown people who had attacked him on this very hill; there was the tiger slain that very day and skinned by Dave and Jarvis; there was the oriental chain and tag about the beast’s neck. Johnny seemed surrounded by many mysteries and great dangers. Was it his duty to call the deal off and desert the mines? Sometimes he thought it was. Ice conditions were such that it might yet be possible to get their gasolineschooner into open water and go pop-popping south to Vladivostok. But there would be those there who waited and hoped for gold to aid them in the battle against hunger, disease and death. Could they go empty-handed?
Rumors of a new peril had drifted in that day. A Reindeer Chukche, coming from a five days’ journey into the interior, had told of great numbers of Russians pushing toward the coast. These could be none other than Bolsheviki who hoped to gather wealth of one kind or another by a raid on the coast. If the Chukche was telling the truth, the stay of the white men could be prolonged by only a few days at the most.
At the same time, the mining crew had reported indications that they would reach the mother-lode in No. 2 within three days.
“We’ll chance it that long,” Johnny said, with an air of determination, as he rose and left the mine.
He was crossing a ridge of snow, when, as once before, his eye was caught by a spinning black object.
“Another phonograph record! Another warning!” he exclaimed. “Wonder what it will be this time?”
Johnny whistled thoughtfully to himself, as he strode forward to pick up the little black messenger.
CHAPTER VIIN THE GRIP OF TERROR
“Oh, there’s honey in the rock, my brother,
There’s honey in the rock for you.”
Johnny was listening to the second phonographic record. In high-pitched falsetto note the singer had repeated these words over and over. That was all. If the other message had seemed void of meaning, this one appeared doubly so, for here there were no improvised lines, only these two taken from a threadbare religious song. What could it mean?
Johnny did not puzzle over this long. There were too many other important matters to attend to. Dangers confronted them. He did not fear the natives for the present. But the Bolsheviki? If they were coming this way, then here indeed was peril enough.
“Dave,” he said, after a long period of musingby the fire, “I’m going to take the team of gray wolf-hounds with a two-day supply of food and go see what all this talk about Russians means. I won’t be in danger of being followed by natives, for I shall start long before sunrise. I’d send the boys with the airplane, but the sight of the machine would give us dead away. I can probably obtain the information we need concerning their numbers, rate of travel and so on, and not be seen at all.
“I shall leave matters in your hands. Push the mining in No. 2 to the utmost and get the richest of the mother-lode panned as speedily as possible. A hundredweight of gold would mean much. Should I fail to return, and should conditions seem to warrant the abandoning of camp, send the plane out to look for me. If they fail to locate me, take no chances. Clear the ice with the schooner as quickly as you can. I shall be all right. I came to this place from Vladivostok once by reindeer, and went north to Bering Strait the same way. I can take care of myself.”
“All right,” said Dave, a trifle anxiously. “I’ll do just as you say. Good luck, and may you come back.”
They gripped hands for a second, then parted.
In the meantime, over in the corner, with a discarded shirt thrust into the horn of the phonograph as a muffler, Pant was playing that newly-found record over and over. A puzzled frown wrinkled his forehead above the goggles.
Presently he sat up straight, and, tearing the muffler away, started the machine. His hands trembled as he sank back in his chair, limp with excitement. He allowed the record to grind its way out to the very end, then he nodded his head and murmured:
“Yes, that’s it, ‘money in the rock.’Money, plenty of it.”
When Johnny started out at four o’clock the next morning, he set his dogs zig-zagging back and forth to the land side of their cabin. He was hunting the invisible trail of the Reindeer Chukche who had come from the interior the day before. When once the dog-leader had comeupon the scent of it, the team bounded straight away over the tundra.
The cabin soon faded from view. First came the frozen bed of the river, then a chain of low-lying hills, then broad stretches of tundra again, with, here and there, a narrow willow-lined stream twisting in and out between snow-banks. The steady pat-pat of his “mucklucks” (skin boots) carried him far that day, but brought him no sight of the reported Russians.
After a brief sleep, he was away again. He had traveled for eight hours more, when, upon skirting the edge of a long line of willows by a river’s brink, he imagined he caught sight of a skulking figure on the further bank. He could not be sure of it. He pressed on, his dogs still trailing the reindeer sled. If they had come near the Russian camp, the trail would doubtless have made a direct turn to right or left of it to escape passing too closely. The Chukches avoided these Russians as merchant ships of old avoided a pirate bark. Contact with them meant loss of their reindeer, perhaps death as well.
So, confident in his false security, Johnny pushed on. But just as he was about to emerge from the river-bed, a dozen armed ruffians of the most vicious-looking type sprang from the willows.
“Whoa!”
Resistance was useless; Johnny stopped his team. He looked back and, to his disgust, he saw that their camp was pitched on the other side of that long row of willows. These shrubs had been caught by the frost when their leaves were yet green. The leaves had not fallen off, and, even at this time of year, formed a perfect screen, a fact for which Johnny was later to be profoundly grateful.
In vain he attempted to play up in a friendly fashion to the Bolsheviki. They looked upon him as an enemy and a hostage, for, in the first place, did they not know that American soldiers had, for many months, guarded a section of the Trans-Siberian Railroad against their armies? And, in the second place, did not Johnny drive a splendid team of gray wolf-hounds, which wouldbe of great service to them in their march to the coast? They did not understand how he came there. They asked him all manner of foolish questions, to which he gave quite as foolish answers, and, when this was at an end, they fitted a rusty pair of “bracelets” to his feet, and, thrusting him inside a vile-smelling tent, gave him vermin-infested blankets to sleep in and sour brown bread to eat.
“Here’s a pretty mess!” he stormed silently to himself. “There’s at least a hundred of them. They must travel slowly, but even so, four days will bring them to the coast; then, unless the unforeseen happens, it’s the ocean for our outfit, or perhaps worse than death. And if anything goes wrong, it’s all my fault because I failed to consider that this bunch would have moved forward from where the Chukche saw them. I only hope the boys find out in time.”
He listened for a while with aching heart to the wail of his dogs, who had been turned into their snowy beds without their supper, and, at last, from sheer exhaustion, he fell asleep.
Two days later he was led toward a peculiar square cabinet that had been set up in the snow. Beside it was a pile of glowing embers left from a fire of willows. The ten men who marched beside him were not armed. Since they pressed about him on all sides, cutting off all chance of his escape, no weapons were needed.
They had not told him what they meant to do. What the cabinet was, what the bed of coals meant, he could not even guess. Malignant grins gave the faces of the men a look that made his blood run cold. He had seen such an expression only once before, and that in the movies when Indians grinned at the prospect of burning an enemy at the stake.
He was soon inside the cabinet with one of his guards. This cabinet was divided into two compartments, each about four feet square. As soon as he entered one of these, he was told to remove all his clothing and was then handed a large, coarse towel. At this, he heaved a sigh of relief and even chuckled a little at his fright. He was merely being given a bath—a Russiansteam-bath. He had heard of such baths, and was now thoroughly in favor of them.
“A bath is a bath,” he whispered to himself as he twisted the towel about his hips, “and a great luxury in this country.”
He was pushed into the other compartment. It was stinging cold out here. A second guard appeared with a great metal can filled with the glowing coals from the fire Johnny had seen outside. He set this down upon a small stand, the top of which was on a level with Johnny’s waist, and backed out. A third man appeared with a bucket of water and a huge gourd. Taking a position directly in front of the door, this guard dipped a full gourd of water and poured it on the coals. Instantly a dense cloud of steam rose to the ceiling. This much steam, Johnny figured, would give one a comfortable bath. But at that moment, with a fiendish leer on his face, the man threw on another gourdful, then another. The door slammed and a bar thudded into place.
Immediately Johnny took in the full horror ofhis situation. He was to be steamed alive. Already the dense, white cloud was descending. Lower and lower it came. He crouched down to avoid it. In another moment, it would engulf him. No man could live in such a place.
His mind worked like chain-lightning. This cabinet? How was it fastened down? How strongly? His fingers felt for the lower edge of it. Working them down and under, he secured a hold. Then, with all his superb strength, he heaved away. Something snapped, but still the thing held firm. He heaved again. The touch of steam on his back lent him new power. Crack! Crack! Then the uprooted cabinet swayed a second and then crashed into three of the gaping spectators.
Johnny leaped forward. A burly fellow seized his arms. Using an old college trick, Johnny fell backward, taking the man with him. Then, with his foot on the other’s stomach, he sent him whirling into two other men, and, before they could recover from their astonishment, Johnny went sprinting down the side of the long row ofwillows, which had proved his downfall two days before.
He was headed for home. No Russian, nor Russian dog-team, could catch him. But he was clad only in a towel, and there were many miles of snow between him and his friends.
Suddenly, from the rear, there came the ki-yi of dogs.
“Hounds!” he murmured in despair. “Unhitched from the sled. They’ll catch me. I can’t escape them.” He stared wildly to right and left as he ran, but saw no way of escape.
After Johnny Thompson had left camp in search of the Bolshevik band that eventful morning, he was no more than out of sight when a slight figure crept from a snow-buried pup tent to the right of the cabin and went gliding away up the hill in the moonlight. It was Pant. Rapidly he scaled the snow-packed hillside. Arriving at last at the foot of the rocky cliff, he began a minute examination of those cliffs. Once he climbed to a dizzy height by clinging tothe crags. It was a cat-like feat which very few persons could perform, but he did it with consummate ease. At another time he dropped flat on his stomach and crept into a broad crevice between the rocks. He was gone for a long time, but finally appeared grimy with dirt and empty-handed.
“‘Money in the rock,’” he murmured. “‘Money in the rock for you.’”
Then, as if discouraged with his quest, he turned and started down the hill.
He had covered half the distance when something caught his eye. A black spot, the size of a baseball, had bounced mysteriously past him.
In a twinkling, he was away in mad pursuit. Slipping, sliding, bounding over the glistening surface, turning a somersault to land on his feet and race ahead, he very soon came up with the thing where it had lodged against a protruding flat rock.
His fingers grasped it eagerly. Here was a third message from the unknown one. Perhaps this would explain all.
CHAPTER VIITHE MYSTERY OF MINE No. 1
When Johnny Thompson saw that the wolf-hounds were on his trail, though he was without weapons of any kind and practically destitute of clothing, he decided to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the Russians, then to turn upon the pack and sell his life dearly, if indeed it must be sold to a murderous pack of half wolves.
As he sped forward, through his mind there ran all manner of stories told round northern camp fires. The stories had to do with these same Russian wolf-hounds. A man had once picketed his dogs near him in a blizzard and, creeping into his sleeping bag, had slept so soundly throughout the night that he did not realize the drifting snow was burying him. He had awakened to struggle against the weight ofsnow but could not free himself. Months later, when the spring thaw had come, his bones had been found picked clean by his wolf-hounds. A child at Nome, Alaska, playing with his father’s team, was scratched by one of them. The smell of blood had set them wild. They had attacked him, and before help could arrive had torn him in pieces. These stories flooding his memory lent added speed to his stalwart limbs.
He ran three miles, four, five miles. But at each added mile, the yelp of the hounds came more distinctly to him. Now he could hear the loud flap as they sucked in their lolling tongues.
He was becoming fatigued. Soon he must turn and stand at bay. He looked to the right and left of him. A cutbank presented a steep perpendicular surface against which he might take his stand with the knowledge that they could not attack him from the rear.
“But shucks!” he half sobbed. “What’s the use? I’ll be frozen stiff before they get courage to attack me.”
To the cutbank he ran, then, turning, waited.
With rolling tongues, the dogs came hurrying up to form themselves into a circle, seven gaunt, gray wolf-hounds grinning at one naked boy.
Then Johnny, catching the humor of the situation, not only grinned back, but laughed outright, laughed long and loud. What he said when he had finished was:
“Bowsie, you old rascal, why didn’t you tell me it was you?”
It was his own team. Having been unhitched at the time, they had recognized the stride of their master and had deserted with him. It was indeed a joyous meeting.
There was, however, no time to be wasted. The bitter cold air made Johnny’s skin crinkle like parchment. His feet, in contact with the stinging snow, were freezing.
Two of the dogs still wore their seal-skin harnesses. These Johnny tore off of them and having broken the bindings, wound them in narrow strips about his feet, tying them firmly around his ankles.
So, with his feet protected from the cold, hetook up the fifteen miles of homeward race, the seven dogs ki-yi-ing at his heels.
Five miles farther on, he came upon a cache built by some Reindeer Chukche. In this he found a suit of deer skin. It was old, dirty and too small, but he crowded into it gratefully. Then with knees exposed and arms swinging bare to the elbows he prepared for a more leisurely ten miles home. He was quite confident that the lazy and stolid Russians were not following.
Johnny was well within sight of the friendly hill that sheltered his cabin from the north wind, when, with a sudden gasp, he stopped and stared. Coming apparently out of the very heart of the hill, an immense brown object extended itself along the horizon and at last floated free in air.
To understand this strange phenomenon, we must know what had been happening at camp, and what Pant had been doing since finding the mysterious black bill.
The ball was covered with black paper. This much, Pant discovered at once. The rest he leftto the seclusion of his pup tent and the light of a candle.
When at last he unwrapped the paper, he found nothing more than a film, a small, moving-picture film. This had been developed, dried, then rewound on a spool. The remainder of the inner contents of the ball was nothing but blank paper with never a scratch of writing upon it. When Pant had examined each scrap carefully, he held the film to the light. There were pictures on it. As his keen eyes studied them, his expression changed from that of puzzled interest to intense surprise, almost of horror.
For a full half hour he sat there holding them close to the light, then far away; tipping them to one angle then another, mirroring them on the retina of his eye until nothing could efface them. Then, having rerolled and rewrapped them, he hid them away among his deer skins and turning over, fell asleep.
He was awake again by sunrise, and without pausing for breakfast went directly to the entrance of Mine No. 1. Having entered withouta light, he made his way to the back of the cavity. There he paused to listen. The earth shudder seemed to fairly shake the rocks loose about him. One pebble did rattle to the floor. The next instant there came the clang of rocks on metal. A light flashed. It was in Pant’s hand. In the gleaming circle of light from his electric torch, a brightly polished disk of metal appeared. It was eating its way through the frozen wall of sand and rock. One second the light flashed, the next second Pant was hurrying from the mine as if his life depended upon it.
Dashing down the hill, he broke into the mess-room where the men were assembled for hot-cakes and coffee.
“Arms! arms!” he panted. “Rifles, automatics, anything. A pick, two picks. C’mon.”
The men, believing that he had gone mad, stood staring in speechless astonishment.
“C’mon, can’t you?” he pleaded. “It’s the yellow men, the dirty little yellow men. They’ve got an infernal machine for cutting out the pay dirt in blocks. They’ve looted Mine No. 1 whilewe slept. That was the earth-tremble. C’mon, can’t you? Bring rifles! Anything. We’ll get them yet!”
Catching a glimmer of his meaning, the men dashed to the bunkroom and clubroom, to appear a moment later armed with such weapons as they could find.
Arriving at the entrance of Mine No. 1, Pant held up a finger for silence.
“Arms ready,” he whispered, “your left hand on the shoulder of the man ahead of you. I’ll lead.”
Without a light, he entered the mine and beckoned the men to come on. With soft and shuffling tread they followed, like a chain gang entering a dungeon. They took fifty paces, then they halted. A light flashed. Instantly every man gripped his weapon.
It was only Pant. What they saw before them caused involuntary ejaculations. A hole some eighteen inches square had been cut in the frozen wall.
For a second they listened. The silence wasso complete that the ticking of a watch sounded like the beat of an alarm clock.
“They’ve gone,” whispered Pant. “C’mon.”
His light blinked out. There followed the sound of garments rubbing against the walls. The man behind Pant felt him one instant, the next he was gone. He had crawled through the hole. There was nothing to do but follow. One by one, thrusting their rifles before them, they crawled through this narrow door from the mine. To what? They could not even guess.
“’Tis fair spooky,” whispered Jarvis to Dave. “’Ow does ’e know ’ow ’e should go? Can ’e see in the dark? ’Ow’d ’e come by the name Pant anyway?”
“Langlois give it to him,” Dave whispered back, “the fellow that was killed here, you know. He claimed Pant could see in the dark and began calling him ‘Panther Eye.’ The men cut it down to ‘Panther,’ then to ‘Pant.’ That’s all I know about it.”
“’E’s rightly named,” growled Jarvis, as he fumbled his way through the hole in the dark.
“This way,” came the low whisper of Pant. “As you were, hand to shoulder.”
Only the soft pat-pat of their footfalls on the floor of what appeared to be a narrow runway broke the tomb-like silence of the place. Now and again, as they moved forward, Dave Tower felt his shoulder brush some unseen object. Each time he shivered and shrank back. He expected at any moment to hear the roar of rifles, to find himself engaged in deadly combat with the mysterious robbers who had looted the mine of its treasure while they worked within a stone’s throw of it.
Twice they paused. A silence so deep that it was painful ensued. No sound came. They marched solemnly on. And now, they had struck a steep incline.
“Down low; down low; down low,” came whispered back from man to man.
They stooped to an almost creeping posture and began to climb. The ascent was steep as a stair. Twice Dave lost his footing, and once came near sending his rifle crashing to thefrozen earth. Some one behind was less fortunate. There came the clang of steel, then deathly silence.
Again they crept upward. Suddenly a ray of light cut through the gloom. In another second, they were in a veritable flood of light. And yet, as they glanced rapidly to right and left, they saw walls of rock. Above them too was a vaulted ceiling. Only before them was light. What could it mean?
In an instant they knew. Leaping toward the opening, they expressed their surprise in unchecked exclamations.
“A balloon! A balloon!”
It was true. It seemed to them, as they looked, that the whole side of the mountain had burst open and allowed a giant dirigible balloon to float out from its depth.
What had really happened was evident. These robbers, having located the rich mine and having no concession to mine it, had discovered this natural cave and had cut a channel from it to the place of the gold deposit. They hadreached the point by balloon. Having deflated it, they had stowed it away in the cave and had blocked the entrance of the cave with snow. The next blizzard had defaced every sign of their presence. Doubtless there had been a small secret entrance to the cave which none of Johnny Thompson’s men had discovered.
“They’re gone!” exclaimed Dave.
“And I ’ates to think ’ow much gold they took with ’em,” mourned Jarvis.
“Quick, the airplane!” shouted Pant, turning to the two aviators. “There’s a machine gun on it. We’ll halt them yet. I better go with you. Some of the rest of you explore the interior here. They may not have taken the gold.”
Dave Tower snapped on his flashlight, and, after taking one more look at the giant black “sausage” in the sky, turned to assist the others in the exploration of the looted mine. He had little hope of discovering the treasure, but he did want to see how they had accomplished the task.
One more question crowded its way to the front: “How had they killed Frank Langlois?”