CHAPTER VIIITHREE MEN DISAPPEAR
It was the dirigible balloon that Johnny Thompson saw as he rounded the point of the hill in his wild flight from the Bolshevik band.
With his dogs grouped about him, he stood and gazed at it in speechless astonishment. Where had it come from? What was its mission? Whither was it going? These and many other questions sped through his mind as the balloon rose lazily in air.
Scarcely a moment had passed when a sound arrested his attention. It was the thunder of a powerful gasoline engine. He guessed that it was the motor of his own airplane. He had not long to doubt, for in a second the machine came swooping into sight. It made directly toward the clumsy sausage. Lithe and bird-like it tore away after the balloon.
Was this a friendly visit or an attack? The answer came in a series of noisy punctuations—the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun.
This balloon then was an enemy. Dimly the truth entered Johnny’s mind. He was beginning to connect the balloon with the little yellow men who had attacked him, and with the earth shudder, but how it all fitted in he could not tell. Who was the enemy?
His eyes were on the two ships of the sky. The airplane, having circled close to the cabin of the balloon, had fired a volley, whether directly at it or above or below it, he could not tell. Now the plane circled close again. But what was this? A man was climbing to the upper rigging of the plane. Now he was standing, balancing himself directly on top. Johnny recognized the slim figure of Pant. Now the plane, with engine dead, drifted toward the cabin of the balloon. They were almost even with it. There came three snorts of the engine and the plane shot beneath the cabin, then out on the other side. But Pant? Where was he? Hewas not on the upper surface of the plane nor climbing down on the rigging.
Johnny sat down dizzily. Cold perspiration stood out on his brow. The excitement, following hours of fatigue and near starvation, was too much for him; his head swam; his eyes blurred.
But he shook himself free from these sensations and gazed skyward. He expected to see Pant come crashing down to earth. He did not. There could be but one answer: he had leaped in midair for the underrigging of the cabin of the balloon and had caught it. What a feat! It made Johnny’s head dizzy to think of it. He did not doubt for one moment that Pant would do it. But what could be his purpose? Had the balloon broken loose? Was it drifting free, a derelict? This he could not believe, for the thing had seemed to travel in a definite direction. Besides, if this was true, why the machine-gun fire? Had they killed the only occupants? Johnny hoped not. He hated death. Whatever the men had done, he hoped they had not been killed. But why had Pant taken such chances?
Then as he looked, he saw a package drop over the side of the cabin. It fell straight downward, with tremendous velocity. But there came a sudden check. It was attached to a parachute. The parachute had opened. Its course was now marked by a little down-rush, then a pause, then a rush again.
He had been so intent on his observation of this that he did not realize that once more an object had fallen from the car. This time it was a man. He also was attached to a parachute.
As he came into Johnny’s circle of vision, the boy rose and waved his arms, crying with a hoarse shout of joy:
“Pant! Pant! Good old Pant! He’s safe!”
When Dave Tower and Jarvis led the little band of miners back through the cave, they found, as they had expected, that a small tunnel had been cut out of the frozen earth to form an entrance to the mine. Before entering this tunnel, they paused to look about them. Ranged about the walls, piled tier on tier, were blackcubes of sand and gravel. From these came the glitter of yellow metal. These were cubes of pay dirt which would yield a rich return when the spring thaw came. Bits of cable, twisted coils of wire, a pair of rusty pliers, told that electricity had been employed as power for mining.
A smooth spot on the cave’s floor showed where some form of engine had been set. That the power of the engine had been supplied by gasoline was shown by a great pile of empty one hundred gallon steel tanks which had been stolen from the company’s supply in the sheds.
Dave picked up the pliers and rubbed the rust from them.
“They’re Orientals all right,” he mused. “Pliers got their stamp on ’em. But say! These boys sure had some ideas about mining placer gold. A man could take their machine to Alaska and make a fortune. Let’s have a look.”
“Sure! Sure!” came from a half score of throats.
They hurried down the narrow tunnel to find themselves in the mine. Here, as in the cave, they found cubes of pay dirt piled high on every side. At the end of it all was a low square machine with a buzz-saw-like wheel extending from it. The power wires, still attached to it, had been cut some ten feet from it.
“’E’s a clever one!” said Jarvis.
“I’ll say so,” agreed Dave.
Before Pant leaped from the balloon, after throwing overboard the two hundredweight sack of gold which the yellow men, in their fright at the machine-gun fire, had deserted in the outer cabin, he performed one other valuable service. He threw over the heavy anchor, which was attached to a steel cable.
The anchor shot like a plummet for the ground and proceeded to hang itself securely in a corner of rock. The progress of the balloon was instantly halted. Still filled with terror at the machine-gun fire, the yellow men took to their parachutes. On landing, they made goodtheir escape by losing themselves in the rocky ledges which rose up from the sea shore. It was useless to pursue them there.
By the time all this had happened, Dave and Jarvis, with their men, had come out from the mine and had joined Johnny, who, still prancing about in his ridiculous costume, was rejoicing with Pant over the sudden enriching of their treasure-hoard.
“Get a windlass,” said Dave. “We’ll bring that giant bird to earth. There may be more treasure aboard her.”
In due time the balloon-cabin touched the snow and the men swarmed upon it.
They were disappointed in their hope of finding further treasure, but they did find a solitary man. He was a white man and was totally unconscious from a blow on the head.
“Dave, you and Jarvis stay here and see what you can do for the chap,” said Johnny. “All the rest of you come with me. We’ve got work ahead of us and a plenty. The Bolshevik band will be here in less than twenty-four hours.We’ll have to float our schooner, load the provisions and gold and beat it.”
He turned once more to Dave and Jarvis. “If you bring him to consciousness and can manage it, carry him to the ship. Otherwise I’ll send two men to help you when we are through loading.”
Wild hours of tireless labor followed for the the main gang. To bring the schooner from the bank to the water-channel, a quarter of a mile over the ice, was no mean task. It was at last accomplished. After that, the loading went on rapidly.
Nothing had been seen of Dave and Jarvis when the last case of provisions had been brought aboard.
Johnny chose two of the men and went round the hill to assist in bringing the injured man to the ship. Imagine his astonishment when, on rounding the curve, he saw that the balloon was gone.
“Gone!” he murmured, dazed at the suddenness of it.
A hasty examination of the surroundings gave them no sign of the missing men.
“Must have broken loose and sailed away with them.”
At that instant he caught the gleam of a light on the western sky.
“Camp fire of the Bolsheviki. We can’t wait another moment,” he muttered. “And it wouldn’t do any good if we did. They’re gone.”
He turned and led his men back to the ship.
A half hour later the little schooner was pop-popping her way through a narrow channel to open water beyond. She carried, besides her crew and provisions, a hundredweight of gold taken in the last three days from Mine No. 2, and twice as much taken from the robber yellow men. Thirty-five per cent of this would do wonders in Vladivostok. Johnny was sitting and thinking of these things and of a wireless message he had received but a few days before, when he suddenly began wondering where Pant was.
“Say,” he exclaimed, turning to one of hismen, “where’s Pant? Haven’t seen him since we put out.”
Sure enough, where was he? They searched the ship. He was not to be found. At last Johnny spied a note pinned to his spare parka. It was written by Pant.
“Dear Johnny,” it read, “you will pardon me, I am sure, for leaving your service at this time. But you won’t need me down there and Vladivostok sounds too tame. Up here there is real adventure.
“Good-bye,
“PANT.”
Johnny looked at the man beside him and the man looked at him.
“Queer chap,” murmured Johnny. “But a real sport at that.”
“No use to try to find him.”
“Not a bit.”
“Queer chap,” Johnny murmured again, “Queer eyes.”
“That Pant was just short for Panther Eye,” said the miner. “Men gave him the name. Oneof them claimed he was hunting panthers once with a skillful surgeon. A panther tore his right eye out. The surgeon shot the panther and grafted an eye into Pant’s empty socket. The fellow claimed he’d seen him with those yellow goggles off. Said his pupil contracted in the light like a great cat’s eye. But you can’t believe half those men tell you.”
“No, you can’t,” said Johnny. “I guess every chap has a right to have a secret or two about himself and keep them. Pant had his and kept it. That’s about as far as we’ll ever get on that mystery. What say we go to chow?”
CHAPTER IXSTARTLING PERILS
In the harbor at Vladivostok a thirty-ton gasoline schooner threaded its way through narrow channels left by ocean liners and gunboats toward a deserted water-front where half-dismantled warships of ancient Russian design lay rotting in the sun. Straight to a rickety wharf they made their way.
Hardly had they thrown a line over a swaying post when two men sprang across the narrow space.
“Watch your step!”
It was Johnny Thompson who spoke. The man with him was the young doctor of his outfit.
As they cleared the dock and entered a side street of this metropolis of eastern Russia, they walked with a heavy tread; their step lacked theelasticity that their youthful faces would warrant. They were either very weary or very heavily burdened. No burdens were visible, though something might be concealed beneath their greatcoats. There was, indeed, a bulkiness about their forms from shoulder to waist, but in this Arctic clime, coming as they had from the north, one might easily credit this to sweaters.
As they reached the shadow of a building, Johnny stopped and fumbled in his pocket. At the same time his gaze wandered away toward the north.
“Wonder where Pant is now?” he grumbled. “I miss the little rascal, don’t you?”
“Sure do.”
“Wonder what made him drop us flat that way?”
“Can’t say. Had a reason, though. He always had a reason, and a good one. There was something he wanted to do.”
“Hope he does it quick and gets on down here. He’s been part of my bodyguard so long,I confess I don’t feel safe in a new place like this without him.”
Johnny stopped fumbling in his pocket and drew forth three yellow slips of paper.
“Here’s the messages. I wrote ’em all down. Mighty little good they’ll do us.”
He read them aloud:
“‘When can you come across?’”(Signed) “M.”
“‘When can you come across?’”
(Signed) “M.”
“‘We must produce. At once.’”(Signed) “M.”
“‘We must produce. At once.’”
(Signed) “M.”
“‘Am in danger. Come across.’”(Signed) “M.”
“‘Am in danger. Come across.’”
(Signed) “M.”
“What does a fellow get out of that, anyway?” he grumbled. “What does this fellow ‘M’ expect? The first one reached us after we’d been operating two months, the second a month later, and the third a month after that. What does he think this land is like? Three thousand miles! But then, I suppose the rotten Russians did it. Made threats, likely.”
“Doesn’t give any address,” commented the doctor.
“Not a scratch. We’d better go to the Red Cross headquarters, wherever that is. Let’s hunt it up.”
Again they took up their heavy, even tread and came out from the narrow street onto a broader one, which appeared to lead to the business section of the city.
As Johnny sniffed the pungent odor of spring in the twilight air, he was forcibly reminded of the time consumed in that journey from the mines to Vladivostok. He regretted the many delays. When they occurred, he had fairly fumed at them. He realized now that “M,” whoever that might be, the agent sent from Chicago to superintend the distribution of supplies for the refugee orphans, might have been compelled to leave Russia before this. That the Russians, disturbed by a thousand suspicions and fears, would not tolerate a stranger who had no apparent purpose for being in their land, he knew all too well. The agent could state the purpose of his presence in the beginning and get away with it, but when months had elapsed andnothing had been done, what dark suspicions might be directed against him?
Johnny heaved a sigh of resignation. Nothing that had happened could have been avoided. Time and again ice-floes clogging the waters of those northern seas had threatened to crush their craft, and only by long detours and many hours of tireless pulling away from the giant cakes had they found a passage. The journey could have been made by reindeer in the same length of time. As he thought of that, his heart skipped a beat. What if the little yellow men who had come so near making away with that two hundredweight of gold had succeeded in securing reindeer, and had made their way to Vladivostok? What would they not risk to regain possession of the gold that had been snatched from them?
As he thought of this, he picked his steps more cautiously along the slippery streets. He cast a glance to the right and left of him. Then he started and plucked at his companion’s sleeve.
“Hist!” he whispered. “Watch the alley to the right!”
When Pant so abruptly deserted Johnny Thompson’s service, leaving only a vaguely worded note to tell of his going, he had, indeed, a plan and a purpose. So daring was this purpose that had he taken time to think it through to its end, he might never have attempted it. But Pant thought only of beginnings of enterprises, leaving the conclusions to work themselves out as best they might, effectively aided by his own audacity.
His purpose can best be stated by telling what he did.
When he left the schooner that night and crossed over the shadowy shore ice, a blizzard was rising. Already the snow-fog it raised had turned the moon into a misty ball. Through it the gleaming camp fires of the Bolshevik band told they had camped for the night not five miles from the mines.
The blizzard suited Pant’s purposes well. Itmight keep the Russians in camp for many hours, and would most certainly make an effective job of a little piece of work which he wished to have done.
With a watchful eye he skirted the cabin they had left but a brief time before. A pale yellow light shone from one of the windows. Either the place was being looted by natives, or the yellow men had taken refuge there. The presence of a half-score of dogs scouting about the outside led him to believe that it was the natives. Where, then, were the Orientals?
Breathing a hope that they might not be found in the mines or the machine sheds, he hurried on. With a hand tight gripped on his automatic, he made his way into Mine No. 1. All was dark, damp and silent. The very ghost of his dead comrade seemed to lurk there still. Who was it that had killed Frank Langlois, and how had it been done? Concerning these questions, he now had a very definite solution, but it would be long before he knew the whole truth.
Once inside the mine, he hastened to the square entrance that had been cut there by the strange buzz-saw-like machine of the Orientals. The wall was thin at this place. With a pick he widened the gap until the machine could be crowded through, and with great difficulty he dragged it to the entrance of the mine. Once here his task was easier, for the machine was on runners and slid readily over the hard-crusted snow. With a look this way, then that, he plunged into the rising storm. Pushing the machine before him, he presently reached the mouth of Mine No. 3 in which three days of steam-thawing had brought the miners to a low-grade pay dirt. The cavity was cut forty feet into the side of the bank which lay over the old bed of the river.
Having dragged the machine into the farthest corner, he returned to the entrance and at once dodged into the machine sheds. To these sheds he made five trips. On a small dog-sled he brought first a little gasoline engine and electric generator, next eight square batteries,then some supplies of food, a tank of gasoline, and some skin garments from the storeroom. His last journey found the first gray streaks of dawn breaking through the storm. He must hasten.
With a long knife he began cutting square cakes of snow and fitting them into the entrance of the mine. Soon, save for a narrow gap well hidden beneath a ledge of rock, the space was effectively blocked.
He stretched himself, then yawned sleepily.
“It’s a poor game that two can’t play at,” he muttered. “Now, if I can get this machinery singin’, we’ll see what Mine No. 3 has saved up for us. Unless I miss my guess, from the way the rock lays, she’ll be a rich one.”
With that he crept into his sleeping-bag and was soon lost in the land of dreams.
Pant’s first act, after awaking some six hours later, was to connect four of his batteries in series, then to connect the ends of two wires to the poles of the series. The wires were attached at the other end to a socket for an electric light.
When the connections were completed he screwed in a small bulb. The filament in the lamp glowed red, but gave no light.
Two batteries were added to the series, then two more. At this, the light shone brightly, dispelling the gloom of the place and driving the shadows into the deepest recesses.
With a smile on his lips, the boy twisted a wire into a coil, connected it to the battery circuit, watched it redden, then set his coffee-pot over it.
He was soon enjoying a cup of hot coffee and pilot bread.
“Not so bad! Not even half bad!” he muttered good-naturedly to himself. “Electricity is great stuff. Now for the mining stunt!”
He listened for a moment to the howl of the blizzard outside, then began busying himself with the machinery at hand. Connecting the batteries to the gasoline generator to give it a “kick-off,” he heard the pop of the engine with evident satisfaction. He next connected all his batteries in series and, having connected theengine, ran wires from it to the motor in the strange, mining buzz-saw. There followed a moment of suspense, then a grunt of disgust.
“Not enough voltage. Gotta get more batteries to-night. Dangerous, too. Storm’s going down. Bolsheviki coming in. Natives prowling an’ yellow men, don’t know about. Gotta do it though.”
At that he sat down on his sleeping-bag, and, with arms outstretched, like Jack London’s man of the wild, he slept the uneasy sleep of one who hunts and is hunted.
Night came at last and, with it, wakefulness and action. Cutting a hole through the snow-wall, which under the drive of the storm had grown to a surprising thickness, he crept out and slid down the hard bank, leaving no tracks behind.
The storm had abated; the moon and stars were out. As he dodged into the store sheds, he fancied that he saw a shadow flit from sight at the other end.
Working rapidly, he unearthed four freshbatteries. They were heavy affairs. A sled improvised from a plank and a bit of wire would aid him in bringing them up the hill. He had just arranged this contrivance and was about to turn toward the door, when a sudden darkening of the patch of moonlight admitted by the open door caused him to leap behind the massive shape of a smelter. He peered around the edge of it, his breath coming rapidly.
Through his mind sped the question: “Bolsheviki, natives, or yellow men?”
Upon freeing itself from the frozen claybank, the sausage balloon, with Dave Tower, Jarvis and the unconscious stranger on board, rose rapidly.
In their wild consternation, Dave and Jarvis did not realize this until the intense cold of the upper air began to creep through the heavily-padded walls of the cabin.
At this, Jarvis dropped on his stomach and stared down through the plate-glass on the floor.
“Shiver my bones!” he ejaculated, “we’re a mile ’igh and goin’ ’igher!”
At this word Dave dashed for the door. He had it half open. A blast of air so cold that it seemed solid ice rushed its way through the opening.
Immediately Jarvis threw himself against the door.
“What’ll y’ do?” he stormed. “I ’ates to think ’ow stiff you’d freeze h’out there in the ’alf of a second.”
Dave shook with the cold and the excitement. The stranger in the corner groaned.
Jarvis sprang to the gasoline motor.
“If we can get ’er started we’ll ’ave some ’eat.”
After five minutes of fumbling about with stiffening fingers, he straightened up with a sigh.
“Can’t make ’ead nor tail of ’er. These bloomin’ ’eathen; they make such queer riggin’s.”
Dave did not answer. He had discovered aseries of sealed wet batteries lined against the wall and, having dragged one of these loose from its wiring, prepared to test it out with a piece of insulated wire.
In a second there came a blinding flash.
“Charged! Charged to the gunwale!” he exulted. “Now if we can only hook them up with the heating system of this cabin, we’re all right. Give us a hand.”
Jarvis, catching his idea, began searching for the connecting wires of the heating system, while Dave connected the batteries in series.
“’Ere they are,” he exclaimed suddenly. “Right ’ere, me lad.”
Soon a life-sustaining warmth came gently stealing over the place.
“Take hoff ’alf the batteries,” suggested Jarvis, “’alf’s a plenty. There’s no tellin’ ’ow long we’ll be sailin’ in this hark.”
This was hardly done when their attention was attracted by the stranger. He had groaned and turned over.
“Now that it’s warm enough,” suggestedDave, “we’d better try to help the poor fellow back to consciousness. If he hasn’t suffered a concussion of the brain, he’ll live yet, and perhaps he can tell us things. There are plenty of questions I’d like to ask him.”
“Yes,” exclaimed Jarvis eagerly. “’Oo killed Frank Langlois.”
They went to work over the man. Having removed his outer garments, they unbuttoned his shirt and began chafing his hands, arms and chest, till they were rewarded by a sigh of returning consciousness.
“Where am I?” the man whispered, as he opened his eyes.
“You’re all right,” answered Dave quickly. “Drink this and go back to sleep.”
He held a cup of steaming malted milk to the man’s lips. He drank it slowly. Then, turning an inquiring look on Dave, he murmured, “American?”
In another second he was lost in a sleeping stupor.
Dave twisted himself about and gazed downat the panorama of purple shadows that flitted along beneath them.
“Patient doing well,” he murmured at last. “Going due north by west. Forty miles an hour, I’d say. Beautiful prospects for all of us, Mr. Jarvis. Going right on into a land that does not belong to anybody and where nobody lives. Upon which hundred thousand square miles would you prefer to land?”
Jarvis did not answer. He was dreaming day dreams of other adventures he had had in that strange no man’s land.
Finally he shook himself and mumbled:
“No ’opes. No ’opes.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say it was as bad as that,” smiled Dave. “Let’s have a cup of tea.”
“Yes, let’s,” murmured Jarvis.
CHAPTER XPLAYING A LONE HAND
Hardly had Johnny Thompson in Vladivostok uttered his warning to the doctor than a figure leaped out at him from a dark doorway. Not having expected an attack from this direction, Johnny was caught unprepared. A knife flashed. He felt a heavy impact on his chest. A loud snap followed by a scream from his assailant. There came the wild patter of fleeing footsteps, then the little drama ended.
“Hurt?” inquired the doctor, a deep concern expressed in his tone.
“Nope,” Johnny smiled. “But I’m afraid the rascal’s ripped a hole in one of my moose-hide sacks. The gold is leaking out.”
“Hang the gold!” ejaculated the doctor. “Let it go. It’s done its part—saved yourlife. An armor of gold! I’d say that’s some class!”
“That’s all right,” said Johnny, still keeping an eye out for other assailants. “But sentiment won’t buy biscuits and honey for starving children. Gold will. Give us a hand at stopping the leak.”
“Go easy,” admonished the doctor, “you’ll give the whole thing away.”
They worked cautiously, revealing nothing to a possible prying eye. When the task was completed, Johnny stooped to pick up the hilt of the broken blade. He turned it over and over in his hand, regarding it curiously.
“Oriental, all right,” he murmured. “I wonder if those little rascals could have beaten us here.”
“Come on,” exclaimed the doctor impatiently, “this is no place for wondering. I’m for a safe place inside somewhere.”
A few turns brought them to Red Cross headquarters, and to one of the big surprises of Johnny’s rather adventurous life. He hadhardly crossed the threshold when his lips framed the word:
“Mazie!”
Could he believe his eyes? Yes, there she was, the girl chum of his boyhood days, the girl who had played tennis and baseball with him, who had hiked miles upon miles with him, who swam the sweeping Ohio river with him. The girl who, in Chicago, having tried to locate him, had come near to losing her life in a submarine.
“Mazie! Mazie!” he whispered. Then, “How did you come here?”
“By boat, of course,” smiled Mazie. “How’d you think?” She took both his hands in hers.
“But, Mazie, this is a man’s place. It’s dangerous. Besides, what—”
“What’s my business? Well, you see, I’m your agent. I’m going to spend all that splendid gold you’ve been digging to help the orphans. I’m ‘M.’ It was I who did all that frantic wireless stuff. Did you get it?”
“I did,” smiled Johnny, “and if I’d known it was you I would have come on by wireless.”
“But now,” he said, after a moment’s reflection, “as Jerry the Rat would say, ‘Wot’s de lay?’”
Mazie sighed. “Honest, Johnny, have you the gold? Because if you haven’t, it’s ‘Home, James,’ for me. These Russians are the most suspicious people! They’ve threatened to put me aboard ship twenty times because I wasn’t making good. I wasn’t feeding anybody, as I have said I would. And, oh, Johnny!” she gripped his arm, “the last three days I’ve been so frightened! Every time I ventured out, day or night, I have seen little yellow men dogging my footsteps; not Japanese military police, but just little yellow men.”
“Hm,” grunted Johnny, “I fancy Doc and I met one of them just now. He seemed to know us, too. Here’s his dagger.”
“Broken?” exclaimed Mazie. “How?”
Johnny stepped to the door of the small parlor and closed it.
“Gold,” he whispered, “an armor of gold.”
From beneath his coat he drew a sack of gold.
“Yes, Mazie, we’ve got the gold—plenty of it. Again I ask you, ‘Wot’s de lay?’”
Mazie clasped her hands in glad surprise. For fully three minutes she acted the part of a happy child dancing around a Christmas tree, with Johnny doing the part of Christmas tree and delighted parent all in one.
At last, she came down to earth.
“What we need is food and shelter for the poor little wretches. Oh, Johnny, I can’t tell you—”
“Don’t need to,” interrupted Johnny, “I soldiered in this God-forgotten hole for nine months. Tell me what we can do first and fastest.”
“Well, there’s a great empty hotel down in the street St. Jacobs. It has a wonderful dining-room, big enough for a thousand women and children. We can rent it for gold.”
“For gold,” said Johnny, setting a sack of gold on the table.
“Then we can get rice and sweet potatoes from China by ship, for gold.”
“For gold,” again echoed Johnny, banging three heavy sacks on the table.
“Oh, aren’t you the Midas!” exclaimed Mazie, clapping her hands.
“But, Johnny,” she said presently, “there’s one more thing. It’s hard, and I’m afraid a bit dangerous. Rice and sweet potatoes are not enough for starving people.”
“I’ll say not.”
“They need soup. Many would die without it. Soup means meat. We must have it. The nearest cattle are a hundred miles away. The Mongols have them. They are the border traders between China and Russia, you know. They have cattle—hundreds of them. They can be bought for gold.”
“For gold,” smiled Johnny, patting his chest which still bulged suspiciously. “I’ll be off for the cattle in the morning. I’ll leave Doc here to do what he can, and to look after you.”
“Good!” exclaimed Mazie, clapping her hands again. “The Red Cross will supply you a band of trustworthy Russians to help drive thecattle here. The Mongols won’t dare bring them.”
“All right,” said Johnny. “And now, what about the supposed hospitality of the Red Cross? I’m hungry. So is Doc.”
“Right this way,” and Mazie hurried through the door.
Half an hour later the two were enjoying such a meal as they had not eaten for months; not because of its bountifulness, nor richness, but because it was prepared by a woman.
“To-morrow,” said Johnny, as he murmured good-night, “I am to venture into one more unknown land.”
“Yes, and may your patron saint protect you as he has done in the past,” said Mazie.
“My patron saint is a miss,” smiled Johnny, “and her name is Mazie. Good-night.”
Realizing that he was trapped, the instant that forms blocked the door of the machine sheds at the Seven Mines, Pant tackled the problem of escape. If these were natives or yellowmen, they would treat him rough. If they were Bolsheviki, he could hope for no better fate. His only hope lay in escape. The place had no other door and no open windows. He must gain his freedom by strategy. Evidently, he must play the cat-and-mouse act about the piles of supplies and machinery.
As he dodged back to a position behind a large ore crusher, he managed to catch sight of the two men.
“Bolsheviki!” he gasped inaudibly. “What giants!”
Full-bearded giants they were, reminding him of nothing so much as of Bluebeard in the fairy books, or the Black Brothers in “The Lost River.”
Seeming to scent him, as a dog scents a rat, they moved cautiously down the narrow passage between piles. As yet, they had not caught sight of him. Hope rose. Perhaps they would pass by him. Then he could make a dash for it. Yet, this was not entirely satisfactory. They would follow him, would see where he had gone,if he escaped to the mine. Then all his plans would go glimmering.
Instantly there flashed through his mind a bolder and, if it worked, a better plan. Moving close to the crusher, he put his hand to the great hopper that rested on and towered above it. This was made of iron and was fully eight feet wide and quite as deep. His keen eye measured the aperture at the bottom. No giant, such as these were, could crowd through that hole. And the hopper was heavy. Applying all his strength to it, he felt it give ever so slightly. It was not bolted down; it was merely balanced there. He would be able to topple it over. And, once over, it would be a difficult affair to handle, especially from beneath.
As he waited, his heart thumped so loudly that it seemed the Russians must hear and charge down upon him.
They came on cautiously, peering this way then that. He caught the gleam of a knife, the dull-black shine of an automatic. It was a man hunt, sure enough—and he was the man. Nowthey were five paces from him, now three, now two. His breath came in little inaudible gasps. His muscles knotted and unknotted.
And now the moment had come. The men were even with the crusher, on the opposite side from him. Gathering all his strength, he heaved away at the hopper. There followed a grinding sound, a shout of warning, then a dull thud. The enemy were trapped.
Pant spun round the crusher like a top. Seizing the wire he had arranged for his improvised sled, he rushed toward the door, dragging the batteries after him.
A glance backward came near convulsing him with laughter. One of the Russians had succeeded in thrusting his head through the narrow opening at the top of the inverted hopper. Here he stuck. To the boy, he resembled a backwoodsman encircled by a barber’s huge apron.
But there was little time for mirth; business was at hand. New problems confronted him. Were other Bolsheviki near the shed? If so, then all was lost.
Poking his head out of the door, he peered about carefully. There was not a person in sight. The wind had risen.
“Good!” he muttered, “it will hide my tracks!”
He was soon speeding across the snow. In another five minutes he was peering like a woodchuck from his hole in the snowbank. His batteries were already inside. If he had not been observed, he had only to block his entrance and leave the wind to plaster it over with drifting snow.
As he looked his brow wrinkled. Then he dodged back, drawing the snow-cake door after him. The two Russians had emerged from the shed.
For hours on end the balloon, with Dave Tower, Jarvis and the stranger on board, now hundreds of miles from the mines, swept over the barren whiteness of unexplored lands. The sun went down and the moon shone in all its glory. The fleeting panorama below turned totriangles great and small—triangles of pale yellow and midnight blue. Now and again the earth seemed to rise up toward them. By this Dave and Jarvis knew that they were drifting over snow-capped hills. When it receded, they knew they were over the tundra. Sometimes they caught the silver flash and gleam of a river the ice of which had been kept clear of snow by the incessant sweep of the wind.
As Dave crouched by the plate-glass window staring down at that wonderful and terrible spectacle of an unknown land, he asked himself the question: “Was this land ever viewed by mortal man?”
The answer could be only a surmise. Perhaps some struggling band of political exiles, fighting their way through summer’s tundra swamps and over winter’s blizzard-swept hills, had passed this way, or lingered to die here. Who could tell? Surely nothing was known of the mineral wealth, the fish, the game, the timber of this unexplored inland empire. What a field to dream of!
His mind was drawn from its revels by a groan from the stranger. He was awake and conscious. Propping himself half up on an elbow, he stared about him.
“Where am I?” He sank back, an expression of amazement and fear written on his face.
“Who are you?” asked Dave.
“I—why—I,” the man’s consciousness appeared to waver for a second. “Why, I’m Professor Todd from Tri-State University.”
“What were you doing with the Orientals?”
“Orientals?” The man looked puzzled. “Orientals? Oh, you mean the natives; the Chukches. Why, I was studying them. Getting their language, taking pictures, getting phonographic records, and—”
Suddenly the man’s face went white.
“Where—where are we?” he stammered through tight-set lips. The balloon, caught in a pocket of thin air, had caused the car to lurch.
“Taking a little trip,” said Dave reassuringly. “You’re all right. We’ll land after a bit.”
“Land? So we are on a ship? I’ve beensick? We’re going home. It is well. Life with the Chukches was rotten, positively rotten—positive—”
His voice trailing off into nothingness. He was asleep again.
Dave stared at him. Here was a new mystery. Was this man lying? Had he been in collusion with the Orientals, and was he trying to hide that fact; or had the rap on his head caused a lapse of memory, which blotted out all recollections of the affair in the case and mine?
“Look, Dave!” exclaimed Jarvis suddenly, “as I live it’s the City of Gold!”
In the east the sun was just peeping over the horizon. But Jarvis was not looking in that direction. He was looking west. There, catching the sun’s first golden glow, some object had cast it back, creating a veritable conflagration of red and gold.
Dave, remembering to have viewed such a sight in other days, and in what must have been something of the same location, stared in silence for a full minute before he spoke:
“If it is,” he said slowly, “there’s only one salvation for us. We’ve got to get down out of the clouds. The last time I saw that riot of color it was on the shore of the ocean, or very near it, and to drift over the Arctic Ocean in this crazy craft is to invite death.”
He sprang for the door which led to the narrow plank-way about the cabin and to the rigging where the valve-cord must hang suspended.