Johnny nodded.
“It’s no clearing. No axe has been put to any tree. When God and the birds planted these low forests they left this place for me.
“Spring and summer,” he mused, “they are marvelous here. The wild ducks come to lay their eggs and rear their young. There’s an egg or two extra for me. There are ptarmigan in the low hills and fish aplenty. A light rifle and a gill-net, that’s all you need for living well.
“At night you hear the bull moose calling to his mate. One stormy day you see the caribou passing by your cabin, a line many miles long, straking away toward the north.
“When the notion seizes you, you drop into your canoe and paddle away. You enter a broad bay and you say to yourself, ‘There must be a prosperous village deep in the heart of this bay. There the saw mills are humming and the merchants are measuring out goods over the counter. There I will find a bed and a meal such as only good Molly McGregor can provide.’
“But you are deceiving yourself. There is no village, no saw mill, no store, no bed save that of spruce boughs, and no meal save that which nature will provide.
“In all this broad bay there is no village, nor even an inhabited cabin. This is God’s country and His alone.
“His and mine!” he added reverently. “That is why I love it. That is why, for me, it is the place of peace.
“And, Johnny,” he went on after a time, “sometimes I’d leave the lake and go wandering away into the heart of the forest, following a trail not made by man but by wild creatures of the North; moose, caribou, deer and bear had been there. And then I, smaller than them all, walked there unafraid. It made me feel strong, Johnny; made me think I was truly a child of the Great Father.
“The path was soft under my feet, all padded with moss, Johnny. The air was cool and damp. And such a stillness as there was, until some little bird began his faint, melodious song.
“And then a noisy old raven who was raising his black brood in a tree near-by would spy me. And, ah! how he would tear the air into shreds with his senseless warning!
“I’d hide myself away and squawk like a young raven who’d been captured. Then I’d throw myself on my back and look up as the angry black-coated one would come over shouting at me. I’d shout back and laugh, laugh at him and at the sun and everything that is good and clean and new. I’d imagine I was a boy again, Johnny, just a boy. Yes, Johnny, this is the place of peace, the place I can call home.
“But come!” He shook himself as if to bring himself back to the present. “Come, let us go inside. The silence may be broken. The Voice may speak. It will pay well to listen. Indeed it will.” And once again he told the truth.
The room Curlie Carson occupied while he stayed at the Prince George at Edmonton was on the second floor. It was reached by a very narrow elevator. There were probably stairways leading up. Curlie had never taken the trouble to look into that.
On this particular night, after he had tried in vain to study out the mysterious message, he retired early. He fell asleep the moment his head struck his pillow.
Since it was one of those silent nights of intense cold, he left his window open only a crack.
Late in the night he awoke with a feeling that a sudden draft of air had blown across his face.
“Wind’s coming up.” He shuddered with cold as he crept from his bed with the intention of shutting the window. Still not fully awake, he found himself bewildered by the facts that presented themselves to his mind. The wind had not risen. There was no draft. Yet the room was icy cold.
“As if the window had been wide open,” he thought.
Throwing up the shade, he looked out. At the back of the hotel was a narrow court and an alley. Down that alley a man was walking. He was tall and seemed rather gaunt.
“Probably some watchman been in for coffee,” he told himself.
Just then the man turned his head. He looked back and up. Then it seemed to the boy that he resisted with difficulty an impulse to bolt down the alley.
“Been into something,” Curlie decided. “None of my business, though.”
Having drawn the shade once more, he turned about and would have been under the covers in another ten seconds had not his bare foot come into contact with something soft and furry.
A surprised downward glance revealed a large mitten lying close to the window.
“That,” he whispered excitedly, “is not my mitten. No one’s been here but Jerry. It’s not his either. How—”
He broke off. Fully awake now, he was beginning to put facts together. He had awakened with a sense of cold. The room was frigid; yet the window was open only a crack. No gale was blowing. And now here was a mitten belonging to no one he knew. And it lay by the window.
“Some one has been in this room,” he told himself. “He lost his mitten. I’ve been robbed!” A thrill shot up his spine. “But in Edmonton of all places! The police are speedy and successful in their work. If I’ve been robbed I’ll—”
Once more he broke off. He had not been robbed; at least his most valuable possessions, his purse and his watch, had not been taken.
“The mystery deepens.” He searched his mind for some motive and found it at once.
“The paper, the copy of that message taken from the pigeon!” he exclaimed breathlessly.
He thrust nervous fingers into his inner coat pocket.
“Right at last. Itisgone!
“And now,” he thought, sitting down upon his bed, “what’s next?
“I might call the office and tell them what has happened. They would call the police. There would be an investigation. The police would ask questions. I had been robbed? What of? A paper? What paper? A message? What message? How did you come by it? How indeed? And how much right had I to copy a message taken from a carrier pigeon?”
To this last question he could form no adequate answer.
At once his mind was in a whirl. He was from the United States. Having read all his life of the efficiency of the Mounted Police (and to a boy all Canadian officers are “Mounties”), he held those officers in great awe.
“I’ll not notify the office.” He crept back into bed. “I’ll handle this affair myself.”
Holding the mitten up before him, he examined it closely. It was a large mitten made of long-haired fur. The fur was on the outside. It was gray. First impressions made him believe it was wolf’s fur. A more careful examination caused him to doubt it. “Some foreign fur, perhaps,” he concluded.
“This mitten,” he told himself, “is a clue. Find the other mitten in some one’s pocket. That’s the man.
“This mitten,” he began enlarging on the idea, “this mitten is from Siberia. The man is a Russian. For some reason, not known to us, he and his friends of the flying ‘Gray Streak’ have entered this land by crossing Bering Straits and Alaska. They have treasure. They are negotiating some secret treaty. They—there’s no knowing their mission. But this is the man to find.
“All of which,” he told himself soberly a moment later, “is probably entirely wrong. But who flies the ‘Gray Streak’? Who sent that message? Who stole my copy? These are questions I mean to answer if I can.”
At that he fell asleep.
Next morning, somewhat to his surprise, he found the gray mitten still lying by his bed. And the mysterious message was still missing.
The tiny clock that ticked away cheerfully in the corner of the cabin indicated that a full hour had gone by, and Johnny and Sandy sat by the fire awaiting the moving of the spirit that was to restore animation to the motionless figure lumped over in the chair.
To Johnny, who was accustomed to action and plenty of it, this seemed a strange procedure. A bit spooky it was, too. Night lay silent over all. Only the dull glow of a half-dead fire lighted the room. From time to time a log, burned to glowing charcoal, would break and fall. For a moment after, strangely grotesque shadows would dance upon the wall. Then they, too, would lapse into inactivity.
At last the figure in the corner stirred. A bony hand outstretched seemed to beckon. Sandy knew the meaning of this. All the time the great coffee pot had stood just close enough to the fire to simmer low. Now he poured a steaming cup and passed it to the outstretched hand.
“See!” came in a hollow, cracked voice after the cup had been drained. “See many strange things, me.”
“Ah!” Johnny thought to himself, not daring to stir, “The oracle speaks.”
“See Devil Bird,” the Voice went on. “See two Devil Birds.”
“He means airplanes,” Johnny told himself. “Devil Birds belong to Indian legends. Airplanes are like them.”
“One Devil Bird,” the Voice droned on, “gray like clouds on a day of slow rain. No marks. No, none. No white man’s writing.”
“The gray outlaw,” Johnny breathed.
Sandy placed a hand on his arm for silence.
“Other Devil Bird plenty marks,” the Voice went on. “This one follow gray like a cloud Devil Bird. Go fast. Both, very, very fast. One go. One follow.”
“That will be Curlie chasing the ‘Gray Streak.’” Johnny’s lips barely moved. “How does it end?”
“See storm,” the Voice continued. “Gray storm. Plenty wind. Plenty cold. Plenty snow. Gray Devil Bird not stop. Lost in cloud. Other Devil Bird turn back. Run. Run very fast. Storm follow very fast.”
Johnny sat forward, scarcely daring to breathe.
“One hour, two hour, three, four, big race, cloud chase Devil Bird. Devil Bird fly fast.
“Bye-um-bye,” the Voice lost his animation, “bye-um-bye all right. Fort Chipewyan. All right.”
“Curlie is safe. But what about the ‘Gray Streak’?” Johnny was about to ask the question aloud when the pressure of Sandy’s arm stopped him.
For some time after that the Voice was silent. Sandy cast some bits of dry sprucewood on the fire. It flared up and for a time the place was as bright as day. When it had died down the Voice spoke again.
“See girl, white man’s girl. White man, too, much white hair. See three white man, not too old.”
“That,” thought Johnny, “will be the party who are trying to beat us in the discovery of minerals by using the films stolen from Sandy and his partner.” He frowned. It hurt him to feel that his one-time pals, Joyce Mills and her father, now belonged to a rival camp. That this was due to no fault of theirs he realized clearly.
As he closed his eyes now he seemed to see the girl, Joyce Mills, as he had seen her on that day when, after their final battle with a great city’s crime, she had asked:
“When do we go back?”
They had stood then on a rickety little dock before a deserted cabin on the shore of Lake Huron.
How well he recalled his own answer: “We don’t go back. We go on into the silent North, perhaps. It may be that we shall find a land where men are just and merciful and kind.”
“I said that,” he told himself. As he looked back upon it now, that remark seemed near to prophecy, for were they not now in the far North?
“There is a destiny that shapes our ends, rough-hew them though we may,” he thought to himself.
Ah, yes, they were in the North. Yet, how different it all was from what he had dreamed! He had dreamed of working by her father’s side, of sharing with him and with the girl who held a central place in both their hearts the joys and the privations of a strange new land.
“And now this!” he thought grimly.
But the Voice spoke once more. “See girl. See dog team. See much danger.”
Once more Johnny leaned forward.
“See—see—” The Voice grew faint. “See dim. See not at all.”
Johnny started to his feet. Sandy pulled him back. Once more the fire flared up, then again died away.
“See bird.” The Voice rose high. “Strange bird. Not Devil Bird. Bird, how you say? Like raven. So big. No croaks. No black. Gray like clouds when sun not yet up. Fly, fly fast, that bird. Fly far. Not sing, that bird. White man keep in box. White man let him out, say: ‘Fly away! Fly straight!’ Fly far, that one.”
“Must be a carrier pigeon,” Johnny thought to himself. “But who would have a pigeon in such a land?”
Two minutes of silence. Sandy cast more tinder on the fire. The light flared up. Johnny started and stared. The figure was no longer in the corner. He fully expected the Voice to drone on. It did not. The Voice had slipped silently from the room, into the night.
A few moments later, as Johnny stood looking away at the glimmering field of white that was the frozen lake, he murmured two words:
“Moccasin Telegraph.” Then he turned back into the house.
And that is how it came about that Johnny and Sandy sat for an hour before their fire telling one another all they knew about carrier pigeons and speculating on their possible use in this frozen land.
“I read,” said Johnny, “an article in some paper telling of the manner in which blackmailers used carrier pigeons. They sent a pigeon with a demand for money to some wealthy man. The money was to be attached to the bird’s leg and the bird was to be freed. Detectives in airplanes tried following the pigeons.”
“Think they could?” asked Sandy.
“Who knows?” For a time after that they were silent. At last Sandy yawned as he rumbled, “Time for three winks.”
Johnny did not get his three winks until he had put many thoughts of airplanes, carrier pigeons, gold, radium and old-time friends to rest. But at last sleep came, and before he knew it there was a new day.
Time passed, as time has a way of doing. There was much to be accomplished and Curlie Carson’s slim shoulders bore their full share of the burden.
Always in the back of his mind as he labored one thought remained to urge him on. He was working not for himself alone but for the glory of his company. The men who toiled with him and those in the office in far away Winnipeg were, he knew right well, worthy of his most loyal endeavors.
“Loyalty. That’s the great word,” John Mansfield, the President of the Company, had said to him. “Loyalty to a proper cause or a deserving group of human beings; that is the greatest driving power this old world will ever know.”
Curlie believed he spoke the truth. He rejoiced in the knowledge that, come what might, his loyalty and his most earnest endeavor would never be overlooked, discounted or disregarded.
So Curlie worked untiringly as millions have done before and other millions will do in the years that are to come.
All one’s life may not be spent in the unravelling of mysteries and hunting adventure. This Curlie knew full well. His work? Was there adventure in that? Very little. Piloting a six-passenger airplane over the Mackenzie River route is about as exciting as driving a bus in New York. Curlie carried a load of freight, beef, eggs, coffee, calico and a score of other items from Fort McMurray to Fort Chipewyan. He answered an emergency call from Resolution. A Catholic Sister was rushed to the hospital at Edmonton.
At Edmonton he took on two cases of eggs, a case of oranges, a package of phonograph records, one missionary and two “Udson’s Bay’s Men” (as the native Canadians call them), and sailed away straight for the shore of the Arctic Ocean. He was there on the second day and, after a night’s sleep, was ready for the return journey.
It was during this return journey that one or two questions that had been puzzling him were, in a way, answered.
At Fort Chipewyan he lay over for a few hours to await the passing of a snowstorm. He did not tarry long enough. The storm was traveling south. It was making but fifty miles an hour. He was doing better than a hundred. He had not been in the air an hour when he realized that he could not reach McMurray without running into that storm.
“That means I can’t see to land,” he grumbled to himself. Jerry was not with him. “Have to sleep on the river.”
Sleeping on the river is not as bad as it sounds. Here and there along the river, trappers’ cabins are to be found. The inhabitants of these cabins are for the most part known to the pilots. And any weary bird-man is sure of a hearty welcome there. The coffee pot is ever on the fire and a pan of beans rich in bacon fat ready for warming. There is an extra bunk in the corner to which the stranger is welcome. But, for the most part, the pilot prefers rolling up in his eight-foot-square eiderdown robe and sleeping on the floor of his cabin. This is what is known as “sleeping on the river.”
It may appear strange that out of the three possible cabins on this section of the river Curlie chose to come to earth before the one occupied by the rough and ready little world war hermit who had in so strange a manner defied him when a pigeon had been tracked to his window.
“Oh, it’s you, me lad!” the scrawny little man exclaimed, as Curlie climbed from the cockpit. “Sure it’s sorry vittals I be ’avin’, but such as they be, y’ are welcome.”
“Ptarmigan!” exclaimed Curlie. “Nothing better than that!” A brace of these birds hung by the cabin door.
“And can y’ eat ’em?”
“Sure. Why not? They’re fine.”
“Every man to ’is taste. Sure I’ve fed ’em to me dorgs until they’ve grown feathers, they ’ave. But it’s the birds ye shall ’ave, roasted with bacon fat fer seasonin’.”
Curlie could not complain of his birds, nor of the coffee he drank.
“That,” he said, “is the best coffee I’ve had for a month!”
“An’ I wouldn’t doubt it!” exclaimed the little man. “Learned ’ow t’ brew it from a bloomin’ Australian bushman in th’ bloody war; right in th’ trenches.
“Ye see,” he went on, warmed by his own beverage and cheered by kind words, “I were in th’ signal service. Bein’ small, I was set to carin’ fer pigeons an’ sendin’ ’em away with messages a-hangin’ from their laigs or their necks.
“And y’ know, son, ’avin’ ’em always with ye like yer bloomin’ dorgs, makes ’em seem like yer bloomin’ pals. D’ ye understand that?”
“Yes,” Curlie replied, “I understand.”
“An’ ye know, son, if it weren’t fer ’avin’ one of them pigeons under me arm in a cage made of wood, I’d not be trappin’ foxes now.”
“No?” Curlie sat up. “Tell me about it.”
He did tell Curlie. And for Curlie that story held a special interest. It was no great story as stories go; just the account of one little underfed Irish boy soldier lost in a forest in No Man’s Land, with a leg half torn away by a shell, and a plain, drab carrier pigeon kept safe by the boy’s shielding body. The boy scribbled a note to his pals in camp, then released the pigeon that he might bear the message home.
“They found ’im safe,” he ended quite undramatically. “They found th’ message an’ after that th’ ’eathen enemy’s guns was silenced, an’ then they found me, too.
“’T’ain’t much of a story, son. But ye’ll not be thinkin’ me soft when I tell ye as ’ow them carryin’ pigeons seems like the truest friends I ever had.”
“No,” said Curlie huskily, “I surely will not.”
Before Curlie left the cabin next morning he heard a sound that bore a suspicious resemblance to the coo-coos he was accustomed to hear on his uncle’s farm when the pigeons were waking to greet the sunshine.
“I believe this little chap kept that bird for a pal,” he told himself. “And he might have done worse than that—a whole lot worse, yes, a whole lot worse.”
During that week there had been no cessation of activities in the two camps where the search for rich mineral was in progress. Since it had been found that the report on the radium-bearing pitchblende must be delayed for some time, there was nothing for it but to go out in search of other prospects.
The entire group at Joyce’s camp, her father, Jim, Lloyd and Clyde, worked like beavers. Lloyd had gone to get the thawer. He had returned in four days.
“I miss him more than I dreamed I would,” Joyce had told herself on one of these days. “He seems to confide in me. And that, I guess, is the sort of friend a girl needs.”
Indeed, for a quiet man he had told her much. On that evening before he flew away to Fort Resolution, he had spoken of his life, his struggles, his hopes, his fears. He had entered the world war as a boy soldier, only sixteen. He had carried stretchers through it all, had brought many a poor wounded soldier to safety. In time he, too, had been dropped by a shell. His recovery had been slow. But he had come back.
“And now,” he told her earnestly, “I must make good; for my mother’s sake I must! She is the grandest of women; gave me as a boy to her country without a murmur, and allowed them to keep me four years. Four years. You don’t know what that means—to a mother.”
Ah, yes, Joyce had missed Lloyd. But now he was back. They were all back. Lloyd’s steam-thawer had been going for three days. What success had come to him? Would there be gold on that ancient river bed?
She was thinking of all this as she stood bare-headed in the starlight on a glorious Arctic night. Then the night claimed her. The moon was not up. But the stars! Every one of them seemed a spark of fire fallen upon a curtain of midnight blue velvet.
“They burn, but they do not consume,” she thought, as she moved slowly up the hill toward the place where the white foxes played. “Stars are like our love for our fellow men and God. They light the world, but do not destroy.”
She had come close to her watching place at the back of a cluster of scrub spruce trees, when a voice close beside her drawled:
“What are you all doing up here by your lonesome?”
It was Jim, the Kentucky mountain boy. Her first impulse was one of anger. Why should he intrude upon her privacy? This lasted but for a space of seconds. The night, the stars, the yellow lights from the cabins below, together with Jim’s appealing southern drawl, changed her impatience.
The rebuke that came to her lips remained unuttered. Instead, she held up a hand for silence, then pointed toward the clump of trees. Then together they crept forward.
“There! There they are!” she whispered low.
“Foxes!” he whispered back. “Cunnin’ little critters!”
After that for ten minutes, with the golden firmament swinging overhead and the foxes frisking in the starlight, they watched in silence.
The foxes were more playful than ever. Joyce had hung some pieces of caribou fat and shreds of white fish out for the snow-buntings and bluejays. Some of these bits were within reach of the foxes when they stood on their hind feet and clawed upward. Others were hung higher. The lower ones soon vanished. It was truly wonderful to see the antics they went through in their attempts to reach the others. They leaped, they clawed. They did everything but stand upon one another’s shoulders. When none of these availed, they sat on their haunches and, pointing noses at the tempting morsels, sang their white fox song.
“As if that would do any good!” Joyce chuckled.
“Singin’ for their supper,” drawled Jim.
One thing puzzled Joyce. To-night there were only two foxes. Always before there had been three. The small one was not there. Where could he be?
“Perhaps he overslept,” she told herself. But she was a trifle worried. These little wild playmates had become very dear to her heart.
Frightened, suddenly, by the slamming of a door down below in one of the cabins, the two foxes scampered into their holes, leaving Joyce and Jim alone with the night.
“They’ve gone in for the youngster, I guess,” Joyce laughed.
“The youngster?”
“Always before there have been three. The other was only a cub, or would you say a kitten? He is the cutest thing you ever saw.”
After that, having turned about to seat themselves on the hard packed snow and to gaze away toward the great white world and the blue dome above it, they communed in silence.
A faint glow appeared on the margin of that sea of white. The arc of a golden circle appeared. Moving in solemn majesty, the moon rose to clothe their world in purple shadows.
“This,” whispered the girl, “is moonlight in the great white world.”
“Do you know,” said Jim, and there was a deep seriousness in his tone, “a time like this makes me certain that thar’s more to life than that thar we see. We don’t live to fret and fuss a little, to hunt gold and find it and be rich fer a little spell, or not to find it and be poor as p’ison. We don’t just shuffle off. That’s not the end of it.
“Look at those stars, that moon. Don’t they tell you things?”
“Yes.” Her voice was low, musical. “Yes, Jim, they do.”
“Do you know,” he went on after a moment, “we mounting folks is ignorant folks, I reckon. Not much larnin’ amongst us. But we sit a heap. And we think a heap. And when we see a thing or get told something we just naturally gotta try to think it plumb through to the end.
“Do you know?” He was looking away once more. “When I look away at them thar stars, hit reminds me a heap of my old Kentucky home away up on Poundin’ Mill Creek that flows into Clover Fork of the Cumberland River.
“Way back yonder—” His voice was like the low strum-strum of a banjo. “Back yonder’s a cabin whar I’ve set many’s the night, listenin’ to the tree toads sing and some old bull frog croakin’, and seem’ the lightnin’ bugs streakin’ across the air. Then I’d see the mountings all settin’ in a row like a lotta plumb big folks settin’ by the hearth a-whisperin’. And I’d see the stars a-comin’ down close to listen. And it was plumb pretty, Miss Joyce. Plumb pretty. Mighty nigh the prettiest picture I most ever seed.
“But, Miss Joyce,” he leaned forward, “’t’ain’t no prettier nor this here up here. And, you know,” he hesitated, “you know, somehow you sort of fit into it all. Plumb queer now, ain’t it?”
“Yes, Jim, it is.” Joyce felt a strange thrill run through her being. It was strange that she, a girl who had spent all her life in a great city, should fit into a picture such as this. She was grateful for the compliment.
After that, for a long time, they sat in silence, listening to the faint, all but inaudible sounds of an Arctic night and watching the world that seemed so new, so fresh, so ready for those who were good and kind and true. Can souls speak, though no words be uttered? Who knows? Joyce wondered, but did not speak.
It often happens that we go from joy to sorrow in a single hour. So it was with Joyce. Her hour with Jim had been one of transfiguration. To go from communion with a human companion to seek a four-footed friend might seem the imperfect ending of a perfect hour. But who can understand the heart of a girl?
Joyce was still wondering about the half-grown white fox. Why had he not come out to play?
She was not long in finding the answer. As they stepped into the moonlit playground of her little white friends, Jim’s keen eyes discovered a dark object. It was a steel trap. And in the trap was the baby white fox, quite dead.
“Who could have done that!” Joyce exclaimed, all but in tears.
“Some trapper.”
“But there are no trappers here; that is, I have seen only one.” She recalled the stranger she had followed by mistake.
“We’ll leave him a message,” said Jim.
Springing the jaws of the trap, he caught it by its chains, then crashed it so violently against the rocks that it flew in bits.
“No right to set it so close to our camp!” he grumbled, throwing it down.
“They say that Indians read signs. Well, there’s my sign.” Selecting an untouched circle of snow, he placed there an imprint of his large moccasin.
“And this,” said Joyce, placing her foot close to his, “is mine.”
At that, without another word, they turned to make their way down the hill.
It was when he was about to leave her at her cabin door that Jim spoke again.
“Thar’s somethin’ been on my mind for a long time, Miss Joyce. I—”
“The stolen films,” flashed through the girl’s mind. “It was Jim. He stole them. He wants to confess. But I can’t let him now—”
“Please, Jim,” she broke in hurriedly, “not to-night. Tell me some other time, but not now.”
“All right, Miss Joyce.” And he was gone into the night.
Joyce stood there alone, allowing the cool night air to fan her hot temples. She was troubled. Had she done wrong? Should she have allowed the mountain boy to make his confession?
“I couldn’t,” she told herself at last. “This has been a golden hour. How could I have it ruined? Another time will do as well.” At that she turned and entered the cabin.
* * * * * * * *
Strangely enough, at this very hour in their far away cabin, another group was discussing the stolen films.
After long thought Johnny had decided that it was his duty to tell the men of his camp the story of the stolen films and of the men who at that moment were using their hard-earned leads for profit.
“Old Timer,” Scott Ramsey was saying to Sandy, as they sat beside the roaring fire, “do you think it would be too hard on those fellows to move right in and file on their land the moment they make a strike?”
“Not one whit!” Sandy’s chair came down with a bang. “Trouble nowadays is, too many folks have vague ideas of what’s honest and what isn’t. Get wrong notions, lots of them, when they’re in school. Steal ten dollars, that’s wrong; but snitch another chap’s toy pistol, that’s sport. That’s the way they look at it. It’s all wrong.
“Lots of young football fellows think it’s being bright to carry home souvenirs, napkins, salt-shakers, silver from a restaurant. It’s wrong! Hew to the line, I say.
“If those young fellows think it was a sporting proposition to filch those negatives and make prints from them and then come up here with them to hunt gold, they’re wrong.
“But say!” he demanded suddenly, “how’d they get them?”
“That,” replied Ramsey slowly, “is just what I don’t know.
“You see,” he went on thoughtfully, “after I’d taken the airplane trip and snapped the pictures and had them developed and enlarged, I was low on funds. I showed the pictures to a geologist and he said the thing looked good.
“While I was searching for a partner with money, I asked permission to store those films in a vault, the vault of the people I had worked for in Winnipeg.
“When I found you in Edmonton, I had the pictures, but not the films. One set of pictures was enough. The films, I thought, were safe.”
“But how did you find out they had the films?” Sandy asked, turning to Johnny.
“I ran onto a photographer I knew in Edmonton. Always did like to be around where you smelled developer and hypo, so I stuck around. He showed me some defective enlargements he was about to throw away. I knew right away that they were the same as some we were planning to use. After that it was a fairly simple matter to trace the men who had engaged him to make the enlargements. The thing that surprised me most was that two of my best friends, an old man and his daughter, are working with those three young men.”
“You can’t get information through them?” Scott asked.
“I can, but I won’t,” said Johnny.
“Right enough!” exclaimed Sandy. “I honor you for it.”
“The thing I can’t understand,” said Sandy after a time, “is, how did they get hold of those films if they were in a vault?”
“Thatwouldbear looking into,” agreed Ramsey. “I’ll write a letter to-night. Old Benny Brooks is still with the company, or was the last I knew. I’ll write and ask him.” He did. But even in the days of the airplane, mail is a trifle slow in the North. And in the meantime the search for that elusive wealth that lies hidden in the rocks and beneath the snow went on.
* * * * * * * *
It was about this time that Curlie Carson, on returning from his trip to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, received a telegram that set his head whirling.
“Am on my way by fast plane. Big business.” This is the way the message ran. It was signed “Drew Lane.”
This telegram, together with a paragraph in a back number of the Edmonton daily paper, gave him what appeared to be a solution of the mystery which the “Gray Streak” had created. The article was captioned:
“Mail plane stolen from Chicago Airport.”
In brief, this new story told of the theft of a powerful biplane from beneath the very nose of her pilot. Having taken on his load of air mail, this pilot had stepped into the office to discuss his routing with his chief. Then, according to the story, the look-out in the tower, who checked the numbers of all planes coming and going, had seen some one resembling the pilot enter the plane and take off.
“The strangest part of the whole affair,” the story went on to say, “is that, after a somewhat prolonged conversation, the real pilot returned to the spot where his plane had stood, and it was gone. It is assumed by the police that the man who stole the plane, having studied the dress and mannerisms of the pilot, had been able to imitate him so perfectly that the look-out, who knew him well, had not discovered the fraud.
“In the meantime,” the article concluded, “Where is the stolen biplane? And where is the half-ton of mail, some of which is reported to be of great value, that was the airplane’s cargo?”
“Where indeed?” Curlie said after reading the article through twice. “Unless here in the wilds of the Northwest? Where else in the world could a great biplane be hidden? And where else could they refuel without being caught?
“Let me see.” He scratched his head. “It was six days ago that I wrote Drew Lane telling him of the mysterious ‘Gray Streak.’ Plenty of time for him to get his keen mind at work on that Chicago airplane case, to arrive at some very natural conclusions, and then to get himself assigned to the task of hunting down this ‘Gray Streak.’
“So,” he drawled slowly, “I am to have some assistance in the solution of this great mystery.”
Was he glad Drew Lane was on his way north? Ah, yes, to be sure he was. Who would not be? Drew Lane was the sort of chap any one would be glad to greet once again. But was Curlie glad that some one else was likely to beat his time in solving a great mystery? Of this he could not be sure.
“And yet,” he told himself after a few moments of sober thought, “at such a time as this, when the rightful possessions of many are endangered, when the efficiency of the air service that has done so much for this barren land is threatened, it is one’s duty to set his personal hopes aside and to welcome the aid of any who may assist in bringing the malefactors to justice. So, welcome, Drew Lane, old top! Our arms are open wide.
“And one thing is sure,” he added after a moment’s reflection, “there never was a truer sport, a braver cop, nor a better pal than Drew Lane!
“Brave! Why he’d drop right down upon them from the air if need be.”
How near this last came to being prophecy, he was, in time, to know.
On the day following her experience with Jim and the foxes, Joyce Mills once more took to the trail with her dog team. And a dangerous trail it proved to be.
She wanted time to think. And what better opportunity could be afforded? Well tucked in, half buried in caribou robes, with the wind at her back and her toboggan sled gliding over the snow, and with Dannie, the leader, choosing his own course, her mind had little to do but wander at will.
Her thoughts were for the moment on that strange brownish-black rock her father called pitchblende. He had found samples and had sent them south on the airplane.
“Will they contain radium?” she asked herself. “Much radium?”
Her father had told her a little about the wonders of radium. “A grain,” he had said, “one thirty-second part of an ounce, is worth more than thirty thousand dollars. In a year all the operators in the world produced less than nine grams. Yet a single half gram owned by a great hospital has sent many a poor soul, stricken with the deadly cancer disease, back to his loved ones in perfect health. The healing qualities of radium is one of God’s great gifts to man. Think what it would mean to find a fresh and richer supply of this life-restoring mineral?”
She had thought, and had thrilled to the very core of her being.
So she dreamed on and on and, like many another, all unaware of impending danger, enjoyed the drowsy comfort of the passing hour.
Suddenly she was shocked from her dreaming, for her dog team, breaking away from a leisurely trot, sprang away across the snow like a pack of hounds in full cry.
Her first thought was, “They are after a snowshoe rabbit. But Dannie! I hoped he was better trained than that.”