So he was. Next instant she knew the cause of this terrific speed and her cheek blanched. The outlaw buffalo, the very one who had before brought her into great peril, was upon their trail. With a mad bellow, with white frost pouring from his nostrils like smoke, he charged straight on.
They were on the lake’s ice. No trees to climb here. Speed was their only chance. How fast was a buffalo? Could he outrun a dog team? She was to know.
The team’s speed for the moment saved her. As the buffalo charged down a treeless slope, he fell behind them. One instant more, and he was on their trail.
“What if the sled tips and I am thrown out?” she asked herself with a shudder.
But the thought of what might happen was crowded out by that which was happening. The buffalo was gaining. There could be no question about it.
“He has shortened the distance between us by ten yards,” she told herself.
She caught the gleam of his terrifying horns, heard his deep, guttural bellow; then, dragging her eyes away, she shouted bravely:
“Now! Dannie! Now!Ye! Ye! Ye!Now, Grover! Now, Ginger!Now! Now! Now! Ye! Ye! Ye!”
The splendid creatures responded to her call that was half plea, half command, by a fresh burst of speed. But was it enough? She dared not look back. They sped on across the white waste.
Moments passed, agonizing moments they were. Urging her dogs to their utmost, she still refrained from looking behind. If she looked her heart might fail her.
“The way out!” she repeated to herself over and over. “What can be the way out?”
What indeed? She might, if there was time, call upon her dogs to pause in their mad rush. They might face about and trust their fates to a battle. That these fine fellows would fight she did not question.
“But what chance?” Her voice was choked with a dry sob. “Hindered by the harness, they could never win.”
Dark to the left on the horizon a clump of tamarack showed.
“Too late! We’ll never make it. We—”
Then suddenly, as upon that other occasion, a curious thing happened; a rifle cracked.
This time the result was different. It was as if an avenging God had said: “It is enough.” The girl heard a dull thud and, looking fearfully about, saw the outlaw buffalo lying upon the snow. A bullet had brought his mad career to an end.
Instinctively the dogs slowed down. The girl’s eyes searched the low hills for her benefactor. He was nowhere to be seen.
A moment passed into eternity; another and yet another. In all that great white world not a living creature moved.
Seized by a strange new fear, she spoke to her dogs and once more they sped away. Ten minutes later they were back on the trail they had followed in the beginning. And this, she discovered by a study of snowshoe prints, was the trail of her father and his companion.
Once more she settled back in peace. But not for long. This was to be a day of days in her life.
* * * * * * * *
Drew Lane followed hot on the trail of his message. Curlie Carson was warming up his plane for one more journey in the land of great white silence when a small, fast monoplane circled above the field for a landing.
This little ship of the air caught Curlie’s eye at once. And why not? It was painted a vivid red.
“In the name of all that’s good!” he cried, when he saw Drew Lane spring with his pilot from the cockpit. “You don’t expect to do detective work up here in that fire wagon, do you?”
Drew laughed as he gripped Curlie’s hand. “What does color matter? It’s speed that counts. She’s the fastest thing in the air. Let me get sight of those robbers in that lumbering old mail truck and you’ll see something pretty. The Red Knight of Germany won’t be in it with me.
“But tell me.” He sobered. “You’ve seen this gray outlaw of the air. Do you think it could be the plane that was stolen in Chicago?”
“Y—e—s,” Curlie said slowly. “It could be. Same type of plane and all that. But—”
“But what?”
“Nothing. At least not a thing that’s tangible. Just a fancy, I suppose. I found a mitten in my room. It was made from the pelt of a Siberian wolf-hound.”
“For John’s sake!” Drew Lane stared. “What’s that to do with an outlaw plane?”
Curlie told him of the carrier pigeon, of the copied message, and of the theft in the night.
“That,” agreed Drew when he had ended, “may have a bearing. At least we’ll not forget it. But, as for me, I stick to the theory that this outlaw is driving the stolen mail plane. There were valuable papers on board, being transferred from one city to another. Owners have offered a large reward. And say!” he exclaimed, “why couldn’t those fellows be trying to collect the reward through carrier pigeons?”
“Wrong end to,” Curlie objected. “If they were doing that the pigeons would be sent in a crate to the persons paying the reward. Then the plan would be to have them released with the reward in thousand dollar bills attached to them.”
“That’s right. Well, we’ll see.”
Drew then changed the subject. “You’re off for the North?”
“In an hour.”
“I’ll trail you.”
“How far?”
“Until I get a hunch to sail away on my own.”
“Which won’t be long,” Curlie grinned, and then led him away for a cup of coffee.
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime, strange and terrible things were happening to Joyce and her friends. With her team she had left the lake and had traveled two miles into the low hills when, on rounding the point of a ridge, she sighted her father.
Quite close at hand, he was bending over a rocky ledge that hung above a rushing cataract. “A dangerous position,” she told herself. “One step and—”
To her great consternation, at that instant she saw him throw up a hand—then plunge downward.
There is a section to the north and east of Great Slave Lake where the surface of the land is one heap of gigantic rocks. The land falls off to the west so rapidly that the streams are little more than cascades playing continually over giant stairways. It was into one of these unnatural streams that her father had fallen.
Even as Joyce stood looking, too terrified to move, Clyde Hawke, a powerful swimmer, plunged in after her father. So swift was the water, however, that he was three yards behind in the mad race for life.
Never very strong, Newton Mills, now prematurely old, offered little resistance to the wild torrent that appeared determined to carry him to destruction. One fortunate instance, for the moment, saved him. An overhanging snag caught at his stout jacket. It held for a space of seconds. Before the stout canvas gave way, he had secured a tight grip on the snag. Ten seconds more, and the brave young westerner, swimming with one hand, had gripped the older man by the arm and was struggling to bring him ashore.
The battle seemed all but won when, without warning, the snag gave way to cast them once more upon the mercy of the torrent.
To Joyce, who had made her way to the brink of the stream and stood ready to lend a hand, all seemed lost.
The last vestige of hope left her when, with a cry of horror, she saw them, tight in one another’s grip, disappear beneath the ice of the pool that lay beyond the rapids.
“They’re gone! Gone!” she sobbed.
But what was this? Beyond the narrow stretch of ice was a second chain of rapids less precipitous than the first. Poised on a rock at the very center of the rapids, she had seen a lone pelican waiting for fish. Now, as if disturbed, he rose and went flapping away.
“Can it be—”
Plunging headlong over rocks and treacherous ice, she made her way to this second space of open water. She was just in time to lean far over and grip Clyde by the collar of his coat. Then, securing a hold upon a stout willow bush, she clung with the grip of death. Not one life, but two, depended upon her strength and endurance. Clyde Hawke still retained his grip upon her father. Together they had passed beneath the ice and had come out on the other side.
Ten minutes of heart-breaking battle with the elements, and they had won. Or had they? True, her father lay upon the snow beside the exhausted youth who had risked his life to save him; but he neither moved nor spoke. Was he dead? She could not be sure.
Time restored strength to the plucky Clyde Hawke. Then together they carried Newton Mills to a sheltered crevice among the rocks. After gathering dry twigs and branches, they built a roaring fire.
“It’s the only thing that will save him,” Clyde explained. “Home is too far away.”
Joyce removed her warm fur parka. Then she walked a short distance up the hill. When she returned Clyde had stripped off her father’s clothing and, after chafing his limbs, had dressed him in her parka. As she came up her father’s eyes opened and he murmured hoarsely: “That was close, awful close!” Then his eyelids fell.
With the hatchet from his belt Clyde cut off spruce branches and built them a shelter. Sheltered by the three walls of boughs and warmed by the fire, they soon were as comfortable as they might have been in the cabin.
When her splendid mind had regained its full powers, Joyce sprang up and cried:
“The dog team!”
She had left the dogs, she hardly knew where. And the toboggan sled was lined with caribou-skin robes.
“I will go for them.” She stood up. “As soon as you are dry enough to be safe, we can take him home in the sled.”
“When you’re back I’ll be O.K.,” Clyde said simply.
A hurried search showed her the dogs curled up in a low run where the sled had tangled in the willows. “Good old pups!” she murmured, as she gulped down a sob.
Two hours after dark they arrived at camp from an expedition that had threatened to be the most disastrous in the entire history of the enterprise. Newton Mills was still unconscious. Would he recover? Who could say?
By great good fortune they found Punch Dickinson there with his plane. He had arrived late and was prepared to stay all night. Although night flying is, as a rule, off the program of Arctic flyers, he agreed in this extremity to go to Resolution for the doctor.
A little more than two hours later, there came the thunder of the motor and Punch was back with medical aid.
“It’s the shock and exposure,” was the doctor’s verdict. “With care he should pull through.”
“He’ll get the care right enough,” said Jim Baley. “He ain’t one of them sorry old men. He’s a king. That’s what he is. We’ll stick with him if we don’t never find narry a bit of radium nor gold.”
“Come to think of it,” Punch Dickinson started up from his place by the fire, “I’ve a message for you. Report on your pitchblende I guess.”
He drew two envelopes from his pocket.
“Curious thing happened.” He seemed ill at ease. “You know two bags of samples went down; both of them pitchblende? Well, some way the tags were torn off and there’s no way of telling which sample belongs to which outfit. I—I’m sorry it came out that way. But up here I guess you’re all friends in the same game. Luck for one is luck for all.”
“Luck for one, luck for all?” Joyce wondered as her mind went over the words.
“What’s to be done?”
Clyde, the westerner, scratched his head. “Guess we get first look,” smiled Lloyd Hill, putting out a hand for the envelopes.
“Seems that it might be a case of sending down more samples,” he murmured as he tore open the first envelope.
“I’m sorry some one blundered,” Punch apologized. “I know how hard it is to get samples. I—”
“Just a minute.” Lloyd Hill held up a hand. “Looks as if it hasn’t made any difference. The reports are almost identical; same amount of copper, same nickel, same cobalt and—”
“Radium! Radium!”
Instantly the word was on every tongue. “Just a trace,” said Lloyd reluctantly. “Not enough to make the slightest difference. In other words, we lose, all of us; the other fellows, too.”
“Oh!” The cry that escaped the girl’s lips was a cry of pain. Her father had hoped much from his radium rock. She had hoped, too. She had dreamed. Johnny Thompson had dreamed. They were all friends together. And all had lost.
“And now this!” she whispered as she turned to hide a tear that would not stay. “Now father is desperately ill. If he recovers I must tell him this. And we hoped so much!” Truly this was her darkest hour.
The air of the cabin suddenly seemed oppressive. Throwing on a coat, she wandered out into the night. As she stood there bathing her hot temples in the cool night air, a figure moved silently toward her.
“You find gold? Mebby yes? Mebby no?”
It was the Indian, he of the traps. He had found his broken trap, she felt sure of that. As she looked he seemed to leer at her in a mocking manner. Then he passed on into the night.
The look on that man’s face disturbed her. Many things troubled her. She was tired, needed rest.
“I must sleep,” she told herself.
The doctor was to remain, at least for the night. Her father was in good hands. Creeping away to her small room, she disrobed in the dark and was soon fast asleep.
Johnny Thompson and Scott Ramsey were disheartened by the news that Sandy’s pitchblende was of no value.
“It’s the end of one glorious dream.” Ramsey stared into space.
“Yes,” Johnny agreed, “that’s gone.”
“Not a bit of it!” Sandy’s keen old eyes snapped. “There’s pitchblende in these rocky old ledges such as the world has never known.
“Look here. Do you know that in 1922 a pocket of several hundred pounds of remarkably rich pitchblende was mined in the Belgian Congo, that it yielded two or three million dollars worth of radium, and that this discovery actually caused a drop in the price of radium? If they can do that in South Africa, we can do it in northern Canada!” He banged the table with his huge fist.
“And now look at this!” He drew forth an enlarged photograph to spread it on the table. To the average person this would have seemed a snap-shot that had gone wrong. It showed only dull stretches of rock, intermixed with rough ledges and narrow stretches of snow.
“See that!” Sandy’s long finger trembled as he pointed. “Taken sixty miles from here, this was. Looks like the real thing to me. Pitchblende. Radium.” He said these last words almost reverently.
“There’s no stopping him,” Johnny told himself. “All the same, if he’ll permit me, I’ll go out and look those ledges over for him. With the specimens we have now, it would not be hard to gather others. Only an analysis could give the final touch to such a find anyway. I’ll suggest it when the right time comes.”
Scott and Sandy were ardent chess fans. As Sandy was spreading his men over the board a little later, he looked up at Johnny.
“Ever play chess?” he demanded.
“A little.”
“You should. You should play much. Tell you why.” He allowed his powerful hand to rest upon the board. Between his thumb and finger was the smallest man of all, a pawn. “Chess,” he went on, “makes you think. And thinking is always good for your soul. That’s why the study of mathematics is worth while.
“But there’s a more important reason why you should play chess.” His expressive eyes gleamed. “Chess is the game of life. Oh, yes, it’s the game of war, too; but life for most of us is one long battle, so it’s the game of life, too.
“See that little fellow?” He held up the pawn.
Johnny nodded.
“That’s you and me. All my life I’ve been a pawn. Nothing much to be ashamed of. Out of every hundred people born in the world, ninety-nine are pawns and always will be. So you’ve plenty of company.
“A pawn,” he went on, “is very much handicapped in his movements. If he chooses, at the beginning of the game he may move forward two squares. After that he must cover only one square at a time, and that straight ahead.
“Knights, bishops, castles, queen, these have far greater freedom of movement. These, in life, are the highly successful ones, the great scientists and other scholars, successful lawyers, merchant princes.
“But you and I, Johnny—” He put the pawn on its spot. Very carefully placing it in the exact center, he went on: “You and I are like this little round-headed pawn.
“Oh, yes, he has one other chance; he may move to one side as well as forward, but only to destroy some other pawn who happens to be on the spot at the wrong time.”
“Poor old pawn,” Johnny sighed.
“Not so fast!” the canny old man exclaimed. “The pawn moves forward slowly. He is insignificant, his movements unimportant. Often he is neither noticed nor missed. But there may come a time in this battle of the board, as in the battle of life, when knights and bishops, castles and queens have fallen, when the poor little pawn in a single move takes on a position of tremendous importance. All the time, with his snail-like pace, he has been coming closer and closer to the king-row. When the time comes, when he is prepared to glide across that last black line into the king-row, if there is no knight, bishop or queen to stop him, then he may look back from the king-row and say: ‘I am about to make a wish. My wish must be granted, for I have made my long and laborious way to the king-row. Now I wish to be a knight. I wish to be a bishop. I demand the right to become a queen.’ And behold, his wish must be granted!
“And that, too!” he exclaimed in a booming voice, “That, too, is life! All these long years I have been a pawn. Now, very soon, with God’s help and for the good of my fellow men, I shall step over into the king-row. Then I shall choose what I am to be, knight, bishop or queen.
“And you, too, my good friends,” he placed one hand on Scott’s shoulder, the other on Johnny’s, “you shall go into the king-row with me.
“But mind you,” his tone became solemn, “when a man becomes a knight or a bishop in this life we are living now, he assumes as great a responsibility as did knight or bishop in those brave days of good King Arthur and his Round Table.
“Come, Scott, boy.” His tone changed. “The men are placed. Who wins to-night?”
Johnny smiled as the two settled down to their game. His smile was very friendly. He was coming to love this brave old prospector more and more.
“He believes in himself and in God,” he told himself.
“‘Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron chord.’” Where had he heard that? He could not recall. He liked it all the same.
“It’s like Sandy,” he told himself. “He did not say, ‘Let those fellows who stole our films find gold or radium, then we’ll step in and get our share.’ He said, ‘We’ll go out and find it.’ And by all that’s good, we will!”
No Knight of the Round Table ever went forth with higher resolve than did Johnny as he ventured forth on the long trail that would take him to those rocky ledges that showed so plainly on the enlarged photograph. And no knight of any land faced more dangers nor dreamed of higher adventures than did he. Nor were his dreams to be in vain.
The news of the arrival of Chicago’s best known detective, Drew Lane, in the northern wilds spread over the land as oil spreads over water. Mail planes speeding on their courses dropped the surprising news. Gold-hunting planes picked it up and carried it on. Dog teams creeping over the white surface of the earth did their bit. Every trader, every trapper and every Indian passed the word along. Above and beyond all this was some mysterious means of communication which no one appeared to understand but which none doubted. This carried the news to every corner. And from each corner the word came echoing back: “Drew Lane is here. He rides in a bright red plane. The ‘Gray Streak’ may well tremble now!”
Some there were who doubted Drew Lane’s power. Not least among these were certain members of the Mounted Police. “All very well for Chicago,” they laughed, “a young chap like that. Plenty of nerve, no doubt. But what does he know about the North? Leave it to the Mounties. In the end, we get our man!”
“In the end.” Ah, yes! But there were those who shook grave heads at this. Rumors were not lacking that told of the bold, evil doings of the “Gray Streak.” Some of these, to be sure, went unconfirmed. Yet when a starved trapper with a starved dog team came in from the Barrens to tell of a cabin pillaged to the last cupful of flour, the last bacon rind, they said:
“It is time this was stopped!”
But who was to stop it? As for Curlie Carson, his answer was: “Drew Lane.” And yet, in the back of his head was a great desire. He hoped that for the glory of the Company that had trusted him with a powerful and valuable plane in this land of many hazards, he might help to bring the “Gray Streak” to justice.
Even Joyce Mills, busily engaged as she was in the business of bringing her father back to life, and puzzled as she ever was with the problem of the stolen films, found time to listen and thrill at the tale of the arrival of her one-time pal and all-the-time friend, Drew Lane, and to lend an ear to the stories that came floating in from all quarters.
“He’ll get them,” she told her father. “I am sure he will.”
In her more sober moments she puzzled as ever about the stolen films. Matters were coming to a head in their mining camp. Hope ran high.
“But one is a thief,” she whispered more than once. “Jim, Clyde, Lloyd, which could it be? Jim is so religious, so kind and so—so—How could he? Clyde saved my father’s life. How could I doubt him? And Lloyd went all through that terrible war as a boy soldier. He might have gone home from the horror of it all simply by saying the word, yet he never said that word. How can one doubt a man like that?”
So the days passed. Her father’s condition improved. The work at their camp progressed.
From the other camp Johnny Thompson went in search of pitchblende, only to return empty-handed. Nothing daunted, he prepared for a second journey.
In the meantime, with his pilot, Don Burns, one of America’s finest, Drew Lane scoured the country for signs of the “Gray Streak.” Starting at Edmonton, he soared in ever widening circles until his ship of flaming red was known to every Indian child from Fort McMurray to Lake Athabasca and beyond where Great Slave River winds its white wintry way into the lake that bears its name.
From time to time he came to earth for food, fuel and sleep. All the resources of the land were at his command. The poorest trapper was ready enough to share with him his last batch of sourdough pancakes. But information? Ah! That was quite a different matter.
“Where is the ‘Gray Streak’?”
“Where indeed, Monsieur?” So spoke the half-caste French-Canadian. So spoke they all. “He is there, somewhere; not here. He has been seen on the Porcupine, at Great Bear Lake, over the Barrens. But not here, sir. Thank God, not here!”
“And all the time,” thought Curlie Carson, as the days passed, “that D’Arcy Arden person is being carried about as a captive. Or, can that be true? Could a girl stand such a life? Or even a woman, or a boy? Think of the mental strain!”
“Drew,” he said one day as they met at the Chink’s at Fort Chipewyan, “if you ever come up to them, be careful. Think of that captive. If there is shooting to be done, watch the course of your bullets.”
“I’ll watch,” Drew replied quietly.
That Drew had watched the course of many bullets Curlie Carson, yes, and most of the world besides, knew right well, for Drew Lane had not hesitated to arrest the higher-ups in one of the greatest crime rings a city has ever known.
“This,” Curlie laughed, “should be a mere vacation for you.”
“Hardly a vacation,” Drew replied soberly. “No work, especially work that concerns the safety and welfare of many people, can ever be a vacation. Do you know, Curlie,” his tone became deeply serious, “it’s just because this case is different and quite new, and because its dramatic moments are to come in a land strange to me, that I fear it.”
“Fear it, did you say?” Curlie stared.
“Fear of failure is not considered a weakness,” Drew answered quietly. “Fear of failure properly applied puts one on his guard, leads him on to do his best.”
“But you will succeed!” Curlie spoke with conviction.
“Here’s hoping!”
They parted at this, but Curlie was to recall those two words, “Here’s hoping,” and that not twenty-four hours later.
And then the most astounding thing happened.
At Fort Smith, which lies on the way north from Chipewyan, Curlie received a message instructing him to proceed without delay to Resolution.
In defending his dogs from an infuriated bull moose a trapper had been badly injured. It was necessary to carry him at once to the hospital at Edmonton.
“No pursuit of the ‘Gray Streak’ this trip,” said Curlie as he hurriedly gulped down his coffee and prepared for flight.
“Absolutely not,” agreed Jerry.
The thing they saw enacted that day will never seem completely real to Curlie. “More like a moving picture drama,” he has said many times.
The day was one of mixed weather. One hour the sky was clear. The next it was filled with scudding clouds. There were times in between when it was half sky and half clouds.
It happened during one of these clearing spells. Their plane was bumping along like a bob-sled over the clouds, with the sky clearing, and fine chances of reaching Resolution in time for dinner when suddenly Jerry nudged Curlie, then pointed silently to the edge of a silver-lined cloud.
There, Curlie made out clearly enough, just emerging was the “Gray Streak.”
“Of all the luck!” Curlie groaned.
But what was that glint of red in the distance? For the first time in his life Curlie thought he knew how a gray-backed old pike must feel when some red lure is drawn through the water at a distance.
“Is it Drew Lane?” he asked himself. “Or is it some strange trick played on me by the sun?”
Now he thought he saw it. And now it was gone. A small cloud appeared to hide it. The cloud moved on. It was not there, that red speck. But yes, there it was, a little larger. Or was it?
Between keeping an eye on his own instruments and that elusive spot of red, he completely lost sight of the “Gray Streak” until once more Jerry nudged and pointed.
Curlie looked, then groaned aloud
“Going to land! What rotten, rotten luck!”
“Absolutely!”
It was true that the “Gray Streak” was circling for a landing, equally true that Curlie had sworn to do all within his power to bring that outlaw’s career to an end. And yet, he did not swerve one inch from his course. How could he? He had orders. This time they must be obeyed to the letter. A man’s life depended upon it.
And then came the moving picture drama which was after all not drama at all, but life—life so pulsating and real that Curlie was to start from his sleep with a cry of surprise and pain on many a night thereafter.
The “Gray Streak” had been sighted at a position some five miles before them. It was landing almost directly beneath the airway they followed. Indeed, it was coming to rest on the surface of the river.
The red spot Curlie had seen, or thought he had, was off at right angles to their course. A large cloud had blotted out that spot until Curlie was all but directly over the “Gray Streak,” which by this time had come to rest on the river, when there emerged from that cloud a large red spot which could no longer be mistaken for other than Drew Lane’s red racer of the air.
“What luck!” Curlie fairly shouted. “What luck for good old Drew Lane! He will—”
He broke off to stare. He was close enough now to make out a human figure clinging to the upper surface of the red plane.
“Drew!” His breath came quick. “It can’t be the pilot. It must be Drew. But why—why would—”
Again he gasped. The figure that at this distance seemed so tiny, slipped from the plane to shoot downward.
Ten seconds of suspense, then a sigh of relief. A parachute had unfolded. Together the figure and the parachute drifted into a cloud.
“Going after them single handed,” was Curlie’s conclusion. “Good old Drew! He hunts alone. And, like the Mounties, he gets his man. He—”
At that instant, for the first time in all his flying career, Curlie Carson all but lost control of his plane. A dip, a side twist, three wild heartbeats, and he was himself again and his plane went thundering on.
Yes, he had all but gone into a tailspin, and that with his motor thundering at its best. But who could blame him? The parachute he had seen a few seconds before, bearing his good friend Drew Lane safely toward the earth, had suddenly come fluttering out of the clouds. Borne on by the wind, it drifted aimlessly. Drew Lane had vanished.
“It’s the end!” Curlie thought, with a gulp.
Filled with rage, once his plane had righted itself, he felt himself consumed by a desire to disregard all orders; to drop to earth and engage the “Gray Streak” in a battle to the death.
But, guided by a more sober counsel, he thundered straight on toward Resolution. Duty had called. He must obey.
Before the parachute, from which Drew Lane had so mysteriously dropped, had floated out from the cloud, the Red Racer, still manned by Drew’s pilot, had passed into another cloud.
“He does not know,” Curlie told himself. “He believes that Drew made a safe landing and will believe it until some one has told him the truth.”
It came to him that it was his duty to hunt out the Red Racer and break the sad news.
“But what would be the good? One does not fall thousands of feet and survive. My first duty is to the living.”
He flew into Resolution, drank a scalding cup of black tea, took on his emergency passenger, and then flew straight back to Fort McMurray. There Punch Dickinson, who had come to relieve him, took over his task and he was free.
“Free to think!” he told himself bitterly.
And such thoughts as they were! He lived over again trying days in a great city when Drew Lane had played the part of a true friend to him, saw again his quiet smile, seemed to hear his voice. And then, as he closed his eyes he saw a thing like a white sheet flutter from the clouds to go drifting away on an all but endless journey, and heard once again the thunder of motors.
For a long time he tossed aimlessly about in his bed. Then a great resolve to control his mind won for him rest.
Morning found him with the time and the great desire to follow the “Gray Streak” to the bleakest shore of the Arctic, if need be.
He called the office and obtained permission to use his plane in this pursuit for three days.
“At the end of that time you must report for duty at McMurray,” came over the wire. “Take no chances that will cause you to break this trust.”
He gave his word; then, with Jerry at his side, he flew away into the morning.
If the news of the arrival of Drew Lane in this land spread rapidly, the story of his departure into a cloud spread with no less rapidity. It reached Johnny Thompson’s camp just as he was preparing to venture forth on another search for radio-active pitchblende. Like his good friend Curlie, he set his lips tight in a determination to do his utmost in avenging the death of a friend.
“He planned to drop down and face them single-handed,” he said to Sandy. “Somehow they must have found out his plans. They weakened the parachute ropes or his belt, so they would give way under his weight.”
Was this the solution? Who could say? There were many who believed it. For had not Drew Lane taken off at Edmonton airport? And had not Curlie Carson been robbed of a code message in his hotel in that very city? Who could say how many accomplices the “Gray Streak” might have in this frontier?
And after all, who was the outlaw pilot of this “Gray Streak”? There were those who believed the plane to be manned by Russians bent on raising a revolution in Canada and annexing this Dominion to Russia. “What could be more logical?” they argued. “Like the Russians, we are northern people. Our problems are their problems. How could they doubt that we would join them were the opportunity really given?”
In support of this theory, there was the gray mitten fashioned out of the pelt of a Siberian wolf-hound. It had been found in Curlie’s room. The thief had lost it.
“And yet,” another pointed out, “there are thousands of gray wolf-hounds in the United States and Canada. Their pelts are made into mittens. Such mittens may be bought and are worn in Winnipeg.”
“It’s that Chicago mail plane.” This was Curlie’s opinion. “That city is making life hard for dangerous criminals. The biggest of them all is out on bail. He is likely to be sentenced to three years in prison. What could be more logical than that he, or some one like him, should seize a plane to fly to the security that is found in wide open spaces?”
Some there were who believed that the “Gray Streak” was manned by reckless youths. This number diminished as charges piled up against this pirate of the air.
The news of Drew Lane’s disappearance brought sorrow into the camp of Joyce Mills and her father.
“He was a true friend,” Joyce said sadly.
“He was indeed!” her father agreed.
One ray of hope cheered their lonely path. The gleam of gold along their trail seemed to grow brighter day by day.
Thus matters stood as Curlie Carson, with Jerry at his side, sailed away in the light of the morning sun, bound on his three days’ search for the “Gray Streak.”
Three days, coming to earth only for fuel and sleep, Curlie and Jerry skimmed the far horizon searching for some sign of the “Gray Streak.” The days were fair. Beneath them lay the earth, a blanket of white broken only by streaks of black where spruce and tamarack followed a narrow stream. Beyond, to the north, south, east and west, lay the gray rim of the horizon. Three times Curlie’s heart leaped at sight of a plane on that horizon. Each time he met with disappointment. A commercial plane bringing trappers in from the Barrens and two mineral hunters, they brought him no news of the ship he sought.
And then, on the third day at a time when he was feeling the urge of duty to turn back, the “Gray Streak” hove in sight.
What to do? To follow? To turn back? The thing must be decided on the instant. Official orders said, “Turn back.” Romance, adventure, the desire to avenge a fallen comrade, the common good of all those who had come to dwell in the North, urged him on.
Duty whispered.
The call of romance rang in his ears. Romance won.
“Jerry, we’re going after them.”
“Absolutely, son.” Jerry’s grin was good to see.
Three hours later Curlie found himself following the lead of that mysterious ship. Grave doubts had by this time entered his mind.
“How is this to end?” He asked this question many times. Many times, too, he told himself it was his duty to turn back, that a cargo of freight for the north awaited him, that each mile on this mad adventure was counting against him as a pilot with a blameless record; yet something still urged him on.
A hundred, two, three, four hundred miles they flew.
Then like a flash it came to him that he was being led away into a land where no man was.
“They hope I will run out of gas and be obliged to land where there is no fuel supply. And then?”
He shuddered at thought of that which might follow. Save for his bow and arrow, neither he nor Jerry was armed. “And if they did not attack us, we would be in a fair way to starve before we could beat our way back across this rocky wilderness.”
* * * * * * * *
At this same moment Johnny Thompson was enjoying adventures all his own.
With his dog team on his second journey in search of pitchblende he had traveled fifty miles, and the day was still young. That was because he had started at two o’clock in the morning. In this north country where at one time of the year there is no night at all and in another there is no day, men forget the conventions of life. Instead of three meals a day, they may eat five, or two, or only one. If a journey is to be made, they start when they are ready. Johnny had been ready at two in the morning.
He was fond of night travel. Then the moon casts ghostly shadows. The stars burn like candles. All living things are afoot. White foxes are barking on the crests of rocky ridges. Wolves follow a traveler for hours. He did not mind the wolves. Like Curlie, he was an archer. His powerful bow, a curious affair made of wood, rawhide and some secret glue, presented to him by an Indian, was ever at hand.
Now and then a dark bulk that was a caribou loomed in the distance.
“If I could pick off one of those I could make my journey twice as long,” he told himself.
He thought of the mineral he had come to seek, pitchblende. More illusive than gold and many times more precious, radium, the product of pitchblende, had somehow gotten into his blood.