CHAPTER XII

THE VOICE SPEAKS

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.